1928 Times Square derailment

During the evening rush hour on August 24, 1928, an express subway train derailed immediately after leaving the Times Square station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Sixteen people were killed at the scene, two died later, and about 100 were injured. It remains the second-deadliest accident on the New York City Subway system, after the Malbone Street Wreck.

At 5:09 p.m. on August 24, 1928, the last two cars of a ten-car downtown express train, consisting of all-steel cars, were derailed when a faulty switch moved, and the ninth car hit a wall and pillars on either side of the track and split in half; the rear was telescoped by the last car while the front remained attached to the train and was dragged for 100 or 200 feet (30 or 61 m), when the first and eighth cars turned over. Short-circuiting started a fire. A witness in one of the damaged cars spoke of hearing "a terrific grinding noise" then seeing "the car behind ours rip right through a steel pillar". Morris De Haven Tracy of the United Press wrote an account of the crash that had left the city "still dazed":

[The eighth car] "split the switch," and before the passengers jammed within it could raise their cries of terror it was skidding half sideways down the track.

A hundred feet farther on it crashed into one of the great steel pillars which keep the street above from tumbling in upon the tunnels.

Sixteen people were killed instantly and 100 or more injured. Additional victims died the following day and on the 26th, as did Jennie Lockridge, an actress who had had a heart attack after seeing victims' bodies. One victim was misidentified; the man returned home two hours before his funeral was scheduled to start. It was the worst accident on the New York City Subway since the Malbone Street Wreck in 1918.

Track maintenance workers had discovered the faulty switch where a storage track branched off 85 feet (26 m) south of the platform, but decided not to spike (immobilize) it. The train had been held in the station while repairs were made, and was packed with approximately 1,800 passengers; an empty train was first sent over the switch without incident.

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