Southern Pacific Railroad - Notable Accidents

Notable Accidents

• On March 28, 1907, the Southern Pacific Sunset Express, descending the grade out of the San Timoteo Canyon, entered the Colton rail yard traveling about 60 mph, hit an open switch and careened off the track, resulting in twenty-four fatalities. Accounts said all but five of the train's fourteen cars disintegrated as they piled on top of one another, leaving the dead and injured in "a heap of kindling and crumpled metal." Of the dead, eighteen were Italian immigrants traveling to jobs in San Francisco from Genoa, Italy.
• The Coast Line Limited was heading for Los Angeles, California, on May 22, 1907, when it was derailed just west of Glendale, California. Passenger cars reportedly tumbled down the embankment. At least two were killed and others injured. "The horrible deed was planned with devilish accurateness," the Pasadena Star News reported at the time. It said spikes were removed from the track and hook placed under the end of the rail. The Star's coverage was extensive and its editorial blasted the criminal elements behind the wreck. "Diabolism Incarnate" is how they headlined the editorial. It read: "The man or men who committed this horrible deed near Glendale may not be anarchists, technically speaking. But if they are sane men, moved by motive, they are such stuff as anarchists are made of. If the typical anarchist conceived that a railroad corporation should be terrorized, he would not scruple to wreck a passenger train and send scores and hundreds to instant death."
• In the early hours of June 1, 1907, an attempt to derail a Southern Pacific train near Santa Clara, California, was foiled when a pile of railway ties was discovered on the tracks. A work train crew found that someone had driven a steel plate into a switch near Burbank, California, intending to derail the Santa Barbara local.
• On August 12, 1939, the westbound City of San Francisco derailed from a bridge in Palisade Canyon, between Battle Mountain and Carlin in the Nevada desert. Twenty-four passengers and crew members were killed and many more were injured, and five cars were destroyed. An act of sabotage was determined to be the most likely cause; however, no suspect(s) was ever identified.
• On New Year's Eve 1944 a rear end collision west of Ogden in thick fog killed 48 people.
• On January 18, 1947, the Southern Pacific nightflier wrecked 12 miles outside of Bakersfield. 7 people were killed and over 50 injured.Four coaches and a tourist sleeper were overturned, landing far off the tracks. The other seven remained upright. The locomotive stayed on the tracks, and, its crew was uninjured. Robert Crowley, 29, Miami, Fla., a combat war veteran said 'I never saw such a mess," even on a battlefield. He had been conversing with a man across the aisle, Crowley said, and the latter was killed instantly. (Albuquerque Journal January 18, 1947)
• On May 12, 1989, a Southern Pacific train carrying fertilizer material derailed in San Bernardino, California, after descending a nearby slope. The train failed to slow down, and as a result, sped up to about 110 mph before derailing. The crash destroyed seven homes along Duffy Street and killed two train workers and two residents. Thirteen days later on May 25, 1989, an underground pipeline running along the right-of-way ruptured and caught fire due to damage done to the pipeline during cleanup from the derailment. Eleven more homes were destroyed and two more people were killed.
• On the night of July 14, 1991, a Southern Pacific train derailed into the upper Sacramento River at a sharp bend of track known as the Cantara Loop, upstream from Dunsmuir, California, in Siskiyou County. Several cars made contact with the water, including a tank car. Early in the morning of 15 July, it became apparent that the tank car had ruptured and spilled its entire contents into the river - approximately 19,000 gallons of a soil fumigant - metam sodium. Ultimately, over a million fish, and tens of thousands of amphibians and crayfish were killed. Millions of aquatic invertebrates, including insects and mollusks, which form the basis of the river’s ecosystem, were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of willows, alders, and cottonwoods eventually died. Many more were severely injured. The chemical plume left a 41-mile wake of destruction, from the spill site to the entry point of the river into Shasta Lake. The accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history.