Trolley Thursday 10/14/21 - Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Tunnel Disaster

Despite the 1910s being the "Golden Age" of street railway development and operation, where it seemed everyone and their mother had a streetcar line, it was still a very hazard-fraught period as the companies were still learning how to make their streetcars safer through trial and deadly error. After all, it was just last week where we learned that New York City's worst subway disaster basically gave us the "deadman" pedal as we know it as late as 1918. Unfortunately, that kind of technology could have also saved another runaway streetcar that went down in local infamy as one of the worst streetcar crashes in the Alleghenies. On today's Trolley Thursday, we peer into the annals of the Pittsburgh Railways as we look back on the 1917 Mount Washington Transit Tunnel Terror.

  

The Players

The Pittsburgh Railways Company logo.
(Unknown Author)

A long-exposure shot makes for terrifying speed in this
Forbes Avenue view of the PRC on September 6, 1913.
(Pittsburgh Magazine)

Before the Port Authority Transit Company that defines Steel City's rapid transit today, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, moved to the rhythm of the Pittsburgh Railways (PRC) and the many street railways they had purchased. By 1917, the PR had purchased four whole constituent companies (the Southern Traction Company, the West End Traction Company, Consolidated Traction Company, and the United Traction Company of Pittsburgh) and gained well over 1,100 used and antique streetcars and almost 600 miles of streetcar track up and down the Monongahela River. To evenly spread the service out across the whole system, PR ran almost 99 different streetcar routes across the city with streetcars often handling two routes at once. While the corporate history of the Pittsburgh Railways was already confusing (believe me, try writing about it yourself), their infrastructure building was certainly better handled and better understood.

The Northern exit of the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel in
1968, with the accident site being where the "Parkway" sign is on the right.
(David Wilson)

An early view of the southern entrance
to the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel.
(Brookline Connection)

One of the biggest obstacles to the PRC was Mount Washington, an enormous peak overlooking the city where the Ohio River splits into the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. To avoid a costly climb with steep grades that could test a streetcar's motors to the breaking point, it was decided that a tunnel was necessary to expand trolley service south of the rivers. On October 6, 1902, ground broke on the 3,500-foot "Mount Washington Transit Tunnel" under contractors Booth and Flynn. The tunnel wasn't free from a grade, as it was a 6% climb to reach the city's South Side, but it proved more practical than taking a steam railway or the Castle Shannon Incline. By December 1, 1904, the tunnel opened to streetcar traffic, connecting downtown Pittsburgh with the new communities in the South Hills. One of these communities was Knoxville, a sleepy mining and industrial workers' suburb that depended on the PR for their daily commute. 

This map closeup (which can be seen in full here) shows the 
relationship of the Mount Washington Tunnel with the rest of the system.
(FiftyThreeStudio)

A PRC Jones "Yellow Car", preserved at
the PA Trolley Museum in Washington, Pennsylvania.
(PA Trolley Museum)

That daily commute was rendered by the Pittsburgh Railways' "Yellow Car", a steel car design developed by PRC General Manager P.N. Jones in 1910 that took many cues from the equally-influential "Peter Witt" streetcar from Cincinnati, Ohio. The "Yellow Cars" (of which more than 1,000 were built by various manufacturers) featured low steps, small wheels (25" diameter) with even smaller Westinghouse motors, and a low floor (about 3 feet high) to speed up loading time by allowing for faster entrances and exits without passengers struggling to get in. By 1917, many of these "Yellow Cars" replaced the motley roster PRC inherited from its constituents as the Steel City sought to modernize their rapid transit. Of the one thousand cars constructed, only two survive today at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA: No. 4398 (built by St. Louis Car in 1917) and No. 3756 (built by Osgood-Bradley in 1925).  

The Disaster

In 1965, a PCC car on the 44 "Knoxville & PA Station" line
is seen close to the Smithfield Bridge, at the P&LE Transfer.
(Roger Puta)

One of these famous "Yellow Cars", No. 4236 (another St. Louis Car product), was assigned to the inbound "Knoxville" run to downtown on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1917. Normally, a "Yellow Car" could handle an absolute crush capacity of about 59 people, sitting and standing; that afternoon, however, it had taken on a little over 120 last-minute Christmas shoppers (including 114 paying passengers and 4 transfers, as well as the motorman and conductor) and the excess weight on board strained the car's tiny wheels and brake shoes. This strain was further amplified by the high service speeds that motormen could reach when running through the tunnel downhill to downtown Pittsburgh, roughly 50-60mph. Normally, a motorman had to severely reduce their speed as they exited the tunnel onto Smithfield Street, as there was a nasty S-curve that crossed both the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie (P&LE) tracks and Carson Street. However, for a myriad of reasons, No. 4236 could not slow down at all.

PRC Jones car No. 4398 in service, on the 5 "Spring Hill" line.
(PA Trolley Museum)

Motorman Herman H. Klingler (then 25 years old) and Conductor Martin Joyce (then 22 years old) took over the car at the south end of the Mount Washington tunnel at 3:04PM, and immediately things began going wrong. Not only was the car grossly over-capacity (which Joyce regarded with contempt as he struggled inside like a sardine), but upon moving, the pole came off the wire. Rather than get out and immediately haul the pole back onto the wire, Joyce and Klingler began arguing among each other who would re-pole the car. It took another few minutes of squabbling before an interurban car bound for Charleroi (south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River) stopped to let its conductor put the pole back on the wire. With power restored, the aggravated and annoyed Motorman Klingler was said to "turn the control wide open" as he tried to make up for lost time down the tunnel. 

SF Muni Cable Car No. 26 is provided here for 
artistic illustration only. The cable cars have
and continue to have an impeccable safety record.
(The New Yorker)

As No. 4236 picked up speed, Conductor Joyce noticed the car beginning to rock side to side violently, like a Thomson Scenic Railway ride instead of a trolley car. Fearing the car may have been rocketing out of control, he went for the conductor's valve but found himself crowded away from it and unable to do much. Klingler also noticed the violent rocking of the trolley car, as well as the end of the tunnel that heralded a violent fate rather than an optimistic light. In a panic, he applied the air brakes and the handbrake, then threw the car's motors into reverse. Unfortunately, at this time the violent rocking grew in such intensity that the pole threw itself off the wire again, cutting off the motor braking and the air pump. Klingler could only hang onto his control stand and brace for impact as Car No. 4236 rocketed out of the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel like a hellish sleigh ride.

A contemporary diagram of the wreck scene.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) 

At 3:42PM, after just clearing the P&LE tracks, Car No. 4236 jumped the tracks and skidded onto the curb on Smithfield Street. The trolley car then struck a confection store and ran between a fire hydrant, which broke off both of its trucks, and an iron street pole that tore the back half of the roof off and crushed the rear end. Bodies were thrown like ragdolls as the car skidded across Carson Street on its side, nearly missing another streetcar, before coming to an abrupt stop in front of the P&LE freight depot. The front truck traveled just a little farther like a big square wrecking ball, while the rear truck skidded to a stop on Carson Street. Both Motorman Klingler and Conductor Joyce got away with relatively light injuries, but as the dust settled and the noise died down, they soon heard the sound of wailing souls. weeping crowds, and the sirens of emergency vehicles. As they looked around at the decorations in the windows and the last-minute shoppers gathering in all the commotion, both men realized it wasn't such a white Christmas anymore...

A photographer for the Gazette Times captures the immediate aftermath of Car No. 4326's violent end.
The Smithfield Confectionary is at left, while the fuzzy area at right is where the rear truck ended up.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Cleanup and Investigation

The Pittsburgh Press picks the story up on December 26, 1918.
(The Pittsburgh Press)

Of the over 120 people aboard Car No. 4236, 80 were injured and 21 people lost their lives. Among those injured included young women and children, the youngest of which was Howard B. Young, aged 9, of Beltzhoover who crawled out of the wreckage with just a bruise and a cut cheek. He was on his way to get his haircut, and he continued to walk across the Smithfield Street Bridge to do just that. Even people on the ground weren't so lucky, as George Birmingham and Morris Julius (of the South Side express delivery service) were injured when the errant streetcar struck their horse and wagon. Among the dead was 45-year old Aurelia Kuffner Czerny (the cousin of Post-Gazette author Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt's grandfather), who was sadly crushed under the wreck, and Ella and Gladys Sheridan of Mount Oliver, a mother and daughter. In a few hours, Coroner Samuel Jamison commenced an official investigation and began collecting case facts, while the dead were buried at Calvary Cemetery.

Car 4398, during its restoration, shows off its incredibly tiny wheels.
Not much surface area for brakes to take hold.
(Dementix.org)

Chief in the accident inquiry was establishing Klingler's conduct and actions before and during the wreck. It had emerged that Klingler had a history of intoxication while on the job, and one bartender on Boggs Avenue had previously denied his patronage due to him still being in uniform. Despite not testifying to whether or not he had imbibed before duty, the coroner's deputies found that Klingler had been recently intoxicated (at about 1AM that day) and that Car. 4236's brakes were "faulty" (despite the Public Service Commission finding that the car's brakes were okay). Klingler was eventually tried on of 24 counts of manslaughter in February 1919, with the jury finding him "grossly careless". PRC dispatcher M. Maley (who did testify that Klingler was not under the influence) was recommended to be charged as an accessory; he was not prosecuted. Klingler was eventually found guilty on two counts of involuntary manslaughter (for Clara Tanney and Ella C. Sheridan) and had the other 21 counts struck. He served 15 months of a 24-month sentence and was released on October 10, 1920.

Lessons Learned

A PRC fare token from the 1930s.
(Justin417)

Along with their judgement of Klingler, the jury urged the Pittsburgh Railways in all its overseeing power to implement new recommendations to ensure such an incident never happened. Among their recommendations was that PR had to "more carefully select employees, require dispatchers to scrutinize motormen and conductors before assigning them to cars, set standards to improve trolley passenger safety, fix responsibility for passenger safety with the conductor, and keep all brake handles clear for safe operation." 68 civil suits were also filed against the Pittsburgh Railways under the Allegheny County Court by the remaining injured and the families of the deceased for financial compensation. The PR fought all of them, with one attorney arguing that the injuries done to 15-year-old Elfreda Rosenberger "didn't diminish her appearance" and that she "wasn't very pretty" to begin with. At the end, PR had to pay out fifty-four claims to the tune of $253,117 (or close to $4 million in 2020) and by the time this claim was settled, Pittsburgh Railways was forced into bankruptcy and had to appeal to reduce the payments and extend their pay time. The bankruptcy was partly due to the accident payouts, and also to PR's unsustainable "lease and operate model" of its constituent companies. 

What Happened Next?

PCC Car No. 1643 is on the 44 "Knoxville & PA Station" line
as it takes a curve at South Hills Junction on June 26, 1965.
(Roger Puta)

The PRC continued in bankruptcy until 1924, by which point a major walk-out of motormen and conductors over a rejected pay increase and an inconsequential fare increase had crippled the transit system. New rolling stock in the form of the famous PCCs helped to keep the railway going after 1936, but by WWII, the company was unsalvageable as they refused to allow higher worker wages and were constantly denied fare increases by the city council. Their lines were further cut off by bridge redevelopment which took away ability to go south of downtown Pittsburgh, as the city and transit agency disagreed over who actually was responsible for paying for road development. After June 21, 1959, the whole West End of the PRC was abandoned and by the 1960s, 90% of the whole system was gone. By this time, both Klingler and Joyce had left the PRC but their fates are sadly lost to history; what is known is that Car No. 4236 was scrapped following the accident. 

The aftermath of the 1987 incident, showing the damage to
the PATCO trolley.
(Brookline Connection)

Incredibly, the tragedy of 1917 happened again on October 29 1987, this time to a 1700-series, all-electric PCC car. Just like the first incident, the PCC car had exceeded the tunnel speed limit due to an electric defect in its regulator. Thinking quickly, the motorman hurried all passengers to the back of the car and radioed Station Square to clear the platform in case something happened. As the PCC shot out of the tunnel, it again took Smithfield Street (which had closed to streetcars in 1985), bounded across Carson Street, and struck a fire hydrant. Thankfully, the car stayed upright and only thirty-seven people were injured. The cause was later found to be a complete failure of braking systems: drum, dynamic, and magnetic track brakes, and the PCC models with these defects were retired. Today, the Mount Washington Tunnel continues to serve the Port Authority Transit Company (PATCo) and its light rail services through its Station Square shopping and transit center, and the modern LRVs that run on it (with their modern computer-controlled and battery-backed-up braking and drive systems) send a reassuring message to Steel City denizens that something like the Knoxville Trolley Terror could never happen again.

The current Northern entrance to the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel.
(Brookline Connection)

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt's personal recount of the tragedy in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, "Touring Pittsburgh by Trolley" by Harold A. Smith, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA, and the photo credits in each caption. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Tuesday, we blow into the Windy City and cover the infamous CTA Green Hornet Streetcar Wreck. For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!