The Ninth Avenue derailment, on the Ninth Avenue Elevated in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

on September 11, 1905, was the worst accident on the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

elevated railway An elevated railway or elevated train (also known as an el train for short) is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure (usually constructed from steel, cast iron, concrete, or bricks ...

s, resulting in 13 deaths and 48 serious injuries.

Context

Trains of the Ninth Avenue and Sixth Avenue elevated lines shared the same track above West 53rd Street, where the Sixth Avenue line branched off. Downtown-bound trains displayed disks indicating to the towerman at the junction whether he should set the

switch In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...

for the train to enter the curve or proceed straight on to the 50th Street station.

Accident

During the morning rush hour on September 11, 1905, a Ninth Avenue train following a Sixth Avenue train was mistakenly switched onto the curve. The train was traveling at when it entered the sharp curve, for which was the company-mandated limit. The motorman, Paul Kelly, realizing the error, braked quickly. The lead car remained on the tracks but the second was thrown right off the trestle and down to the street, coming to rest with one end on the ground and the other across the third rail on the trestle, which sparked an electrical fire.Reed says the car somersaulted in the air and also that the front end was on the ground; the account in ''Railway and Locomotive Engineering'' is that it "turned completely over sidewise" but that it was the rear end that fell to the street. The roof was torn off and some passengers were crushed under the car by a falling

truck A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...

and motor equipment from the third car, which came to rest hanging off the edge of the trestle against the front of an apartment building, into which some passengers were able to escape through a window. The rest of the train also derailed but continued down the trestle along Ninth Avenue. The death toll was 13, and 48 serious injuries in the second car. A police officer who had been standing in the street was also injured.

Aftermath

On September 23, the report of the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners laid most of the blame for the accident on motorman Kelly, but some on the towerman, Cornelius Jackson, who was said to have been away from his post at the time of the accident. On October 2, the

coroner's jury A coroner's jury is a body convened to assist a coroner in an inquest, that is, in determining the identity of a deceased person and the cause of death. The laws on its role and function vary by jurisdiction. United Kingdom In England and Wal ...

held both responsible. Kelly claimed the train had been displaying the correct disks for Ninth Avenue; Jackson claimed it had not. The train's conductor, J.W. Johnson, who had the job of setting the disks on the train, backed Kelly, and so did the company, since station guards had identified the train as Ninth Avenue at every stop it had made before the accident. However, the coroner's jury found that Kelly should have seen that the signal indicated the switch was set for Sixth Avenue, and that he was driving recklessly fast. Nevertheless, Kelly, who went missing after the accident, told a fellow motorman immediately afterwards that Jackson had been "trying to do him," accusing Jackson of having previously changed disks on the signal tower at the last second, forcing Kelly to back onto the other tracks, thus losing time and getting in trouble with the railway company. Kelly could not back onto the other tracks this time because of his speed, which he explained had been due to the guards at 59th Street having called out 42nd Street as the next stop; Kelly was making up lost time on what he thought would be a straightaway to 42nd Street, not realizing until it was too late that the switch had actually been set for the curve to Sixth Avenue. Jackson was convicted of second degree manslaughter but his conviction was later overturned. Kelly was arrested in San Francisco in June 1907, almost two years after the accident. He was convicted of manslaughter in the second degree and was sentenced to 1 1/2-2 1/2 years in prison. In February 1909, Kelly escaped from

Sing Sing Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about north of ...

prison with another inmate he met while building a new prison at Bear Mountain due to the bad food and brutal treatment. At the time Kelly had only six months left of his sentence as he was a model inmate. However, when the other inmate became ill, Kelly refused to continue on alone, and the two were subsequently captured.

Notes

References

Sources

* * {{New York City Subway 1905 in New York City New York City Subway accidents Accidents and incidents involving Interborough Rapid Transit Company Railway accidents in 1905