Whistle before the collision
A scene that will haunt a man and make him nervous whenever he hears an engine whistle
Chicago ultimately beat out New York in its bid to host the 1893 Columbian Exposition, owing to an abundance of free space and its relative proximity to the West. Organizers billed the massive event as a commemoration of Columbus’s landing 400 years prior and a celebration of the American culture that had subsequently arisen. Of course, not all Americans were considered worthy of celebration. Thirty years after the Emancipation Proclamation’s signing, the World’s Fair’s depiction of non-white citizens was inappropriate even by the standards of the day
Though nicknamed for its implementation of still-novel electric street lights, White City fittingly also harbored many of the worst offenses. Civil rights leaders Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass coauthored a pamphlet with two others, rebuking the glaring omission. “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition” scathingly notes,
The colored people of this great Republic number eight millions – more than one-tenth the whole population of the United States […] They have contributed a large share to American prosperity and civilization. The labor of one-half of this country has always been, and is still being done by them. […] The wealth created by their industry has afforded to the white people of this country the leisure essential to their great progress in education, art, science, industry and invention.
In spite such treatment, however, Black performers still managed to leave an impact. Frederick Douglass’ grandson Joseph achieved widespread acclaim for his classical violin, while soprano Sissieretta Jones – already a known quantity – performed to a crowd that packed the opera hall an hour prior to her taking the stage. But it was a 25-year-old classically trained pianist that left the most profound mark.
The Fair cemented both Scott Joplin and ragtime music as true cultural phenomena. The musician captivated the public in the following years. He played regularly in his new home of Sedalia, Missouri and found residencies in Syracuse, New York and his native Texas. In the small railroad town of Temple, Joplin published a trio of news songs: “Harmony Club Waltz,” “Combination March” and the “Great Crush Collision March.” The latter is a curious piece in his catalog, owing to the inclusion of specific instructions below the staff in the final third.
“The noise of the trains while running at the rate of sixty miles per hour,” it demands, “Whistling for the crossing / Noise of the trains / Whistle before the collision / The collision.”
It’s speculated that Joplin was in attendance at the event some 30 days before publishing the piece, though records of his movements at the time are spotty, at best. It’s also possible the King of Ragtime was simply caught up in the moment’s zeitgeist. For weeks, word of the Crash at Crush would have been impossible to avoid in Central Texas. Striking red posters were hung across the county, along railway lines, in store windows and on the sides of barns.
The Dallas Morning News was among the numerous papers that covered the story closely. The paper referred ''the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in that part of the world” in one story and added in another, “Crush’s dream caught the Gay Nineties’ fancy. It spread until people talked of little else; politics, the chief entertainment at Texas crossroads, went into hibernation.”
The event was the brainchild of William Crush. The Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (popularly known as “Katy,” owing to its last two initials) agent proposed it to commemorate the retirement of 30-ton steam engines, as the company moved to 60-ton models. With so many hulking structures wasting away, Crush suggested Katy smash a pair together at top speeds for fun and profit.
The event wasn’t the first of its kind. The Columbus and Hocking Valley Railroad staged something similar to great success four-and-a-half months prior. Katy wouldn’t charge for admission, though it expected to generate a good deal of revenue through railway tickets to the site at an exorbitant $3.50 a pop. The company designated engines numbers 999 and 1001 -- painting one red with green trim and the other green with red. The company consulted with safety experts and ran speed tests.
A circus tent was borrowed from Ringling Brothers, housing a grand stand, space for journalists and two telegraph machines. A massive sign declared the site “Crush, Texas.” The temporary town boasted 40,000 to 50,000 residents on the sweltering mid-September day – double the expected 20,000 to 25,000. Police on the scene pushed the crowd back, in a bid to create a safe distance from the spectacle.
At 5PM, the pair of trains slowly advanced toward one another until they touched – a perfect photo opportunity for the reporters in the crowd. The trains, each hauling a cargo of railroad ties, were reversed to opposite ends of the track. Crush walked to the planned point of impacted, raising his arms and yelling for the operator to flash the signal. The engineers opened the machines’ throttles, to sound of a screaming crowd, before tying down the levers and leaping from the trains.
The trains built to a speed of 45 miles an hour, before slamming together. A moment of silence followed and then a far louder sound than the initial impact, as the boilers on both machines exploded at once. Shrapnel flew hundreds of feet upward, before the iron pieces rained down on the panicked crowd. A photographer who had captured the moment of impact was blinded in one eye by a flying bolt. Two spectators were killed and another half-dozen were seriously injured.
“All that remained of the two engines and twelve cars was a smoking mass of fractured metal and kindling wood, except one car on the rear of each train, which had been left untouched,” The Morning News recounted. “The engines had both been completely telescoped, and contrary to experience in such cases, instead of rising in the air from the force of the blow, were just flattened out. There was nothing about the cars big enough to save except pieces of wood, which were eagerly seized upon and carried home as souvenirs.” The paper described “a scene that will haunt a man [and] make him nervous whenever he hears an engine whistle and disturb his dreams with black clouds of death-dealing iron hail.”
The tragedy garnered far more press than the event had received in the lead up. Numerous lawsuits were quickly settled and the railroad fired Crush the same day, only to hire him back the following day.
Joplin dedicated his piece to the Katy railroad.
Sources:
The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier by V.V. Masterson
The Crush Collision March https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Crush_Collision_March.pdf
Historic McLennan County ed. by Sharon Bracken
A Train Company Crashed Two Trains. You Will Believe What Happened Next https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/train-company-crashed-two-trains-you-will-believe-what-happened-next-180964237/