As a marketing scheme, it was brilliant. Take two surplus locomotives from the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad - the Katy - and deliberately run them head-on into each other before a crowd of thousands. Unfortunately, the mechanical engineers were a little off about what might happen if you slam two locomotives into each other traveling at full heads of steam. In the early 1890s, the Katy had started replacing its older, 35-ton steam engines with larger 60-ton engines. There were soon dozens of 35-ton units the Katy no longer needed. Some were sold to other users of locomotives such as gravel companies and logging camps. But there were still plenty left, and a railroad passenger agent named William G. Crush came up with a plan. He suggested the Katy take two of the old 35-ton engines and stage a promotional version of a demolition derby, tentatively designated "The Duel of the Iron Monsters."
Crush pitched the idea to the Katy's top brass, and they signed off on it. He went from passenger agent to promoter extraordinaire overnight. Three 26-year-old Pittsburg engines were prepared for the event, one as a spare. Engine 999 was painted green with red trim; Engine 1001 was painted red with green trim. Both locomotives were examined carefully so there would be no hitches on the day of the crash, and then they were coupled with boxcars featuring ads for the Katy, the Ringling Brothers Circus and the Oriental Hotel in Dallas. After they were checked and commissioned, they went out on exhibition tours to market the big event, reportedly posting handbills on every telegraph pole along the Katy line from St. Louis to Galveston. Meanwhile, Crush did his homework.
There was concern that the heavy metal walls of the steam engine pressure tanks would fracture when the locomotives collided. That would result in a large explosion. Crush consulted several Katy mechanical engineers and was assured that the boilers would remain intact even in the event of a high-speed collision. Bolstered by their confidence, Crush pressed on. Crush found a spot to stage the event right off one of the Katy mainlines about 16 miles north of Waco in a field surrounded by three hills. The area formed a gigantic, natural amphitheater, and Crush knew it would provide good viewing.
To ensure that no stretches of the Katy mainline would be damaged, Crush had the railroad lay four miles of separate track on the staging grounds. He built a grandstand for notable guests and converted a borrowed Ringling Brothers big top into a restaurant headed by the Katy's top chef. He built a special 2,100-foot platform and railway station to handle the anticipated traffic, and the Katy christened the new stop "Crush, Texas." Anticipating the late-summer Texas heat, Crush had two wells drilled and ran pipes for several hundred spigots. On the day of the event, he brought in eight tank cars of artesian water and plenty of tin cups. He also hired a Dallas proprietor to run a dozen lemonade stands. Crush created a midway featuring cigar stands and carnival games and put in stoops for politicians and preachers to mount to speechify and prognosticate. He also set up two telegraph lines and negotiated a franchise for official photos from a Waco photographer. And to keep the crowds in line, Crush built a temporary wooden jail and enlisted 200 special constables. No tickets were sold. It was a free spectacle, and the Katy offered $2 tickets for passage to the event from anywhere in Texas. Crush and the event organizers expected 20,000 to 25,000 people, but on Sept. 15, 1896, 40,000 to 50,000 people showed up, making the temporary town the second largest city in the state. At 5 p.m., the viewing areas were packed and the crowd was ready for the show. For dramatic effect, Engines 999 and 1001, both pulling six cars each, touched cowcatchers at the point where Katy engineers had estimated they might meet. Several photographers captured the moment. Then, the engineers rolled the trains back to their respective starting positions and awaited the signal. Crush grandiosely trotted up on a borrowed white horse and stoked the crowd. Then, he removed his white hat and dropped it ceremoniously, and the engines started forward. The engineers tied the throttles open and stayed on board for four turns of the drive wheels. Then, they and their fellow crewmembers jumped. The trains raced toward each other and black smoke poured from their funnels. The crowd could hear the popping of the steam a mile away.
The honorary constables had pushed everyone except photographers and local dignitaries hundreds of feet back and now the spectators stood shoulder-to-shoulder across the surrounding pastures, on wagons and perched in trees, watching in wonder as the green and red iron monsters approached each other in a charge of mutually assured destruction. As one reporter described it, "The rumble of the two trains, faint and far off at first but growing nearer and more distinct with each fleeting second, was like the gathering force of a cyclone." The trains collided at a combined speed of 90 mph and, for a split second, reared up, their boxcars climbing into and over one another and disintegrating. Then the boilers defied the Katy's engineering experts and blew up. "Pandemonium" is perpetually misused to describe spectators going bonkers after athletic spectacles. But its original connotations implied "hellishness," not hyper-celebratory fandom.
What happened after the crash at Crush was real pandemonium in every sense of the term. As one witness described it, after the initial collision, "there was a swift instance of silence, and then as if controlled by a single impulse, both boilers exploded simultaneously, and the air was filled with flying missiles of iron and steel varying in size from a postage stamp to half of a driving wheel." A pair of one-ton wheel units knocked down a telegraph pole hundreds of yards away. An oak beam felled a mesquite tree spectators were using for shade. Scalding steam and red-hot iron poured from the sky, and the crowd was packed so tightly there was nowhere to run. One Confederate veteran said the smoke and explosions reminded him of a Civil War battlefield. Waco photographer J.C. Deane lost an eye after a flying bolt - with a washer still attached - lodged in his head. Photographer Louis Bergstom was struck unconscious by a spinning plank. Standing between his wife and another woman, Hewitt resident Dewitt Barnes was killed by a hot bolt that passed through him and wounded a woman and child standing behind him. Bremond resident Ernest Darnall was knocked out of a mesquite tree and practically decapitated by a whirling length of chain. Descending projectiles a half-mile away injured a woman named Overstreet.
Hundreds were burned by live steam or nicked by shrapnel. The beleaguered crowd stood in shock for several moments - and then thousands began sifting through the debris for souvenirs. Hundreds were burned when they tried to pick up the hot fragments. The final casualty of the exploding debris was an unidentified woman. Katy representatives were already in damage control mode, and Crush was fired before sundown. By sunup, however, the Katy was a household name. The Crash at Crush filled world headlines overnight. Crush's "Duel of the Iron Monsters" was an astounding success, and within days, he was rehired. The claims of the injured and mortally wounded were quickly processed. Deane received $10,000 and a lifetime railroad pass. The town of Crush was razed as quickly as it was raised. Its progenitor and namesake retired from the Katy 44 years later, keeping a low profile for the rest of his career. He is buried at Calvary Hill Cemetery in Dallas. The last surviving witness of the event was reported to be Millie Nemecek of West, who died in 1983.
All that remains of the spectacle, the excitement and the carnage is a historical marker, some fading photographs - and one interesting new twist. American inventor Thomas Edison loved trains. When he got wind of the scheduled Crash at Crush, he sent an assistant named J.W. Rector to record the event with a new invention called a Kinetoscope - a motion picture machine. That means the Crash at Crush was the first train wreck ever captured on film. Footage of the event has never surfaced and may be lost. When the explosions started, Rector hid behind the Kinetoscope on the photographer's stand. When the mayhem was over, he couldn't stop trembling and swore he would never climb a photographer's stand again.
