Inexperienced driver and flimsy rail cars resulted in worst ever New York Subway disaster
A rail strike in November 1918 had fatal consequences for passengers
Today in History
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A train strike had been called in New York, for November 1, 1918, a century ago today. Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT), operators of the city’s subway system, were involved in a dispute with a union and the industrial action left them without enough staff to run their trains.
Supervisors and workers from other parts of the company were called on to keep things moving. Some filled roles for which they had little or no training, including Edward Luciano. His usual job was dispatcher, but as he had done a small amount of training as a motorman, he was pressed into service driving trains.
Luciano worked a full shift without any incident. But as he was knocking off for the day he was offered a $20 bonus and a pay rise if he would run one more service during the Friday afternoon rush hour.
The run was along the Brighton line, with which Luciano was unfamiliar, and it was getting dark. On a sharp curve leading to a tunnel Luciano derailed the train. The resulting disaster claimed 102 lives — to this day the deadliest disaster in the history of the New York Subway System.
In 1918 the US was still involved in fighting World War I in Europe. About four million men had volunteered or been called up for service in the war. That left many companies struggling to find employees, giving unions more power in their dealings with employers and creating industrial tensions. Some employers tried to take back the initiative by sacking union workers, including BRT which discharged 29 members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE).
The BLE protested and referred the matter to the National War Labor Board, a body created by US president Woodrow Wilson to mediate labour disputes during wartime. The board handed down a recommendation that the BLE workers be rehired at their normal pay, but since the board had no powers of enforcement BRT ignored the recommendation. When BRT refused to meet with representatives of the union the BLE called a strike.
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Luciano was one of BRT’s strike breakers. He had received two hours of classroom instruction on being a motorman and had also spent some time observing train drivers, but this was well below the normal standards for driver training.
Luciano had made a decent fist of his first shift of over 11 hours but was exhausted by the time he was enticed to take the train along the Brighton line. Unfamiliar with this track and train braking system and desperate to make up for lost time after a switchman had sent his train down the wrong junction forcing him to back it up, Luciano sped through an S bend, known as “dead man’s curve” before the train jumped the track as it approached a tunnel. The limit around the curve was six miles per hour (10km/h) but Luciano’s speed was estimated at 30mp/h (48km/h).
The train slammed into a wall. The flimsy, ageing, wooden carriages were tipped over and torn open by the tunnel’s concrete divider and steel pillars in the tunnel, crushing or beheading many passengers while some were impaled by shards of glass from the train’s broken windows or bits of metal sent flying up through the carriages. Some passengers were electrocuted when a technician restored power to the third rail, which had been ripped up in the derailment.
The location of the crash meant it took more than half an hour for emergency crews arrived to attend the injured. Nearby sports ground, Ebbets Field, became a makeshift hospital.
Meanwhile Luciano had wandered off and was found the next day at his home, claiming he had no recollection of how he got out of the wreckage or how he got home.
He was arrested and taken to a police station where he was grilled by police as well as the district attorney and even the mayor John Francis Hylan. When he was asked why he had taken on a job for which he was so poorly trained he said “A man has to earn a living.”
Conferring with his DA, Hylan ordered an investigation into the disaster and instructed police to be stationed at train terminals to ensure that “No man will be permitted to run a train, unless he has had at least three months’ experience.”
The strike was later suspended and months later Luciano and four BRT executives were put on trial for manslaughter. They were all acquitted, but BRT was put out of business thanks to lawsuits from bereaved families and injured passengers.
Hylan’s administration also implemented a law that wooden carriages were not to be used in the underground.