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The wreck of the Red Arrow

Wreck of the Red Arrow courtesy of the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum.

At approximately 3:25 a.m. on the morning of February 18, 1947 the Red Arrow, a passenger train with sleeper cars, was making its normal run from Detroit to New York when something went terribly wrong.  As the train neared the Gallitzin Tunnels two miles away from the Horseshoe Curve, the train was on a downhill grade.  At an excess of 50 miles an hour, the train hit the curve and derailed.  It was a cold, icy night and it has been speculated that ice on the rails might have caused the train to slide and accelerate despite the best efforts of the engineer and crew. 

The train carried 155 people on board.  There were two engines, a baggage car, coach, mail car and two sleeper cars that slid down the steep hundred-foot embankment.  Up near the tracks were five sleeper cars and a dining car that had also derailed.  Of the fourteen cars on the train, eleven left the rails that morning.  It was a disaster for all aboard.  The crash happened on a slope leading to Cresson Mountain.  It was probably one of the worst places for the crash to have happened because Cresson Mt. is the highest section of the Allegheny Mountains with an altitude of over 2,100 feet.

Help came quickly to the wrecked train.  Still, it would be some time before the survivors could be taken off the cold mountain.  Those at the scene would later describe seeing train cars scattered everywhere along the embankment at bizarre angles as if thrown there by a giant hand.  Miscellaneous items from the train cars were scattered about and one man said that pillow feathers floated around like snow for some time.

Inside the cars there was panic and chaos.  People struggled to climb from the twisted wreckage.  Others were pinned and cried out for help.  Yet other people were screaming out the names of loved ones.  A rescuer named Tom Lynam, a photographer from Altoona, later described stepping over bodies to reach the train.  He stated, "I shone my flashlight inside and saw arms and legs sticking up." 

Men with acetylene torches were cutting into the cars to help extricate the passengers.  Others lay on the ground dead and people were trying to render aid to the injured. 

A Reverend Liberman of Canton, Ohio was in one of the train cars at the bottom of the embankment.  It would later be learned that he had stayed in the car despite being able to leave it, and prayed with the injured.  He calmed his fellow passengers and kept them calm until help arrived.  He would later have to be lifted out of the train car.

There were two eastbound track lines still open and a train came to take the injured back to Altoona.  There they were taken to the Altoona and Mercy Hospitals where they were tended.  Over eighty people were admitted that night.

In the end, 24 people would die in the wreck.  Most of the dead were killed upon impact.  With a history like that, it is little wonder that Bennington Curve and the Gallitzin Tunnels have earned a ghostly reputation.  Local lore offers several potential hauntings.  Perhaps the most credible story was the first ghostly tale to surface. 

Two years after the wreck, on the morning of February 18, a workman was up on Bennington Curve doing some maintenance work when he heard the sounds of a train.   He looked up in surprise because he had checked the track schedule and no trains should have been on the curve that morning.  The maintenance man did not see a train, but he heard it rushing toward him.  Suddenly he heard a terrible crash, the scream of metal stressed and the thundering sound of train cars derailing.  The sounds of voices raised in screams of terror followed quickly.  Then all was silent.  The frightened man stared around in silence.  What had just happened?  Where was the phantom train?  He ran down beyond the curve to see if a train had derailed just beyond his view.  Only wintry silence met him there, too.  The troubled workman went back to work, but his mind puzzled over the strange events.  He would not realize the significance of the date until later.  He then would understand that he had heard the train crash at Bennington Curve on the second anniversary of the disaster.  Through the years, a couple other folks have reported being on Bennington Curve on the anniversary date and hearing the sounds of the crash once more.  No one has reported hearing the wreck in recent years, but then there is rarely anyone out on the tracks area today.  It would require trespassing to get there, and it is not safe to trespass upon the railroad tracks.  And so if the Red Arrow re-enacts its terrible demise today, no one living is there to witness it today--only the dead know if the haunting still occurs.

 

 

www.pages.prodigy.com/altoonaarchives/rdar02.htm, www.gendisasters.com/data1/.../altoona-trainwreck1947.htm, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890046,00.html/