Doughnuts and a Train Wreck By Jack Coll

Doughnuts and a Train Wreck

It’s Serious Business

By Jack Coll

10-27-15

Timmy Gunning walked into our frame shop a week or so ago, and I figured it was time for our annual fire inspection, Timmy is a dedicated fireman working out of Conshohocken Fire Department No 2 but also inspects the businesses once a year looking for fire hazards.

Only he wasn’t at the shop to push my smoke alarm buttons but to invite me and my camera to a fire company disaster drill. Septa was running a full scale railroad emergency simulation drill involving members of Narberth Ambulance, a boat load of policeman and police-women from Conshohocken and the surrounding areas, firemen with every color fire truck imaginable, members of the Montgomery County Bomb Squad among other first responders.

So I asked Timmy when the drill was taking place and he said Sunday morning, 7:00 A. M., this means I gotta be out of bed no later than 6:00 A. M. on a Sunday morning and I’m thinking I need an excuse not to go when Timmy says we’re gonna have doughnuts, 25 dozen doughnuts. Well now I didn’t know it was a doughnut event so 6.00 A. M. on a Sunday morning wasn’t looking so rough. So I asked what any respectable good eating doughnut guy would ask, “Where’s the 25 dozen doughnuts coming from?” and Timmy responded “Suzy Jo’s Doughnuts,” and I said “I’m in.”

The operation consisted of Septa bringing in six passengers train cars to the back of Joe Neve’s property down along the river, three of the cars would be separated and located a couple of hundred yards down the tracks. The first three train cars were outfitted with a potential terrorist with a bomb and a bomb wired passenger, the bomb training event was off limits to the press. Police departments from Conshohocken and surrounding areas along with members of the Montgomery County Bomb Squad and other tactical units would arrive at the scene, assess the situation and go into a full scale training drill.

The other three Septa passenger train cars were involved in an accident with a big old Cadillac car and had trapped victims in and under the car. Volunteer victims were bused in and about fifteen victims were given injuries and scattered about the passenger train cars.

I arrived at the accident scene at 6:30 Sunday morning just to access the situation, it was still dark out, very dark and very cold, at the far end of Neve’s yard I found Bob Zinni talking to Gregg Robinson, a Septa official. After a brief good morning I headed back to the Washington Fire Company station to fulfill the promise of doughnuts. I arrived at 6:50 and found two other guys and twenty five dozen doughnuts at the firehouse, Joe Januzelli, who’s running for a council position and my doughnut eating competition Wayne Birster. Wayne and I had a Clint Eastwood moment where we eyed each other up and then eyed up the 25 dozen doughnuts sitting on the bar, within minutes we were in hog heaven, listening to Joe go on about stock car racing, race tracks, firefighting, working on the fire trucks and on and on.

Well before long the place looked like a cop convention with dozens of police officers and dozens of firefighters from all over Montgomery County waiting to take place in the drills, and yes Wayne and I left them a couple of doughnuts.

Before long it was time to get down to business, I headed back to the accident scene with a belly full of glazed, cream filled, pumpkin filled, jelly filled, well never mind, I headed back to the accident scene, it was light out by this time. The victims left the scene of the doughnuts and arrived shortly after I did, they were getting made up with their injuries but we were still waiting for the Septa passenger trains to arrive, it turns out the train broke down at Ivy Ridge and was running late. Now I had an hour to kill and thought about the importance of such a drill. Could this really happen I wondered, well the answer is right in front of me, I started thinking back to May of this year and thought about the Amtrak Northeast Regional Train from Washington D. C. bound for New York City. That train derailed and crashed in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. I remember watching on TV as hundreds of firemen and first responders worked feverishly to extract injured passengers from inside and under the train, this was real and yes this can happen. There were 238 passengers along with the five crew members on board when the train jumped the tracks, over 200 hundred people were injured eleven were critical and eight passengers were killed. Perhaps the death toll would have climbed if not for the actions of the first responders.

I remember watching my TV and the news stations providing aerial coverage, hundreds of first responders were moving about the scene of the accident tending to victims in an orderly fashion, many of the passengers had to be extricated from the crushed cars. The May crash was the deadliest on the northeast corridor since 1987 when 16 people died in a train crash near Baltimore. A train derailed back in 1943 on the very same section of curved tracks in Port Richmond killing 79 passengers and injuring 117.

As I stood in Neve’s yard waiting for the trains to arrive I was very much aware that this could happen, and thought of the brave souls who would be attending this emergency simulation drill preparing for such an event.

While waiting for the trains to arrive so the exercises could get underway I found a spot in the shade as the sun was rising and the air was warming I took a seat not far from where the old canal lock tenders house was once located along the river. History is always on my mind, the canal running thru Conshohocken was constructed and opened in 1824, and then I thought about another train wreck that happened seventy five years after the completion of the canal. In my mind I recalled the great train wreck that happened in Exeter Pa. in 1899, it was a very, very sad story, and it involved Conshohocken residents.

It was a little more than three decades following the Civil War, but the war was still on a lot of people’s minds, especially the veterans who fought in the war. In 1899, 34 years after the war and ten years after General John Frederick Hartranft of Norristown passed away, (General Hartranft later became Governor of Pennsylvania) a local group of veterans most of who had served under his command in the Pennsylvania 51^st Regiment along with other Norristown and Conshohocken residents boarded a train to Harrisburg , Pennsylvania for the unveiling of a statue in Hartranft’s honor.

After a long day of ceremonies on that beautiful spring day on Friday, May 12, 1899, the veterans and other passengers boarded the train dubbed the “Cannon Ball Express” settled into their seats to relax, and enjoy the long peaceful ride home.   Their relaxation was short lived, for the veterans who survived fighting in a war, the ride home would turn bloody.

Also on board with the veterans were firemen, musicians and dignitaries, members of the G. A. R. (Grand Army of the Republic) post from Norristown and G. A. R. members out of Conshohocken, and members of the Montgomery Hose Company of Norristown among others.

As their trains coasted pass the Exeter Station it came to a stop, a northbound coal train was experiencing problems with its brake rigging a few miles down the line in Birdsboro and had come to a stop. About a mile up the tracks behind the Cannon Ball Express another train was traveling at about 50 miles per hour heading towards the Cannon Ball Express. As the back-side train rounded the bend at that speed there was no way the engineer could stop the train in time to avoid a crash. When the backside train rear-ended the Cannon Ball Express carrying the veterans and other local residents the crash interrupted the quiet evening air with the sound of twisting metal, shattering glass and the screams of the victims.

As stated in one of the many articles about the wreck, “The tracks were dark that Friday night, and all seemed well as Engine 574 sped past Neversink, through a long straightaway, and around a gentle curve towards the Exeter Station. As the signal lantern at Exeter came into view, Engineer Harry Orrell knew tragedy was about to strike.”

The result of the crash was described in one publication as follow:

     “What follows is a most vivid description or terror, twisted trees, splintered wood, broken glass, and the tragic injury of many along with the death of 29 souls.

     Amidst the moans of the dying and the cries of the injured, it is reported that the station became a field hospital for some, a morgue for others.

     The room of the first floor of the hotel-station were filled with dead and wounded. Every ounce of food, drink and medical supplies were gone within two hours of the accident. Every quilt, blanket, sheet, towel and necessary household item was removed from the hotel and family living quarters pressed into service.

     Coaches which survived the crash undamaged were also used as havens for triage operations. Doctors, nurses, druggist, emergency crews and undertakers rushed to Exeter Station after word reached Reading some 30 minutes after the collision. (Remember this was a time when horse and wagons were used as transportation, no automobiles.)

Private wagons, teams and barouches were called to serve as impromptu ambulances, and the roads to Exeter were rapidly crowding with those who responded to the unprecedented call for aid.”

On board the train were residents from Conshohocken, West Conshohocken and Norristown. Samuel Betty of Conshohocken was killed in the crash, H. L. Hunsberger of West Conshohocken was also among the dead. Norristown was hit the hardest, among the dead was Norristown Fire Chief Jon Slingluff, five members of the Montgomery Fire Company were killed and five members of the Humane Fire Company also perished in the wreck. Chief Slingluff was a highly respected man in the Norristown community, thousands of residents attended his funeral.

Sixteen of the 29 deaths were Norristown residents, more than 50 passengers suffered major injuries including John Earl, a 62 year old West Conshohocken resident who suffered head and chest injuries and placed in critical condition. A. S. Leedom also of West Conshohocken and Charles Maddis of Conshohocken all suffered critical injuries.

In the end the train disaster left such a deep impression on the public that the name of the village and train stop was changed from Exeter to Lorane. The area in Exeter Township is still known by that name today.

The Exeter train crash from more than a century ago no sooner left my mind when the Narberth Ambulance arrived on the scene, the Sunday morning Septa full-scale railroad emergency simulation drill was underway. Bill and Bob Weber, members of Narberth Ambulance set up a triage center and started directing emergency responders. The Washington Fire Company truck driven by Joe Januzelli and Conshohocken Fire Company No 2 were screaming across the open equipment yard racing to the scene of the fire and train wreck. Bob Zinni, Leo Costello and a host of other Conshohocken firefighting officials were present to direct and observe.

I was reminded of the dedicated volunteers who spend hours upon hours training to fight fires, spending their beautiful October Sunday mornings training to save lives, and me, and all of them praying that their skills are never needed.

Firefighters and medical technicians from Narberth Ambulance boarded the train to find bodies and chaos everywhere. Some of the bodies lying in puddles of blood, some moaning, others crying out for help. The trick is, or rather the training is, to stop, talk to the victim if they can speak, evaluate their medical condition, tag-them, with a one, two, or three priority tag and move onto the next victim. In real life, a false evaluation, or a mis-diagnosis of a victim could cause them their life.

Backboards and medical supplies were rushed onto the trains so first aid could begin on a number of the victims while other victims in critical condition were being transported out of the train by door or by window. These firefighter and Ambulance crew members actually moved the bodies from the train, lifted the bodies and carried them through a wooded area to the safety of the waiting ambulance.

The not so funny part was that I needed a nap just watching these men and women work. Firefighters with their 50 pounds of equipment on their backs were carrying victims through a rocky wooded area, and looking at Narberth Ambulance emergency technicians weighing no more than a 125 pounds jumping at the opportunity to carry a much bigger person on a backboard to safety.

Then there were the firefighters working on the Cadillac with the Jaws of Life, working for more than an hour to free two dummy bodies, I was sweating from watching, if I was working this thing I know I would have called for at least two doughnut breaks during the entire event.

As the event came to a close, with all the victims accounted for, it was time to go back to the Washington Fire house on West Elm Street where Septa officials presented an assessment of the drill.

I walked away from the scene around 11:30 A. M. the sun was rising and the chill in the air had been replaced with a warm breeze. I felt pretty good about myself, not because I had anything to do with running or participating in the drill, but because for more than 40 years I’ve been telling anyone that would listen that we live in the greatest community in America, I stopped to look over my shoulder and saw every reason why that statement is true.

The rest of the Conshohocken and West Conshohocken community were going about their Sunday morning, and our emergency volunteers were going about their Sunday morning.

Damn I love this town,

Maybe someday maybe they’ll let me drive one of the fire trucks around town, or maybe ride along and just blow the fire whistle, yea, that would be cool!

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