On this day in 1904 two passenger trains collided head-on at New Market, Tennessee, killing over 60 people and injuring scores more.
One train, the Number 12 Carolina Special, had left Knoxville on the Southern Railroad early that morning, headed east to Salisbury, North Carolina, carrying passengers headed home from the St. Louis Worlds Fair. The other, Southern Railway Number 15, left Bristol close to the same time, headed west to Knoxville.
Both trains were using the same track.
In order to do this, one of the trains would have to stop on a side-track at Hodges Switch between Strawberry Plains and New Market, east of Knoxville. That never happened.
Supposedly an order was telegraphed to the eastbound train to stop at a siding in New Market instead because this train was making better time than the Bristol train. Although the conductor and the engineer had signed that they had read the order, they never stopped at the side-track in New Market and just kept on going. At 10:18 they morning they crashed at a combined speed of over 100 miles an hour. The crash could be heard up to 15 miles away.
If you’d like to know more about the New Market crash, watch our YouTube video, by clicking here:
