You have multiple choices for the biggest current train wreck in America.
a) the Kardashians
b) the Trump administration
c) Caitlyn Jenner
d) California hipsters
e) All of the above
Any of those selections is an excellent choice for a rolling disaster but all pale before the Monster Smash by Bill Crush in 1896.
September 15, 1896: Engines No. 999 and No. 1001 a moment before impact
(Photo courtesy of Four Event Photos, The Texas Collection, Baylor University)
Texas doesn't bluff and when it says it will wreck some trains, those vehicles will be properly smashed; more accurately, they will be obliterated.
Crush and his team had made a tragic miscalculation. In head-on collisions, engines typically rose together in an inverted V, while the cars behind crumpled, accordionlike. This time, for whatever reasons, the two engines instead telescoped together. Their boilers exploded at once, sending up what one reporter described as “flying missiles of iron and steel, varying in size from a postage stamp to half a driving wheel.” Tens of thousands scrambled to avoid the iron and wood debris catapulting through the sky. Distance was no guarantee of safety; debris peppered the crowd and pocked the earth as far as 300 yards away.
Those trains blowed-up real good and no Celebrity Blow-Up ever will top this one.
Hey, y'all ... watch this.
Any time you hear those words in the South, you know something is going to explode ... soon.
The article is worth a look for the finest kind of all-American P.T. Barnum hucksterism. Bill Crush is a riot and it cost him his job but it did get the Katy line the attention they wanted and business was good ... just not for him.
History.net: Crush’s Locomotive Crash Was a Monster Smash
a) the Kardashians
b) the Trump administration
c) Caitlyn Jenner
d) California hipsters
e) All of the above
Any of those selections is an excellent choice for a rolling disaster but all pale before the Monster Smash by Bill Crush in 1896.
September 15, 1896: Engines No. 999 and No. 1001 a moment before impact
(Photo courtesy of Four Event Photos, The Texas Collection, Baylor University)
Texas doesn't bluff and when it says it will wreck some trains, those vehicles will be properly smashed; more accurately, they will be obliterated.
Crush and his team had made a tragic miscalculation. In head-on collisions, engines typically rose together in an inverted V, while the cars behind crumpled, accordionlike. This time, for whatever reasons, the two engines instead telescoped together. Their boilers exploded at once, sending up what one reporter described as “flying missiles of iron and steel, varying in size from a postage stamp to half a driving wheel.” Tens of thousands scrambled to avoid the iron and wood debris catapulting through the sky. Distance was no guarantee of safety; debris peppered the crowd and pocked the earth as far as 300 yards away.
Those trains blowed-up real good and no Celebrity Blow-Up ever will top this one.
Hey, y'all ... watch this.
Any time you hear those words in the South, you know something is going to explode ... soon.
The article is worth a look for the finest kind of all-American P.T. Barnum hucksterism. Bill Crush is a riot and it cost him his job but it did get the Katy line the attention they wanted and business was good ... just not for him.
History.net: Crush’s Locomotive Crash Was a Monster Smash
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