Albany, NY Electric Train Wreck

May 26, 1901

FATAL STREET CAR COLLISION NEAR ALBANY, NEW YORK

Albany, N. Y., May 27. -- Electric cars racing for a switch while running in opposite directions, at the rate of forty miles an hour, cost five lives yesterday afternoon by a terrific collision, in which over forty prominent people were injured, some fatally and others seriously.

The lobby of the local post office filled with dead and wounded, hysterical women and children looking for relatives and friends, surgeons administering temporary relief and ambulances racing through the city, taking the wounded to hospitals, were the early intimations of the accident.

The scene of the accident was at a point about two miles out of Greensbush, on the line of the Albany & 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 southbound car No. 22 had gone almost clean through north bound car No. 17, and hung on the edge of a high bluff, with its load of shrieking, maimed humanity. One motorman was pinioned up against the smashed front of the south bound car, with both legs severed, and was killed instantly, while the other one lived but a few minutes.

Fully 120 men, women and children formed a struggling, shrieking pyramid framed with blood, detached portions of human bodies and the wreckage of cars. Some of the more slightly injured of the men extricated themselves and began to pull people out of the rear ends of the two cars. Almost every one was taken out in this way, and nearly all were badly injured.

With both motormen killed it was hard to get at the real cause of the accident, but it was 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.

The cars weigh fifteen tons each and are the largest electric cars built, and so frightful was the crash that both cars were torn almost to splinters. Both cars were filled with Sunday pleasure seekers returning from the new recreation grounds that the railway had just opened.

Rifle Reveille Colorado 1901-05-31

LOCAL VICTIM OF ACCIDENT

DAVID MAHONEY One of the Men Killed in Yesterday's Smashup Near Albany.

(Special to the Eagle.)
Albany, May 28 – DAVID MAHONEY, one of the victims of the collision on the Albany and Hudson Electric road yesterday, was a resident of Brooklyn. He was 60 years of age and unmarried.

He had been in the employ of the People's Line for thirty years, and for twenty-five years was second mate on the steamer Richmond. MR. MAHONEY'S brother resides in Brooklyn and a sister lives in Schenectady. Deceased was a member of a number of Catholic fraternal societies.

MAHONEY left the boat about 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon in company with CHARLES KELLER, the company's cooper, and boarded the car on which he met his death at the landing of the People's Line.

The number of injured in the collision had swelled to sixty by noon to-day, although there had been no additional deaths up to that hour.

The responsibility for the disaster is placed at the door of Motorman FRANK SMITH of North Chatham, who had charge of the power propelling car 22, the south bound vehicle which ran beyond the siding where, under the rules of the company, it should have remained until the other car had passed by.

Second Vice-President A. C. SALLISBURY of the company gave out a statement to-day in which he called attention to the fact that each employe [sic] of the company is provided with a time table and code of rules. The time table expressly states that car No. 22, leaving Albany at 3 P. M., Sunday, should have been at Siding No. 69 at 3:30 o'clock, and car 19, which was the north bound car from Hudson, should have been at the same point at the same hour.

There is a belief that Motorman SMITH had become temporarily demented and that he was practically insane when he ran the car at the full rate of speed beyond the siding and to what he must have know was certain death. His wife died some time ago and it is said that he has brooded over her death a great deal.

It is believed that MRS. WILLIAM F. LINK, the wife of a grocer of this city, who, with her husband was injured; MRS. MITCHELL LINK of East Greenbush and GEORGE C. BARRY of Troy will die.

The wreck was cleared from the track at an early hour this morning and traffic on the road has been resumed as usual to-day.

Brooklyn Eagle New York 1901-05-27

Submitted & transcribed by Stu Beitler  Thank you, Stu!

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