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Two “engines and twelve cars were selected for slaughter” by William G. Crush, a passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad. He orchestrated a public event in the temporary town of Crush. The event brought over 40,000 people to watch two train engines be demolished in a spectacular crash.
The ‘Crash at Crush’
On September 15, 1896, The Dallas Morning News sent reporters down to the temporary city of Crush to cover a planned train crash that turned into a disaster. The locomotives selected were an old No. 999 engine painted bright green and a No. 1001 engine painted red. Spectators recalled different accounts of the train’s speed before the final impact, which varied between 40 mph to upwards of 90 mph.
Over 1,500 Dallasites ventured down to the event site at Crush outside Waco, near present day West. The News reported the following day that even with the precautions made to the trains’ boilers before the crash, the impact caused the boilers to explode. Twisted metal and shrapnel were flung in all directions, injuring multiple people and killing two, according to reports.
Looking back at the crash 35 years later
The last of the eyewitness reports
Sixty years later, on May 6, 1956, two eyewitnesses to the event in 1896 wrote letters to Dallas News reporter Frank Tolbert accounting what they saw. One of the letters was from A.K. Ragsdale, formerly of Dallas. He stated after people were hurt in the crash a crowd tried to lynch William Crush but he was able to escape by horseback. He also stated that the crowd rushed to the crash site to pick up souvenirs and his friend picked up an oil cup.
The other eyewitness, Lester Haile of Waco, was picking cotton at the time of the crash. He recalled seeing Dallas business advertisements like the Dallas Oriental Hotel on the stock cars pulled by the trains.
A short video on the ‘Crash at Crush’
The City of Waco produced this short video “Waco, A Moment in Time - Crash at Crush” for The Waco City Cable Channel and be found at their website wccc.tv/.
Celebrating the centennial anniversary
On March 31, 1996, The News staff writer, A.C. Greene, noted that “in September of this year the 100th anniversary of ‘The Crash at Crush’ will roll around — but nobody should be eager to do a re-enactment.”
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