BUTLER — The article in the Mt. Vernon True Whig starts dramatically: “A Terrible Accident. — One of the most disastrous accidents that ever occurred on the S. M. & N. Railroad, was that of yesterday morning.”
That may sound like a major disaster of epic proportions, but it helps to know a couple of things:
First, this is a report from 1854, when said railroad had been in business all of two years in this part of the state. Second, the top speed of the engines on this line were not as fast as modern trains.
According to the only report about this wreck that I was able to locate, no one was killed, and thus the disaster was not as bad as many later train wrecks to come.
So, in retrospect, this two-train collision has been forgotten by history.
The railroad in question is the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad, which was only the second railroad to be built in the state of Ohio.
The whole reason it was built was because of the prime hay-growing farmlands of central and north-central Ohio, which weren’t being serviced by the canals built elsewhere in the state in the early 1800s.
The northern end of the S. M. & N was built first, and saw the first locomotive steam into Mansfield at a blistering 15 miles an hour in 1846.
Entering the small town, the engineer blew his steam whistle to greet the curious crowd that had assembled.
The majority of the gathered people, never having heard a steam whistle, were terrified and thought it meant the steam engine was about to blow. The crowd ran, screaming.
The southern half was in place by 1852, and was also the source of the infamous “screaming beast” story that gave Ankenytown its original name — Squeal — around that time, for similar reasons.
The route of this southern half of the railroad ran from Mansfield to Lexington to Bellville to Butler to Ankenytown to Fredericktown to Mount Vernon to Utica to Newark.
The Newark to Mount Vernon link is still actually in operation, though rarely used. The Butler to Mansfield stretch is today the B&O Bike Trail, named after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad corporation which later absorbed the S. M. & N.
What ended up happening that September morning in 1854 is that there were two trains, both headed north on the railroad. A freight train had left Mount Vernon first, laboring with a heavy load.
It was followed by a passenger train. As the passenger train was spotted to the rear of the freight train slowly but surely gaining on them, the engineer of the freight train decided to pull into a siding track at Fredericktown so that the other train could pass.
The passenger train steamed past, keeping on its schedule. Having fallen behind, the freight train crew decided that they needed to make up for lost time to avoid getting into trouble.
Heading out of Fredericktown and through Ankenytown, they built up steam and pushed their engine hard.
The passenger train, not realizing that the freight would be trying to make up time, stopped on the curve just north of the village of Independence — known today as Butler — to take on wood to feed the fires of its steam boiler.
The freight train crew had no idea the passenger train had stopped, and not needing fuel, they had no plans to stop. Today, such issues are avoided by having all running trains plotted and monitored with computer programs.
In 1854, no such safeguard existed. That’s how it came to be that the passenger train was a sitting duck when the freight train came puffing around the curve.
The engineer and fireman of the freight train didn’t comport themselves in a heroic manner that morning.
Instead of making a desperate attempt to stop their speeding train, they both panicked and jumped out of the engine. The fireman (the one who fed the boiler furnace) injured himself landing hard, but the conductor was able to land without injury.
Alas, that was not the case for the people in the rear passenger car of the other train. The freight locomotive cut into the car, splitting it in two.
The boiler was shattered in the wreck, sending steam and boiling water in every direction, badly scalding 15 to 20 passengers, many of whom were also hurt by the impact itself.
No information is recorded about the engine of the freight train. Early illustrations of the railroad show very primitive engines, but by the mid-1850s, locomotives were beginning to take on the familiar later appearance often seen in photographs.
Indeed, there is an existing photograph that shows an S. M. & N. locomotive named “Independence,” possibly named after the village where this train wreck occurred.
If by some chance it was the engine involved in this wreck, it would indeed have been terrifying and destructive when it plowed into the passenger car.
But, considering that the railroad was not absorbed by the B&O Railroad until 1869, this engine could be from a decade later. We simply don’t have any further details.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all — and why this wreck has been forgotten — is that no one was actually killed. That again suggests that the speed of the freight train could not have been all that great or surely the casualties would have been more severe.
That is not to diminish the major injuries of serious burns, but at least no one was killed.
Walking through Butler today on the Richland B&O Trail, it is apparently the curve just north of Traxler Street where the wreck happened.
Today, your main danger in that spot is getting run over by a speeding bicycle.