Crush, Texas, was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (popularly known as the Katy), conceived the idea to demonstrate a train wreck as a spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site were at the reduced rate of US$2 from any location in Texas. As a result about 40,000 people showed up on September 15, 1896, making the new town of Crush, Texas, temporarily the second-largest city in the state.
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Two wells were drilled at the site three miles (5 km) south of the town of West in McLennan County. Circus tents from Ringling Brothers were erected as well as a grandstand.[1] The train engines were painted bright green (engine #999) and bright red (engine #1001), both 4-4-0 American locomotives (two pilot axles, two drive axles, and nothing under the firebox). A special track was built alongside the Katy track so that there was no chance a runaway train could get onto the main line. The trains toured the state for months in advance, advertising the event. On the day of the event, 40,000 people showed up to the new town of Crush, Texas.[2] The Katy Railroad offered spectators from anywhere in the state of Texas train rides to the site for $2.[1]
About 4:00 pm on September 15, 1896, after police had pushed the crowd back to what was thought to be a safe distance, the two trains rolled to opposite ends of a 4-mile (6.4 km) track.[1] The engineers and crew opened the steam to a prearranged setting, rode for exactly 4 turns of the drive wheels, and jumped from the trains. The trains each reached a speed of about 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) by the time they met near the anticipated spot.
The impact caused both engine boilers to explode. Debris, some pieces as large as half a drive-wheel, was blown hundreds of feet into the air.[1] Some of the debris came down among the spectators, killing three and injuring several more. Event photographer Jarvis "Joe" Deane lost one eye to a flying bolt.
Crush was immediately fired from the Katy railroad. In light of a lack of negative publicity, however, he was rehired the next day.[3] Ragtime composer Scott Joplin, who was performing in the region at the time and possibly witnessed the event, wrote a piano piece—"The Great Crush Collision March"—to commemorate the crash.[4] The wreck was featured in an episode of the History Channel series Wild West Tech.
William George Crush was the general passenger agent of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, known familiarly as the "Katy" railroad.[5] Observing that curiosity-seekers inevitably showed up at train wrecks, Crush persuaded the railway's management to let him pursue a publicity stunt involving the staging of a collision. For the public spectacle, to which the Katy offered to transport spectators for $2 each, on September 15, 1896 near Waco, Texas, Crush placed two locomotives, facing in the opposite directions, on a 4-mile (6.4-km) track. The event had to be delayed by several hours because the crowd of some 40,000 people resisted being pressed back by the police, to what was supposedly a safe distance. The crews, after tying the throttles open, jumped off and let the engines, pulling wagons loaded with railroad ties, steam at full power into a head-on collision, the combined speed of which was 90 mi/h (145 km/h). An unanticipated effect, making the intentional accident more dangerous, was that two boilers exploded. Several individuals were wounded by flying debris, and three were killed. A flying bolt took out one eye of the event's photographer, Jarvis "Joe" Deane.[6]
The total kinetic energy released at the point of impact in the collision was equal to 200 megajoules (MJ), or about 50 kg of TNT.
The event, which became known as the Crash at Crush, was commemorated in "The Great Crush Collision March" by Scott Joplin, who dedicated the composition to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway.[7]
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