Albany, NY Electric Train Wreck
May 1898
TROLLEY CARS CRASH
FIVE PERSONS INSTANTLY KILLED NEAR ALBANY.
Over Forty Injured, Some Fatally – More Than a
Hundred Passengers In the Wreck – The Motormen
Were Racing For Switch – Both Dead.
Two electric cars while running in opposite
directions at a rate of 40 miles an hour ran
into each other Sunday afternoon near Albany.
Five persons were almost instantly killed and
over 40 were seriously injured.
The dead are: FRANK
SMITH, motorman of car No. 22;
WILLIAM NICHOLS, motorman of car No.
19; MAUD KELLOGG,
of Round Lake;
ANNIE ROONEY, of Stuyvesant Falls,
and DAVID MAHONEY,
mate on the Dean Richmond.
The fatally injured are:
GEORGE C. BARRY, Troy, hurt
internally; FRED J.
SMITH, Albany, injured internally.
The seriously injured are:
WILLIAM F. BARRY,
Troy, cuts on head;
MARIE BARRY, Troy, leg broken;
GEORGE P. BITTNER,
Moerville, cut and bruised;
ISAAC BLAUVELT,
Albany, leg broken;
DE WITT C. PELTZ, Albany, badly
bruised; CHARLES PELTZ,
Albany, painfully bruised;
HOWARD J. ROGERS,
Albany, bruised and cut;
MRS. H. J. ROGERS,
Albany, cut and bruised;
______ ROGERS, Albany, leg broken;
A. W. CROTSLEY,
Albany, hurt internally;
GEORGE LANE, Albany, badly cut;
FRED HERZOG, Albany, shoulder
dislocated.
Scene of the Wreck.
The scene of the accident was a point about two
miles out of Greenbush, on the line of the
Albany and Hudson railway. The point where the
cars met on the single track was at a sharp
curve, and so fast were both running and so
sudden was the collision that the motormen never
had time to put on the brakes before south bound
car No. 22 had gone almost clean through north
bound car No. 19, with human flesh for a buffer,
and hung on the edge of a high bluff with its
load of shrieking maimed humanity. One motorman
was pinioned up against the smashed from of the
south bound car, with both legs severed and
killed instantly, while the other lived but a
few minutes.
Fully 120 men, women and children formed a
huge, struggling, shrieking pyramid, mixed with
blood, detached portions of human bodies and the
wreckage of the cars. Some of the more slightly
injured of the men, extricating themselves from
the quivering mass, began to pull people out of
the rear ends of the two cars, and almost every
one extricated in this way was badly injured.
The scenes were heartrending. The few women
and children who had escaped injury and death
were hysterical and added their cries to the
shrieks of the dying and mutilated. Men with
broken arms and bones, dislocated joints and
bloody faces tried to assist others who were
more helpless, and there were many cases of
philosophical bravery.
With both motormen killed it was hard to get
at the real cause of the accident, but it is
pretty well determined that it was caused by an
attempt of the south bound car to reach a second
switch instead of waiting for the north bound
car at the first siding.
Ogdensburg Advance and St. Lawrence Weekly
Democrat New York 1898-05-28
Submitted & transcribed by Stu
Beitler Thank you,
Stu!
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