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Looking Back – 1915 — The Wreck of the Blue Mountain Express, Part 3

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Note: This is the third of three articles about the wreck of the Blue Mountain Express between Thurmont and Sabillasville in 1915.

by James Rada, Jr.

On June 25, 1915, the Blue Mountain Express bound for Hagerstown crashed head-on with a mail train coming east from Hagerstown, crumpling the two engines and sending a baggage car off the bridge where the wreck occurred and into the ravine below. Coleman Cook, engineer; Luther Hull, fireman; J. R. Hayes, fireman; Mrs. W. C. Chipchase, Baltimore; and Walter Chipchase, Baltimore, all died in the crash. Twelve others suffered serious injuries.

Edgar Bloom, a dispatcher for the Western Maryland Railroad, took responsibility for mixing up the right-of-way orders issued from Hagerstown that had caused the crash.

What if there was another contributing factor in the accident that no one realized because it had happened months earlier?

William H. Webb was a sixty-five-year-old watchman on the bridges west of Thurmont. Each day, he would walk to his shanty next to the bridges from his home on Kelbaugh Road. Every day, his wife, Sarah, would have one of their children or grandchildren take William his lunch.

“As watchman of those bridges, Mr. Webb’s position was an important one. The safety of many passengers and trains depended upon his watchfulness during the hours of the night. He walked those bridges at regular intervals during all hours of the night,” the Frederick Post reported.

By 1915, he’d been an employee of the Western Maryland Railroad for thirty-five years. His job was isolated, but he enjoyed it.

Webb was Roger Troxell’s great-grandfather. According to stories that his mother told him, “One of the children or grandchildren took him his lunch one day. It was pouring down rain and he found him (Webb) sitting on the railing holding his umbrella, and he was dead.”

This differs from the accounts in the Frederick Post and Catoctin Clarion. They reported that the day watchman had found William lying beside the cross-tie block on February 24, 1915.

“When found his overcoat was drawn up over his shoulders, and a raised umbrella lay beside him,” the Frederick Post reported.

The Catoctin Clarion explained that it appeared as if Webb had come east from his shack, across the iron bridge to “signal” the Fast Mail train going west soon after 6 o’clock, and while walking to his post east of the bridge was stricken with heart trouble and died.

The day watchman telephoned to Thurmont and Dr. Morris Birely, and Magistrate E. E. Black came out to the bridges to examine the body. No marks were found on it, and Birely said that heart failure was the cause of death.

Although this was months before the summer wreck, there’s no indication that another watchman was hired to replace Webb. Also, one of the trains that wrecked was the fast mail train that Webb usually signaled.

Had Webb still been alive and on the job, he may have been able to signal the trains to stop before they wrecked on the bridges. Bloom may also have been able to call the shanty directly about the mix-up, rather than telegraphing a message to the Western Maryland Railroad Station in Thurmont in the hopes to stop the train before it left the station.

William H. Webb

1915 – The Wreck of the Blue Mountain Express, Part 2

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2by James Rada, Jr.

Note: This is the second of three articles about the wreck of the Blue Mountain Express between Thurmont and Sabillasville in 1915.

high-bridges-wreck-003-firOn June 25, 1915, the Blue Mountain Express, bound for Hagerstown, crashed head-on with a mail train traveling east from Hagerstown, crumpling the two engines and sending a baggage car off the bridge, where the crash occurred, and into the ravine below.

Thomas B. South of Hagerstown was in the passenger car next to the baggage car that crashed into the ravine. He felt a “grating sensation before the crash came.” The impact threw him forward against the seat in front of him.

“Mr. South said he could feel the car in which he was riding turn almost completely around and that it then tilted, as if it was going into the ravine,” reported the Herald Mail. “Women screamed and children cried when the awful impact came, and great difficulty was experienced in getting them out of the cars.”

Harry Smith of Hagerstown was seated in a passenger car of the Blue Mountain Express and “he felt the car topple and pieces of glass flew in every direction and many persons were badly cut,” according to the Hagerstown Herald Mail.

The two trains hit head-on. The baggage car on the Blue Mountain Express fell into the ravine, carrying with it two passengers: Mrs. W. C. Chipchase and her son, Walter.

“Mrs. Chipchase was going to be admitted to a sanitarium, was reclining in a baggage car, son and nurse with her…nurse left to stroll through the train, which probably saved her,” the Adams County News reported.

Mrs. Chipchase died in the fall, but Walter was found unconscious and groaning when rescuers reached him.

The Frederick News reported that Walter was taken to a cottage at Blue Ridge Summit, where his sister, Ethel, had been waiting for her brother and mother to arrive. He died around midnight.

The engines of the two trains had locked together on impact, “appearing as almost one engine to the horrified rescuers who quickly gathered on the scene. Had the engines ricocheted off of one another, there undoubtedly would have been more causalities,” according to a historical study of Catoctin National Park.

Eyler said, “Coals were falling from one of the boilers and for a time threatened to set fire to the wooden structure of the bridge. The whistle on one of the engines had stuck in an open position and kept blowing until all of the steam was gone.”

Within minutes of the crash, about one hundred people had gathered to help the survivors and find the dead amid the debris.

As the passengers and crew were located and pulled from the wreckage, two bodies were seen that could not be reached easily. Fireman Hayes’ body could be seen hanging from the train’s cab, but no one could reach it because the cab was hanging out over the ravine.

“It was impossible to move the body for fear that the slightest motion would hurl it to the bottom of the ravine nearly 100 feet below,” the Frederick News reported.

Dr. Morris Birely of Thurmont was the first doctor on the scene. He went to work treating the wounded as best he could. He worked into the night, using gas lanterns for light.

The Western Maryland Railroad sent two special trains to help in transporting the dead and wounded from the area. One train came from the east and the other the west.

All of the wreckage, except the connected locomotives, had been cleared from the bridge by morning.

“People were still wondering the next day how the two engines had stayed on the rails. But it was easy to see how the wreck had occurred. The bridge is ‘blind’ from both directions. From the east, a train passes out of a deep, curving cut right onto the bridge. From the west, an engineer had a little more visibility but was also on a curve and was traveling down-hill, making a quick stop impossible,” Eyler wrote.

In the end, six died in the crash of the Blue Mountain Express. They were: Coleman Cook, engineer; Luther Hull, fireman; J. R. Hayes, fireman; Mrs. W. C. Chipchase, Baltimore; Walter Chipchase, Baltimore. Twelve others suffered serious injuries. An investigation revealed that a mix-up in the all-important right-of-way orders issued from Hagerstown had caused the crash.

Bloom, “Pale and worn, the unmistakable signs of the worry he has experienced since hearing the result of his mistake,” according to the Adams County News, accepted responsibility for the accident.

Oddly, there were three Western Maryland Railroad officials on the Blue Mountain Express on their way to a meeting about the prevention of wrecks.

Looking Back 1915

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The Wreck of the Blue Mountain Express, Part 1

by James Rada, Jr.

Note: This is the first of two articles about the wreck of the Blue Mountain Express between Thurmont and Sabillasville in 1915.

On June 25, 1915, the Blue Mountain Express, bound for Hagerstown, pulled into the Western Maryland Railroad Station in Thurmont about twenty minutes late for its 5:10 p.m. stop in town. Apparently, the train had had a hotbox that needed to be repacked while the train was in Union Bridge, according Charles Eyler in George Wireman’s book, Gateway to the Mountains.

In Thurmont, the train hurriedly took on water and dropped off Baltimore’s afternoon newspapers for delivery. The stop was short, in hopes of making up some lost time.

The express was made up of a Pullman Parlor Car, three coaches, and a baggage car. “Although it was primarily a freight line, the Western Maryland became famous for the excursion trains it ran to the Blue Ridge, and for the Blue Mountain Express, said to have been the finest train in the East,” Wireman wrote.

Meanwhile, in Hagerstown, the train dispatcher, Edgar Bloom, was busy trying to keep trains moving along the stretch of track that he watched over. Of the 180 miles under his supervision, all but 20 miles were single track. That meant if two trains were coming from different directions, he had to notify the nearest station to have one train pull off onto a siding until the other train passed.

“Bloom had been doing this for a while and knew his job, but, today, he was having trouble communicating to the east. A storm earlier in the week had knocked down a telegraph line. Add to that, the general confusion of a very busy day and Bloom lost track of countermanding an order that gave the Blue Mountain Express the right of way,” according to the Adams County News.

From Thurmont, the next stop was Sabillasville. Outside of Thurmont, the Blue Mountain Express started up the mountain on a section of single track that ran for just over two miles.

Around 5:30 p.m., local residents heard the familiar sound of the Blue Mountain Express’s train whistle, but instead of stopping, it continued blowing. People knew something was wrong and rushed to where they heard the whistle.

On the tracks, it’s not certain how soon the engineers saw the trouble coming at them. The eastbound Baltimore Unlimited came head to head with the westbound Blue Mountain Express. “It is presumed that the engineers of both trains believed the other had been ordered to take the siding to allow his train to pass, …all-steel cars helped minimize loss of life,” the Adams County News reported.

The two engines hit. The impact crumpled some cars and knocked others off the High Bridge, over Owens Creek, and into the ravine one hundred feet below.

Seconds before the crash, Fireman Vendergerst, on the Baltmore Unlimited, “made a thrilling leap for safety,” according to the Frederick News. It did him little good. He was found later with a broken back and legs broken in several places. He was taken to the hospital in Hagerstown.

  1. B. Taylor of Westminster was sitting in the smoking car when he felt the train slowing. He thought the engineer might be applying the emergency brake.

“I thrust my head out of the window and beheld a terrifying sight,” Taylor told the Hagerstown Herald Mail. “The engine and tender of the Blue Mountain was over the bridge, while the baggage car was smashed in, part of it falling into the ravine behind the engine and tender.”

Uninjured, Taylor grabbed his things and headed for the door, along with the other passengers in the car.

He was one of the lucky ones.

high-bridges-wreck-002-co

Train wreck at High Bridges, taken June 24, 1915. This view shows the east bound engine; the other had been moved.

Photo Courtesy of Thurmontimages.com