The Frankford Junction train wreck occurred on September 6, 1943, when Pennsylvania Railroad's premier train, the ''Congressional Limited'', crashed at
Frankford Junction
Frankford Junction is a railroad junction, and former junction station, located on the border between the Harrowgate neighborhood of Philadelphia and Frankford, Philadelphia. At the junction, the 4-track Northeast Corridor line from Trenton ...
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
in the United States, killing 79 people and injuring 117 others.
Train
The ''Congressional Limited'' traveled between
Washington D.C.
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and
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, normally making one stop in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Labor Day Weekend in 1943, the company laid on 16-car trains to accommodate the expected high demand. At Washington's
Union Station
A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...
on Monday, September 6, 541 passengers boarded the 4 p.m. train, its 16 cars hauled by
PRR GG1
The Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 is a class of streamlined electric locomotives built for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), in the northeastern United States. The class was known for its striking art deco shell, its ability to pull trains at up to 100 ...
electric locomotive
An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or g ...
number 4930,ICC Investigation No.2726 scheduled to travel nonstop to
Pennsylvania Station
Pennsylvania Station (often abbreviated Penn Station) is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to several of its grand passenger terminals. Several are still in active use by Amtrak and other transportation services; others have been ...
Everything appeared in order as the train passed through
North Philadelphia station
North Philadelphia station is an intercity rail and regional rail station on the Northeast Corridor, located on North Broad Street in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The Southeastern Pennsylv ...
ahead of schedule and slowed its speed, but shortly afterward, as it passed a rail yard, workers noticed flames coming from a
journal box
A bogie or railroad truck holds the wheel sets of a rail vehicle.
Axlebox
An ''axle box'', also known as a ''journal box'' in North America, is the mechanical subassembly on each end of the axles under a railway wagon, coach or locomotive; ...
(a
hot box
A hot box is the term used when an axle bearing overheats on a piece of railway rolling stock. The term is derived from the journal-bearing trucks used before the mid-20th century. The axle bearings were housed in a box that used oil-soaked ...
) on one of the cars and rang the next signal tower at Frankford Junction, but the call came too late. Before the tower man could react, disaster struck as the train passed his signal tower at 6:06 pm traveling at a speed of 56 mph. The journal box on the front of car #7 seized and an axle snapped, catching the underside of the
truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...
and catapulting the car upwards. It struck a signal gantry, which peeled off its roof along the line of windows "like a can of sardines". Car #8 wrapped itself around the gantry upright in a figure U. The next six cars were scattered at odd angles over the tracks, and the last two cars remained undamaged, with bodies of the 79 dead lying scattered over the tracks. As it was wartime, many servicemen home on leave were aboard who helped the injured. Workers from the nearby Cramp's shipyard arrived with acetylene torches to cut open cars to rescue the injured, a process that took until the following morning. The rescue work was directed by Mayor Bernard Samuel. The work of removing the dead was not complete until 24 hours after the accident.
Among the survivors was Chinese author
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang ( ; October 10, 1895 – March 26, 1976) was a Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist, philosopher, and translator. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generati ...
.
Inquiry
In total, 79 passengers died, all from cars #7 and #8, and 117 were injured, some seriously. The inquiry quickly established the overheated journal box as the cause of the accident, but railroad mechanics who had inspected and lubricated the box earlier that day swore it had been in good order. Normal practice was for signal towermen to watch passing train wheels for signs of problems and for train crew to look back as trains rounded curves. How this hot box escaped attention until too late has never been explained.
Similar incidents
This was not the first railroad accident in which an overheated journal box caused an axle to break and derail a train. The first-ever train wreck involving passenger fatalities, the
Hightstown rail accident
The "Hightstown" rail accident occurred on the Camden and Amboy Railroad between Hightstown, New Jersey and Spotswood on 8 November 1833, just two months after horses were replaced by steam locomotives on the line. It is the earliest recorded tr ...
of 1833, had an identical cause.
71 years and 8 months later, along the same location, an
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...
train, speeding over 100 mph, derailed along the curve. The
2015 Philadelphia train derailment
On May 12, 2015, an Amtrak ''Northeast Regional'' train from Washington, D.C. bound for New York City derailed and wrecked on the Northeast Corridor near the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Of 238 passengers and 5 crew on ...
claimed eight lives as well as injuring many others.
References
*''The Derailment of the Congressional Limited, Pennsylvania's Worst Railroad Disaster'' by Benjamin L Bernhart, publ Outer Station Project 2007,