Answer Man Tells the Tale Of an Eerie Rail Crash 100 Years Ago

What can you tell us about the Terra Cotta train wreck over 100 years ago, which strangely occurred not far from Monday's Metro accident?

-- Bill Peters, Dunkirk

Today we refer to the area just north of Catholic University as "Fort Totten," but at the turn of the 20th century it was called "Terra Cotta," for the vast deposits of red clay in the ground there. The clay was discovered when the B&O Railroad put the Metropolitan Branch through, linking western Maryland with Washington. A clay pipe-manufacturing industry arose, centered around the Thomas Sommerville Co.

On the evening of Sunday, Dec. 30, 1906, the No. 66, a passenger train full to capacity, was returning to Washington from Frederick. It was running late, moving at a leisurely pace and stopping at stations along the Metropolitan Branch, including the tiny shack at Terra Cotta. It was a foggy night. A little after 6:30, as a handful of people milled on the platform, No. 66 started pulling out of Terra Cotta. An instant later, a locomotive came roaring out of the mist on the same tracks.

During the golden age of rail, Americans were familiar with a term that had horrible connotations: telescoping. It was sadly common then, although seldom on a scale as devastating as at Terra Cotta. The speeding locomotive -- No. 2120, the largest and fastest in the B&O fleet -- was probably going close to 60 mph when it struck the passenger train. It ground through No. 66 from behind, splintering its flimsy wooden cars as if they were cigar boxes, churning through the people inside.

Before it came to a rest, No. 2120 had pushed No. 66 almost 200 yards.

Rescuers arrived to a scene Dante might have written. Coal dust and ash had pitched up from the locomotive and coated every wet surface. In all, 53 people were dead or dying, and dozens more were injured.

Wrote The Post the next day: "Men prominent in official life expressed yesterday the horror with which they viewed the wreck and all its ghastly results."

Rich Schaffer spent 10 years researching the Terra Cotta wreck. He's a 43-year-old D.C. firefighter who as a teenager in Silver Spring would walk the rails and watch the trains. His two-part article in the journal of the B&O Railroad Historical Society is probably the most complete look at the accident.

Rich lays the blame on Harry H. Hildebrand, the engineer of No. 2120. Hildebrand was one of the B&O's most experienced employees. He was deadheading that evening, returning a collection of empty carriages to Baltimore. Because of congestion on the main line, he was ordered to take a time-consuming detour through Washington.