Talk:Ashtabula River railroad disaster

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There is much more to this story that i may add one day. To learn more in the mean time, please visit the external links. The firsthand accounts, and the court activity is especially fascinating, as are the ghost stories. --The-outlaw-torn 22:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Please note that the coordinates in this article need fixing as:

41°52'42.36"N ,  80°47'22.34"W

(Comment above is undated and unattributed. BrainMarble (talk) 02:57, 5 August 2009 (UTC))

Railroads presently cross the Ashtabula River at three points within the town of Ashtabula. From north to south, these bridges are: 1.) A two-track line at 41.8914°N 80.7987°W / 41.8914; -80.7987, just west of E. 15th Street; 2.) A four-track line at 41.8784°N 80.7895°W / 41.8784; -80.7895, just east of W. 30th Street; 3.) A one-track line at 41.8625°N 80.78°W / 41.8625; -80.78, just west of E. 48th Street.

Historical accounts of the disaster, as related by Railroad Tales: Ashtabula, Ohio Train Wreck - Historic Accounts, give some clues. The train was "the Pacific Express, which had left New York the night before" on "the Lake Shore Road" (Chicago Tribune account of 1876-12-30), which was the "Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway" (illustration in the Cleveland Leader of 1876-12-30). The train was westward bound for Cleveland (New York Times anniversary account of 1890-12-29). The Chicago Tribune 1876-12-30 account describes the bridge as "a single span of 159 feet, crossed by a double track seventy feet above the water".

Bridge 1 (near 15th Street) is on a line that goes from dockyards on the waterfront just north of the bridge to Jefferson, Ohio, south of Ashtabula. Bridge 1 is very likely not the scene of the disaster. Bridges 2 (near 30th Street) and 3 (near 48th Street), however, are both on railroad lines that connect Cleveland in the west to Erie, Buffalo, and beyond in the east.

Comparing bridges via Google Maps (terrain, map, and satellite views), bridge 3 (near 48th Street) appears to span about 1000 feet with an elevation around 80 feet (assuming 40-foot contours), whereas bridge 2 (near 30th Street) appears to span about 150 feet with an elevation around 40 feet.

An 1881 map (in the David Rumsey Map Collection) of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway does not distinguish two west-east rail lines through Ashtabula. A present day city map of Ashtabula labels the rail line over bridge 2 (near 30th Street) as belonging to CSX Railroad, and the rail line over bridge 3 (near 48th Street) as belonging to Norfolk Southern Railroad.

An 1898 Ashtabula County Railroad Map, at the bottom of a web page on Ashtabula County Ohio Railroad Stations, depicts four west-east rail lines crossing the Ashtabula River, all of which were owned (assuming consistent brown color indicates ownership) by the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern (LS&MS) Railway. If named circles indicate stations, there were only two LS&MS stations in Ashtabula, one of them for two of the west-east lines. The fourth line, crossing the river closer to the harbor, does not indicate a stop in town. The map shows two north-south rail lines (LS&MS and Penn.Co.N.W.) connecting the two stations in Ashtabula. Looking at the tables above the map on the same web page, there is an LS&MS station listed at Station Avenue (listed under both existing stations and stations of the past) at 41.8759°N 80.7927°W / 41.8759; -80.7927 near bridge 2 (near 30th Street), and there was a PY&A-PRR station of the past listed at West 48th Street and Center Street near 41.8642°N 80.7896°W / 41.8642; -80.7896, not far from bridge 3.

The 1877 official summary of the 1876 disaster said the bridge was "located about one thousand feet east of the Ashtabula station". Using Google maps, bridge 2 (near 30th Street) is just over 1000 feet northeast of the existing LS&MS Station Avenue station. Bridge 3 (near 48th Street) is just over 2000 feet from the approximate location of the past PY&A-PRR station at West 48th Street and Center Street.

Comparison of on-scene sketch, postcard, and stereo photographs on an Ashtabula Train Disaster web page with Google satellite photos of present day Ashtabula favors bridge 2 (near 30th Street) as the scene of the disaster, in regard to embankment, ridge line, and river channel shapes and locations.

Another web page describes an Ohio Historical Marker called, "Ashtabula Train Disaster December 29, 1876", and an audio memorial, both near the Ashtabula County Medical Center. This medical center is near bridge 2 (near 30th Street). The historical marker citation appears at Marker #10-4: Ashtabula Train Disaster December 29, 1876, which begins, "Near this site, an iron truss bridge collapsed into the Ashtabula River."

These observations favor bridge 2 (near 30th Street) as the site of the train disaster. BrainMarble (talk) 02:57, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Monument Image

Not sure if it could be worked into the article here, but there is now a file on Commons of the Monument that was built for the unknown dead. ^Avicenna_sis @ 05:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Count discrepancy

Fatalities has "159 passengers and crew" while elsewhere it's all just 159 passengers. ;Bear (talk) 02:04, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus was not to merge. The articles are about two different events. Slambo (Speak) 14:46, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

---

I propose that Angola Horror be merged into Ashtabula River railroad disaster. The content in the Angola Horror article is pretty much duplicated in the context of Ashtabula River railroad disaster, and the merging will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. Tim1965 (talk) 03:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Oppose; they were separate incidents nine years apart in different states, and I don't see how the content of the two articles are duplicates of each other. Daniel Case (talk) 03:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Oppose. I do not see any duplication at all. Kablammo (talk) 05:13, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Structure reference

Until a minute ago, the article cited "Griggs, Frank Jr. (November 2014). "Springfield Bridge for Western Railroad". Structure. Retrieved January 24, 2020." (reference [6]) as support for four different statements:

• Stone had purchased the patent rights to brother-in-law William Howe's truss bridge
• Railroad employees also told Knapp that his firefighters should get the wounded out and clear a pathway up the side of the ravine.
• the official count is 92 dead.
• Another 64 people were injured.

Something is quite wrong here, because the linked article does not say any of those things. It does say:

• Stone, built many Howe trusses in the mid-west.
• Unfortunately, the bridge collapsed ... killing 90 people.

But there's no mention of Stone buying the patent rights, or injuries, or Knapp, or firefighters, or the ravine, or an official count of 92 dead. My guess is that the person who inserted these cites meant to cite a different article, but I don't know what. In fact I have a source that shows the official count as 83 dead.

So I've edited the article to change the official count to 83 (citing my source), to delete the "as low as 87", and to delete the cites of Griggs's article, but I'm leaving the other statements unchanged. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 08:19, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Gasparini and Fields Mention

At beginning of the angle blocks design section, the names of the authors of the article claiming the loss of the design. This reads somewhat strange as the authors are not mentioned previously in the article. I propose the addition of at least some kind of introduction for these two as their names are used later in the section. Thoughts? RotundRadish307 (talk) 16:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)