The Wreck of "The Broker" (2024)

THE CRASH OF “THE BROKER”

The Woodbridge, New Jersey Train Disaster

Onthis date, February 6, 1951, one of the worst train wrecks in America occurredat Woodbridge, New Jersey. It had been an ordinary Tuesday, nothingspecial. The day was cold and damp, withlight rain falling off and on most of the day. People remarked that it couldhave been worse; it could have been snow. It was February 6, 1951. The workdaywas ending and people were heading home. Thousands of people were making theirway to the closest commuter train station.

Manyof them would never make it home alive.

On aPennsylvania Railroad (PRR) track in Jersey City, New Jersey, a nine-carcommuter train known as “The Broker” waited to begin its express run to BayHead. The Broker would soon be carrying homebound commuters, mostly from NewYork City offices, to their homes in Red Bank, Long Branch, Asbury Park, andother communities along the New Jersey’s wealthy shoreline. The Broker was sonamed because most of the regular riders were bankers, lawyers, stockbrokersand other businessmen, as well as office workers.

EngineerJoseph Fitzsimmons was already on the train, going through the necessarypreparations and building up steam prior to getting underway. Fitzsimmons was 52 years old and had beenworking on trains his entire adult life. He had spent 33 years on the railswithout a single accident.

TheBroker’s nine passenger coaches carried an average of 900 people on a typicalweekday evening. This Tuesday however, was not going to be a typical evening.There was another railroad line that ran the same basic route, the JerseyCentral. However, switchmen working for the Jersey Central Railroad had calleda “sick call strike” and most of their commuter trains were not running. TheBroker’s usual passengers load had swollen by several hundred. The train wasseriously overcrowded and the aisles were packed. The Broker pulled out of theExchange Place station in Jersey City at 5:10 in the evening.

Earlierin the day, the rail line the train would normally follow had been slightlyaltered. In Woodbridge, a small New Jersey city 30 miles south of New York, thetrain would be taking a short detour. Work had begun on the construction of theNew Jersey Turnpike, and where the train passed through Woodbridge, parallelingFulton Street, a new temporary wooden trestle had been built to accommodateworkers building the turnpike below. The new trestle shifted the track roughlyfifty feet from the original line to pass over Fulton Street, on an embankment20 feet above the street. The trestle had been put into service that afternoon,about five hours before The Broker was scheduled to cross it. It appeared to besolid and safe, as six PRR trains had already passed over it without incident.Because of the shift in the line, a “go slow” order had been posted in the PRRalert board, requiring a reduction in speed for the approach and crossing ofthe trestle. Under normal conditions, trains would speed through that sectionbetween 50 and 60 miles per hour. The “go slow” order reduced the speed limitto 25 miles per hour until the trestle was cleared.

Thetrip had gone smoothly as Engineer Fitzsimmons pulled his train away from theNewark platform and began picking up speed as he drove through the darkeningwinter evening. Fitzsimmons later said that as the train neared the newtrestle, he had tried to slow down but was having great difficulty. The railswere wet and slick, and the train was terribly overloaded, making it muchheavier than usual. The additional weight and slick rails created a situationwhere the train took much longer to slow down sufficiently. The train washeading into the curve approaching the new trestle at over 50 miles per hour.At 5:43 in the evening, just 33 minutes after the train had left the station,Woodbridge experienced the worst train wreck to take place in the United Statesin decades. The speed and weight of the overloaded train as it rounded thecurve onto the trestle had shifted the tracks, causing the train to derail. Bythe time the sun rose to chase away the darkness, 82 people would lie dead on agarage floor, and over 500 people would be injured, many of themseriously.

At themoment the train passed over the trestle, it lurched sharply and started tosway. The engineer applied the brakes, but it was too late. Momentum carriedthe engine and the first three coaches over the chasm before falling down theend of the embankment and onto the street below.

Theengine flew from the tracks in an arc and fell more than 20 feet to thepavement below. The first five coaches after the engine whipped back and forth,ending in a horrible tangle of ripped steel. Eight of the coaches had beenderailed. The first two lay on their sides in the mud of the wet embankment.The third and fourth cars had telescoped into each other and were the mostbadly twisted and smashed. The largest number of deaths and serious injuriesoccurred in these cars. Still others remained upright but were horribly twistedand smashed, with one car was bent into a U-shape. Inside the coaches,passengers were tossed around like rag dolls as the cars jerked and rolled.Metal stressed and tore, mutilating and crushing the passengers inside.Newspaper accounts reported that some were “...mangled to bits under thegrinding weight of the sharp, broken metal. Others survived or died intomb-like crevasses of steel, as some of the coaches were bent by the terribleforce of the crash.”

Atfirst, the air was rent with the sounds of the train as it smashed and crashedand the scream of the metal as it was torn and twisted in a thousand places.Then came a terrible quiet -- everything was still. The quiet lasted only amoment, for very soon moans and screams shattered the silence. There werechilling cries of: “Help me, help me please...”Moans and sobs of men and women writhing in pain, if they could move atall, were heard from every part of the twisted hulk.

Thecoaches in the center, specifically the fifth, sixth and seventh cars, wereleft fully or partially suspended over the street below. In these cars, many ofthe passengers who were able to move on their own, crawled toward the windowslooking for a means to escape. The train’s route crossed over rivers at severalpoints and many of these people believed they had crashed over a river. Theview out the windows at the street below, with streetlights reflecting on thedark, wet asphalt, made many of the disoriented passengers believe they were inwater. Many jumped headfirst from the wrecked coaches, expecting river water tosoften their landing; instead they hit hard, unforgiving pavement. These peoplehad survived the train crash, but died in an attempt to save themselves.

Thewreck occurred in a heavily populated area so help was very quick to arrive.The Woodbridge fire and police departments were the first official rescueagencies to appear. They found it extremely difficult to climb up the slick,muddy embankment to get to the wrecked coaches, and nearly impossible to pullthe injured from the train and back down through the mud. Ladders were laiddown on the embankment and the rescuers used the rungs as a sort of stairs. TheWoodbridge Fire Department used their ladder truck for nearly the same purpose,except they were able to extend the ladder over the embankment and directlyonto the coaches.

Ambulances,first aid squads, and medical personnel came from at least twenty neighboringcommunities and cities. The Perth Amboy General Hospital, the nearest urban hospital,was alerted that there would be a large influx of injured passengers. PerthAmboy went into full disaster mode and received nearly all the people whoseinjuries were serious enough to need immediate and intensive medical care.First aid squads assisted those injured who were able to walk with treatment atthe site. The number of injured and dead passengers was so great that a localgrocery supplier had its trucks pressed into service as additional ambulances,and later as hearses.

Withinthirty minutes, an enormous crowd had arrived and surrounded the crash site.Some volunteered to help, but the majority had come out of morbid curiosity towatch the bloody drama unfold. The vast numbers of onlookers, pushing in oneach other, rapidly became a calamity within itself. Ambulances experiencedgreat difficulty getting in or out. Rescue workers had to struggle to getthrough the crowds. Vital rescue equipment was smashed under the mass of feet.Seeing how the behavior of the crowd was delaying the rescue operation, andpossibly costing the lives of victims in dire need of immediate attention,Governor Alfred Driscoll called in the New Jersey National Guard for crowdcontrol. The Guardsmen stood side by side, arms linked, forming a human chain,after which the rescue and recovery efforts moved forward at a rapid pace.

Thewhole area was lit with acetylene torches and countless flashlights could beseen bouncing about as the rescuers searched for anyone still clinging to life.When a survivor was found, a call went out for assistance. The rescuers wouldwork in a group to chop, cut, or pry away any obstructions that might bepinning the victim, then they would be loaded onto a stretcher and carried downthe ladders to the street.

Somevictims were able to leave the wreck by themselves, whether they had receivedmedical treatment and been released or had been uninjured. Many people livingnear the crash site opened their homes to these stunned and shockedindividuals. They were offered food, warm blankets, and most importantly forsome - the use of telephones. They needed to call home to assure their familiesthat they were alive and to find transportation home.

As itbecame apparent that the number of dead would be high, a place had to be foundto store the bodies until identifications could be made. There was no placelarge enough that could accommodate the huge number of bodies being pulled fromthe wreckage. It was decided that the garage at the Woodbridge Fire Departmentwould serve as a temporary morgue, but the idea of laying bodies on the dirtyfloor of a garage was repugnant. The problem was solved when a local butcherdonated large rolls of waxed brown paper. As each body was brought into thegarage, a sheet of the brown paper was unrolled and the blood-spattered workersgently placed the body on the paper. Then another sheet of paper was cut andlaid over the body. Witnesses describedhow “the feet of the dead sprawled limp, uncovered by the paper shrouds.”

Someof the bodies brought into the morgue were so severely mutilated that it tookhours to identify them, and then only by an article of clothing or a personalbelonging. As word of the morgue’s location spread, terrified family andfriends of anyone who was supposed to be on the train that evening lined upoutside, hoping against hope that their loved one would not be lying on thefloor.

One ofthe last living victims to be freed, his body partially crushed, found trappedunder one of the heavy steel wheels that had been ripped from one of thecoaches. The rescue and recovery continued nonstop until the last body had beenremoved from the wreckage. It took over seven hours. The National Guardsmenstayed to watch over the site throughout the night to prevent looting and keepsouvenir hunters from climbing on the wreck and getting hurt.

Theday after the crash, the FBI opened an investigation looking for evidence ofsabotage. Finding none, the case was closed.

ThePennsylvania Railroad (PPR) conducted its own investigation and laid the entireblame at the feet of Engineer Joseph Fitzsimmons. The PRR was accepting noculpability, even though they had failed to install any yellow warning lightsto signal a change in speed ahead, or to signal an unexpected change in thetrack conditions, such as a shift of 50 feet and a new temporary trestle.

TheInterstate Commerce Commission was ordered to make an investigation into thecause of the wreck. A public hearing wasconvened the day after the crash. A string of witnesses including PRRemployees, passengers, expert engineers and community members who witnessed thecrash. Fault was found with the operational practices of the PRR. New rules andguidelines were put in place in order to reduce the possibility of a repeataccident of this kind.

TheMiddlesex County prosecutor’s office found the fault lay with the PRR for theaccident. It was discovered that the PRR had a company safety rule that yellowsignals were to be installed at all go-slow areas, regardless of paper noticesposted in the offices. It was further discovered that the PRR branch thatoperated along the north Jersey Shore had a practice of ignoring the rule. The assistant prosecutor voiced outrage thatthe PRR was using Fitzsimmons as a scapegoat. He brought 85 counts ofmanslaughter against the PRR. However, the charges were later dropped when itwas determined that the cost of the court proceedings would bankrupt thecounty. In the end, they agreed to an out-of-court settlement.

A yearafter the accident, the bridge had been rebuilt and all debris, wreckage, and evidenceof the crash had been removed and the trains were “back on track.” In preparation for the anniversary of thecrash, a group of survivors requested that the rush hour train would stop atthe site of the crash just before 6:00 p.m. for a brief ceremony to commemoratethe loss of life. Administrators at the PRR denied the request. Instead, thegroup stood at the rear of the train and threw out a spray of 85 flowers ontothe track as they neared the crash site -- one flower for each life that was lost.

Butthis is not the end of the story. According to legend, there is a haunting thathas occurred at the site where the train plunged off the trestle…