Examining a famous train wreck

The Chatsworth Train Wreck occurred in 1887 when a TP&W excursion train to Niagara Falls was wrecked just east of Chatsworth.

As this train approached a fourteen-foot-long wood bridge, the engineer and fireman on the first locomotive noticed flames on the track. Since there was not enough time to stop the train before the bridge, the fireman jumped from the engine. The engineer stayed on the locomotive, and it made it over the burning bridge before it collapsed. The second locomotive and many subsequent wood passenger cars went off the track and down into the earth below the damaged bridge.

As each wooden passenger car descended into the ditch, it sheared the passenger area entirely off the passenger car in front of it. This phenomenon was called telescoping. Most of the passengers in these telescoped cars were instantly killed. Although the exact numbers are still not known for sure, typical estimates for the train wreck were 625 total passengers, with 85 killed and 372 injured.

The Blade noted that twenty-six people boarded the train at Fairbury. Twenty-three of these people were Fairbury citizens. Miraculously, none of these twenty-three Fairbury citizens were killed. Most of them suffered minor injuries. Fairbury doctors immediately rushed to the wreck site to help tend to the wounded.

In terms of fatalities, the Chatsworth Train Wreck was the second-worst train wreck in that era. The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster had 92 deaths, which exceeded the 85 deaths on the Chatsworth Train Wreck. In terms of the total human toll, the Chatsworth Train Wreck was the worst because 372 were injured compared to the 64 injured on the Ashtabula Wreck. Even today, the Chatsworth Train Wreck is still the seventh-worst in U.S. history.

One magazine of that era that covered the Chatsworth Train Wreck was the Police Gazette. Today, we would call this a "sensational" type of magazine. The magazine focused on scandalous crimes involving famous people.

The Police Gazette magazine must have decided to publish a story about the Chatsworth Train Wreck because of the many reports that thieves robbed the dead and the injured shortly after the wreck. One early theory was that thieves intentionally burned down the little wooden bridge so the train would crash, and then they could rob the victims. This theory was quickly proven wrong. The bridge likely caught fire from burning embers dropped from a freight train, which passed over the bridge a few hours before the Niagara excursion train.

The Chatsworth Train Wreck was the cover story on the August 27, 1887 issue of the Police Gazette magazine. The cover listed the train wreck story as "The Terrible Illinois Railroad Slaughter: A Gory Hecatomb."  The word hecatomb came from an ancient Greek or Roman sacrifice of 100 oxen or cattle. In the 1887 era, it referred to the sacrifice or slaughter of many victims.

The front cover of the magazine had an illustration of an injured man, with a gun pointed at his head, lying beside his dead wife and child. The caption for the illustration was, "He blew his brains out: A victim of the Chatsworth railroad slaughter kills himself by the side of his dead wife and child."

One paragraph of the story was titled "Men Worse Than Ghouls." The magazine reported that a band of abominable, heartless miscreants robbed the dead and injured. Immediately after the wreck, there was a danger the bridge fire would start the wooden cars on fire with passengers still trapped inside the cars. The thieves entered these cars, and the trapped passengers begged them to help free them. Instead of helping to free them, the fiends stripped them of their watches and jewelry and searched their pockets for money.

When the dead bodies were laid out in the cornfields, these thieves searched and stripped the bodies of any valuables. The article alleged that a pile of 16 empty purses was found the morning after the wreck, proving there was a band of thieves robbing the dead and injured passengers.

The magazine speculated that the thieves were either on the train or waiting by the burned-out bridge. It also reported that if the plunderers had been caught, they would surely have been lynched.

The train wreck article recounted the most horrific incident of the wreck. A man, his wife, and their young daughter boarded the Niagara excursion train in Peoria. In the wreckage, all three were pinned by broken woodwork from their train car. When rescuers arrived, the man instructed them to remove his wife first because their child was already dead. The rescuers freed the severely injured wife and moved her to the adjacent cornfield. They then moved the dead girl and her father and laid them beside the mother. The father was in terrible pain, with both of his legs broken.

In a few minutes, the wife died. The father then cried out, "My God, there is nothing more for me to live for now." The father then took a pistol from his pocket and shot himself. This incident was the basis for the story shown on the magazine cover.

In that era, trains were the primary means of transportation. Pickpockets and thieves often rode these trains and robbed the passengers. Several published accounts of Fairbury men who were robbed while riding passenger trains exist. The Niagara excursion train was well advertised, and trains packed with passengers would have been a prime target for thieves. 

The train wreck site was also similar to a bombing scene from a war. Debris and passengers' possessions would have been scattered and easily lost in the confusion. We will never know for sure if thieves robbed the dead and injured or if items were simply lost in the wreck scene. A transcribed version of the 1887 Police Gazette story about the Chatsworth Train Wreck can be read online at https://tinyurl.com/y89gmtko.