The Deadly Train Stunt of McClennan County

by Tom Goodman

In 1896, a railroad company crashed two trains into each other at full speed on a Texas rail line.

On purpose.

The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad—“the Katy” for short—passed among gentle hills between Hillsboro and Waco in McLennan County, Texas. A passenger agent named William Crush thought the slopes would make a perfect setting for a spectacular stunt. 

The company had two old Baldwin locomotives--obsolete but still in working order. Why not let the public watch them smash together?

Crush promoted the event nationwide. On September 15, forty thousand people gathered on the hillsides at “the Crush,” as folks had begun calling the site. Thomas Edison even sent a cameraman from New York to film the spectacle with his new motion picture machine.

At 5 p.m., the locomotives rolled forward until they stood a few feet apart, like boxers touching gloves before a fight. Then they backed up a mile.

At 5:10, on signal, the engineers opened the throttles. The locomotives roared forward, building to forty-five miles an hour. At the last moment, the crews jumped clear.

Only when the engines slammed head-on did spectators realize what a terrible idea this was. Crush had been assured the boilers could withstand the impact. They couldn’t. Both exploded, sending jagged metal into the crowd. Dozens were injured. Two people died.

One writer said the scene “will haunt a man for many, many days, make him nervous when he hears an engine whistle, and disturb his dreams with black clouds of death-dealing iron hail.”

Lawsuits followed. The railroad fired Crush.

But the next day, when the president saw how much publicity the stunt had generated, Crush was rehired.

Humorist Alex Sweet suggested that Crush’s next event “be a prearranged, scheduled meeting between a waterspout and a tornado.”

The famous ragtime composer Scott Joplin wrote a piano piece about the incident called “The Great Crush Collision March.” Listen to it here:

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