The Ingersoll Train Wreck of 1887
The Ingersoll Train Wreck of 1887
By Liz Dommasch, County Archivist
(Originally posted on May 4, 2022)
Last year, we received a donation of records from Fanshawe Pioneer Village which included the following poem:
Poem On the Late Collision at Ingersoll
March the 20th 1887
Composed by Joseph Fenton Johnson, late of Hamilton, Ont., and copied from original March 25th, 1887.
The poem tells the tale of a train collision that happened at the Grand Trunk Railway station in Ingersoll on March 20, 1887. On that fateful day, the No. 53 St. Louis Express tried to break when coming into town. However, the brakes refused to work and the train headed straight towards the No. 56 train that was waiting on the main line for the Express train to pass. The switchman on duty saw what was about to occur and had “the great presence of mind seeing the state of affairs” to turn the switch sending the Express into a freight train that was parking on the siding instead.
Luckily, all the enginemen (George Phipps, John Conveney, Alf Crouch, and Mr. Coswell) were able to jump the train and escape without injury, though Conductor John Turnbull received a number of bruises and cuts when at the last minute he jumped from the baggage car platform moments before it was smashed into fragments.
Both engines, two baggage cars, a smoking car, and nine freight cars were more or less wrecked. Amazingly, the passengers in the Pullman coaches experienced “only an easy lurch” and were unaware that a collision had taken place until they were told.
Following the crash, a large crowd from the town, Woodstock, and elsewhere, were said to have visited the scene of the accident to view the collision. A fresh engine was sent out from London and in little over an hour the scene was cleared and the No. 53 was booming westward again “as if nothing had happened.”
*Note: J.L. Brouse, was an Ingersoll photographer, who operated his business from 1885 to 1887.