Strange and devastating train crashes

In the golden age of the railroad, trains on tracks in Sussex County were commonplace. At the time, it was the only way to move freight and passengers. Every town had its own train station – some had two.

With trains, accidents are inevitable, and three devastating and strange crashes occurred in western Sussex County during the first decade of the 1900s.

On Dec. 2, 1903, during a horrific snowstorm, a freight train derailed and crashed into another oncoming freight train in Greenwood, and its cargo – thought to be dynamite – exploded, rocking the town and killing two people. It was called “The Day Greenwood Blew Up.”

On June 20, 1904, a speeding train crashed into a bridge. It went into the Laurel River on top of a passing schooner. Sounds unbelievable, but it actually happened. Had it not been for the heroic efforts of one man, who crawled under the train to uncouple the passenger cars, many lives would have been lost.

On Feb. 22, 1909, a passenger train headed to Hampton Roads, Va., collided with two locomotives in the early mmorning fog at the Delmar rail yard. Burning coals from the engines started several small fires that led to a series of explosions, killing seven people, several circus animals and Princess Trixie the Wonder Horse. Cars were loaded with fireworks destined for a celebration to honor the Great White Naval Fleet in Hampton.

A ship and a train

In Laurel, engineer Fred Courtney was at the wheel of the Norfolk Express, with passengers and freight headed north on his first trip on the line. Unfortunately, he was going too fast and did not have time to stop as he approached the Laurel River railroad bridge.

As the train plunged into the narrow river, the schooner Golden Gate was passing underneath. Talk about terrible timing.

The crew of the schooner, which was crushed and sunk, saw the impending crash and jumped overboard.

Courtney perished in the crash, but loss of life could have been much worse. Baggage master Sammons (his first name is not known) risked his own life to unhook the passenger cars just in time as the cars came to a halt at the river's edge.

Although no passengers were injured, a story in the Evening Journal noted: “None of them was injured, but when they saw their hair-breadth escape from terrible death, women fainted and became hysterical and it required the efforts of the others to comfort them.”

It took several weeks to get the engine and ship out of the water, and even more time to repair the bridge. Trains were rerouted from Salisbury through Seaford.

Crash in blizzard

As strange as that crash was in Laurel, the one in Greenwood in 1903 had an air of mystery around it. While the explosion that damaged nearly every home in the small town was thought to be caused by dynamite, a reporter for the Washington Times questioned exactly what explosive was being carried.

He wrote, “The car which blew up was loaded in New York and was consigned to the government, its destination being Newport News. It contained a quantity of new explosive, a terrible instrument of death. A glance over the stricken town furnished proof positive that something more deadly than 100 pounds of dynamite exploded in the wreck of the two freight trains.”

The hole left by the blast was as large as a train engine.

Newspaper reports at the time were very descriptive: “People heard the shrill warning and the noise of heavy metal bending and twisting. Moments later, there was a deafening roar when a boxcar of dynamite exploded, instantly filling the air with flying debris, fire and smoke.  That first powerful blast was followed quickly by another eruption as naphtha tank cars took fire, shooting burning liquid out over the landscape. The combination of the explosion and the highly flammable liquid scattered a rain of liquid fire that shock the countryside. Instantly nine houses, and three wrecked tanks cars were wrapped in flames.”

“There was hardly a sound house in town, some having been torn to pieces,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “A number were half overturned, many had great holes in their walls, doors were torn from their hinges, and practically every window in town was smashed. And there was the great pile of freight, one on top of another.”

Killed were brakeman Edwin Roach and an infant in a nearby home.

Even as the winter storm raged, a train from Seaford arrived with five doctors while residents from the area arrived in sleighs to help the stunned residents of Greenwood.

Fiery crash in Delmar

A joyous homecoming celebration turned into a disaster when a train crashed into two locomotives in Delmar. Passengers on the train were headed from Wilmington and Philadelphia to Hampton Roads, Va., to welcome in the U.S. Navy fleet that had been on an around-the-world tour.

With dense fog hampering his view, the engineer slowed his train down to 5 mph, but the damage from the crash was still extensive, and hot coals from the engines ignited fires leading to several deadly explosions.

The New York Times reported, “Almost immediately hot coals which had been showered over the wrecked cars by the shattered locomotives set fire to the wood work. The flames sprang up in a half dozen places, and were followed in less than five minutes by the roar of exploding gas tanks. Those of the train crew and passengers who had been awakened by the shock ran forward, but could do nothing for the victims whose cries arose above the crackling flames and hissing steam. In a few minutes the cries ceased.”

It was later discovered that many of the explosions were from fireworks being transported to the homecoming celebration. Seven men were trapped in the wreckage and could not be rescued.