Answer Man Tracks Down the Facts of Another B& O Crash

Iread with great interest your answer in the June 28 Washington Post about the B&O Railroad crash of 1906. I was in Whittier Elementary School when we heard a tremendous sound of a wreck a few blocks away. I think that it was in 1940 or 1941. The location was along Blair Road, just north of Van Buren Street. The locomotive rolled down the steep bank and ended up on Blair Road, and I believe the engineer died. I have been racking my memory for the date and details. Can you confirm that and tell us about that accident?

-- Ralph Sheaffer, Silver Spring

Answer Man, you seem interested in train crashes on the section of track near Fort Totten. If you would look a little farther up the track to near Takoma Park, you would find that an additional crash occurred in the vicinity of Whittier Street NW. As a young boy living in the area, I saw the results of that crash. The circumstances were similar in that one train was stopped and a following freight train crashed into the back of it. The locomotive rolled down the embankment almost to Blair Road. It was said that the engineer and fireman both jumped just before impact. These trains also had been headed in the same direction as the one you reported on and the recent crash -- three in the past 100 years!

-- Bill Smith, Silver Spring

The accident in question occurred Feb. 26, 1941, when a 50-car freight train plowed into the rear of a work train standing at Lamond Station, a onetime stop on the B&O's Metropolitan Branch. Harold Busser, a wholesale manager for the Good Humor Ice Cream Co., was driving on Blair Road when he saw the freight train smash through the caboose of the stopped train at about 20 mph. The engine hit the next car, a tank car, and pitched up almost 90 degrees before flopping sideways and rolling down the embankment.

The flagman on the stopped train jumped to safety, as did the fireman and the brakeman on the striking train. The engineer, Samuel Snyder, jumped too late and was killed when the locomotive rolled over him. "It was a mystery to me why he didn't jump sooner," Busser told The Post. "He must have thought he could stop in time."

How, in those days before computers and cellphones, did trains warn one another about their respective whereabouts? One way was for a conductor to stand with a red flag a few hundred yards behind a stopped train, signaling any oncoming train. Another was by placing small explosive charges on the railroad tracks. Known as "torpedoes," the devices would detonate with a loud bang when a following train ran over them, a signal to slow down or stop.

Authorities ruled that Snyder did not slow down sufficiently when he heard the torpedoes but that the stopped train's flagman was also negligent.