
For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America’s Favorite Pastimes - stevekemp
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/staged-train-wrecks
======
hanniabu
People died and were maimed so Crush was fired, but then the company realized
people enjoyed it and could still profit off these spectacles so they hired
Crush back.

One engineer warned that they locamotives would explode and they shunned him
as a debbie downer naysayer.

Doesn't seem that far off from today where profits trump safety and any reason
that stands in the way is ignored.

~~~
jopsen
> Doesn't seem that far off from today where profits trump safety and any
> reason that stands in the way is ignored.

Really? :)

While accidents do happen, the rate of accidents is going down. Injuries in
general: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-number-of-deaths-
by...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-number-of-deaths-by-
cause?stackMode=relative)

Fire: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-deaths-by-
age](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-deaths-by-age)

Drowning: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-deaths-by-age-
gr...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-deaths-by-age-group)

And even motor vehicle deaths, could plausibly have topped:
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-by-
type](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-by-type)

(this is world wide, in the developed world these peek many decades ago)

~~~
Wohlf
We live in the safest time ever, yet some people don't realize or refuse to
believe it. I blame media bubbles.

~~~
salawat
No, we don't. We live in a local minimum based on what we're actually well
equipped to define and measure, and what people in positions of power are
willing to treat as actionable information.

Politics is swinging to the extremes, violence is changing it's clothes,
taking on other less familiar forms. Trust in the system is at a low.

Economic inequality is rife; infrastructure and the environment is approaching
levels of instability previously unheard of.

These aren't media bubbles. These are failures to maintain or achieve higher
order awareness. All of these things are feeding into each other in myriad
ways; they can't be reasoned in individual contexts for solutions. That's the
thinking that got us where we are. They need to be reasoned about as a whole.

Problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them in
the first place.

~~~
kube-system
If you are suggesting that we aren’t able to say we’re at all time lows due to
a lack of good long term historical information, then you also can’t draw the
opposite conclusion that we _aren’t_ at at an all time low. We simply don’t
know. But I’d bet it’s highly unlikely that a lack of measurement and/or
recording led to better results.

I do agree that trust is probably at pretty low levels — exactly because
communication is more accessible than any time in history and therefore people
have more opportunity to question authority.

But a lack in trust doesn’t translate directly to violence. I think that
people are becoming very complacent with distrust. The daily media barrage of
reasons to distrust so many things has reached the point where it doesn’t
cause outrage anymore. It has convinced some people that distrust is normal.

~~~
y4mi
every issue salawat mentioned wasn't something that would result in violence
and deaths _today_ so its not refuted by citing current statistic.

They're warnings for the future, because while its true that we're currently
living in a pretty safe environment and are overall pretty well off, our
children won't have that luxury.

Once these issues actually start getting reflected in global statics, its
going to be way too late to actually realistically pull this proverbial ship
around.

And he didn't even mention half of the things on the horizon with the
potential to seriously harm society such as global warming and the evermore
increasing amount of automation destroying the livelihood of a lot of people.
(automation isn't _bad_ , its just going to cause a lot of problems and unrest
very soon)

~~~
iguy
Prediction is hard, especially about the future!

What's clear is the data about the recent past, and the trends are very good,
both for accidental and deliberate death (among other things) on a time-scale
of decades to centuries.

There are indeed some reversals (in the last few years: some kinds of crime,
pedestrian deaths, opioids) which the optimists hope will be short-lived.

------
dullroar
I am here to tell you, however, that the spectacle promised by a local county
fair of a “combine demo derby” (as in, a demo derby with old combines) did NOT
live up to the hype. Crashes there were, but at a lumbering 5MPH (TOPS) they
were not “spectacular," especially when some of the combines had to help
others get going again with helpful pushes. Let's say my ten-year-old son and
I were "underwhelmed." :)

~~~
cr0sh
I've never seen one, but I wonder if a motorhome/bus derby might be wild...

~~~
Swizec
You can see these on Top Gear. They are spectacularly wonderful and I hope I
get to experience one in real life some day.

To wit they've done everything. Bus derby, RV derby, trailer derby ... it
always ends in wonderful amounts of destruction and spectacular crashes.

------
splitbrain
I wonder if clean up was part of the costs. I imagine there's quite a few
parts that are difficult to move without heavy machinery. Or did they just
leave the wreck and tracks as is? If so are there any of those crash sites
still visible?

~~~
michaelt
They got the locomotives and tracks to the crash site somehow, so presumably
they know a thing or two about moving heavy stuff around.

~~~
splitbrain
Well, moving a working locomotive is relatively easy compared to a non-working
one ;-)

~~~
glouwbug
A working train without tracks is non-working machinery. They only laid down a
mile of tracks for the show

------
inflatableDodo
The cultural change in reducing the frequency of this pastime, is that trains
today are considered much less cool than they once were, so contemporary
America crashes other things into things for fun instead. The current fashion
is large navy vessels, apparently.

~~~
liberte82
Our favorite things to crash are the global economy and the sustainability of
the environment

~~~
inflatableDodo
They've been crashing into one another for longer than America has existed, to
be fair. Though someone did mention, it may have been Germany, that America
was last seen laughing hysterically whilst hacking away at the remaining brake
lines, so there's that.

------
pjc50
See also the more serious British Rail / BNFL "flask" crash test:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY446h4pZdc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY446h4pZdc)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
How much power would you estimate that train was producing?

If I remember correctly can’t diesel-electric locomotives put out one or two
megawatts!

~~~
arethuza
Looks like an old Deltic - so about 2.4MW max:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_55](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_55)

NB The Deltic engines were pretty interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic)

~~~
theoh
No, as the voiceover says, it was a much less powerful Class 46 (46009).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_46](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_46)

~~~
arethuza
My mistake - in the office so didn't have the audio on!

------
bitwize
I'm reminded of my nephew who, at four years old, would set up lengths of
track on which to crash his toy cars together in what he called "challenges".

Strange to think that a railroad executive would turn out to be an overgrown
four-year-old crashing real trains together for the fun of it. Especially
considering the lives put at risk.

~~~
liberte82
When I was a kid my favorite toy was the Crash Test Dummies. They had a whole
set of cars, people, motorcycles and other vehicles that would fly apart when
thrown against a wall and could be put back together. :)

~~~
cafard
Back in the early 1960s some such toy as sold. But I recall them as spring-
driven--you'd wind them, let them run against a wall and fly apart, then put
them back together.

------
scandox
J.G. Ballard died and went to heaven:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_\(Ballard_novel\))

~~~
setr
The crash itself isn’t as important there, as being _in_ the crash — the feel
of the crushing steel, on your burning flesh

------
folli
Who's to say that this wouldn't also attract crowds today.

~~~
TorKlingberg
I think the advent of movie theaters killed it. With today's special effects
you can see trains or boats or spaceships crashing into each other in close up
for a reasonable price. It's not "real" of course, but probably fills the
need.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It grows a need in me to see the real thing - because I know the special FX
crashing is invented, and I'd like to know how it would look (and sound, and
smell, and feel) in reality.

~~~
PaulAJ
I remember watching the twin towers collapse on 9/11, and the part of me that
wasn't thinking "Oh God!" was thinking "Wow, that looks just like a special
effect".

~~~
TeMPOraL
When I first stumbled upon reports from 9/11 when channel surfing (I think it
was before the second plane hit), I thought I'm seeing some weird thriller
movie, and continued switching channels. Only later that day I learned it was
all real.

------
Theodores
This was lowest common denominator entertainment.

Today's YouTuber stars make a fine living out of smashing stuff up. They know
it is lowest common denominator stuff that will find a ready audience.

However, these stunts come to an end, after a while the audience needs
something new and not yet another thing smashed up.

The thing with the trains is that they were only good for scrap. Being wrecked
made little difference to the resale value, bent bits of tin are still of the
same weight as finely engineered bits of tin.

The current trend of wasting stuff for likes rarely involves stuff that is
going to be recycled. How many iphone X's does it take to stop a bullet
content results in a lot of waste of new stuff with not a lot recycled. This
is in contrast to this train wrecking stunt-meme of a century ago.

Although people were killed in the train wrecking stunts people did not go
there with that a as premise. Motor racing was about the deadly crashes for
most of the last century, if you were a Formula 1 driver then it was a 1 in 3
chance you might not last the season. Spectators went for the chance to see a
spectacular crash being part of the entertainment.

Public hangings also used to be popular entertainment. So, all considered,
pretty good show.

------
m23khan
I say time is ripe to bring back this ye olde form of ‘tainment to the masses.

Oh, we can have frankfurter rolls and sarsaparilla floats at the fair grounds!

~~~
jsonne
I know you're joking but that legitimately sounds like a lot of fun.

------
kozak
Am I the only one who routinely watches crash test videos as entertainment?

~~~
degenerate
I'd watch those if I knew where to look. Can you link a few?

~~~
kozak
[https://www.euroncap.com/](https://www.euroncap.com/) is the main source, but
YouTube searches also occasionally yield some interesting non-European videos
(small overlap and other kind of tests that are not routinely conducted by
EuroNCAP).

------
GershwinA
Interesting story, though I can't say the practice is celebratory. I think
there's too much waste in the world, starting from such events where things
are like...getting crushed for fun, ending tot he food restaurants throw out.
Yet it's an interesting phenomena about the train crashes

~~~
boohoojangles
I just recently realized that, after moving next to a big park where those big
events happens, even the ones self claimed environmental friendly. The next
day is so so much garbage of all sorts.

------
shazeubaa
Images of Gomez Addams come to mind....

------
hn_throwaway_99
Completely random, but I'm always so impressed by how well-dressed everyone
(including the poor) was 100+ years ago. While there are benefits to having
less formality in public life I also feel that something important has been
lost.

~~~
jandrese
Yeah, but that was their only set of clothes. They look nice because it's what
they go to church in as well.

Look through old wills and it's shocking to see what people list. Each shirt
individually gifted, because they only had 3. Each pair of socks. Their
toaster. This wasn't even 100 years ago. We don't realize just how much more
buying power we have today. It's a completely different world.

------
atemerev
Crash testing is important. Making the public aware of what happens in the
crash is also important. This is the opportunity to observe many of unknown
unknowns, that wouldn't manifest in non-destructive testing.

For cars, crash tests are routine, which is good. For planes, unfortunately,
there are less common. Now, we need destructive testing for e.g. nuclear
reactors (in the controlled and safe environment, of course). We used to do
that, but stopped for political reasons.

------
rjkennedy98
Amazing how 100 years ago they could lay 1 mile of rail to just to crash old
trains. Today it costs millions of dollars to build a mile of track and we
still run cars that are 50+ years old.

------
3minus1
This is fascinating. Nowadays people throng to the theaters for the latest
Michael Bay special effects extravaganza. It seems like the same impulse, to
see a big crash or explosion.

------
adultSwim
Where can I find these images from Baylor?

I tried their repository,
[http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu](http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu)

------
mc32
Given the popularity of kids crashing their toy trains in YouTube videos, this
propensity hasn’t abated in people’s minds yet.

------
eej71
I believe the Scott Joplin piece The Great Crush Collision March was written
to commemorate one mentioned in the article.

------
ChuckMcM
So sad to think of those beautiful locomotives destroyed in a spectacle.

------
exabrial
Mine was too... HO Scale though

------
hanniabu
> By 4 p.m., more than 40,000 people had arrived

For anybody else that was curious, in 1896 $2*40k = $2.4M in 2019

[http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1896?amount=80000](http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1896?amount=80000)

~~~
black_puppydog
that doesn't sound like an awful lot for two locomotives and logistics...?

~~~
jopsen
Probably the locomotives had to be scrapped regardless.

But putting down the rail sounds expensive, could it be that this was cheaper
back then?

~~~
bluGill
Putting down rail would have been cheap. Since it was one time use they could
take a lot of shortcuts - who cares if the next frost will twist the rails
when you will be done before the next frost.

------
burfog
Updating this for the modern era, I suggest the Airbus 380. Crash a fully
fueled pair going full speed at about 800 feet up, with the crowd back 2000
feet.

~~~
peterkelly
It's been done with a single 727, though for research purposes rather than
entertainment.

[https://youtu.be/FlX8KsSXg4s?t=2760](https://youtu.be/FlX8KsSXg4s?t=2760)

~~~
grafporno
Those sound effects were added in post, right?

~~~
LeonM
I think they got the crash sound from the onboard camera equipment, and the
engine sounds from outside cameras. Then mixed it together with tense music
for dramatic effect.

------
bjourne
Not seldom can you measure how unequal a society is by the bizarreness of the
leisure time of the upper classes.

~~~
leadingthenet
It was 50 cents to attend and many tens of thousands of people did so.
Definitely not limited to the upper classes.

