Richmond Hill Wreck

Seventy years has passed since the worst wreck in Long Island's history took 78 lives on Trains 780 & 174 at Richmond Hill.

Read about it:
http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-lirr-0650.html
http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-lirr-0650-1.html
http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-lirr/li ... 15-OL.html

Worst LIRR Wrecks
July 4, 1875, Far Rockaway (SRLI), 9 killed
September 22, 1913, College Point, 4 killed
April 15, 1918, Camp Upton; 3 killed
August 13, 1926, Calverton; 6 killed
August 3, 1946, Port Washington; 2 killed
February 17, 1950, Rockville Centre, 32 killed
November 22, 1950, Richmond Hill; 78 killed.

I've written it before, but it bears repeating. My Dad was present at both Rockville Center and Richmond Hill. As a teenager, I asked him about the wrecks and he would simply say, "I don't want to talk about them", and change the subject. For years, he kept an old copy of Newsday in a filing cabinet in our basement. Over time, it crumbled into dust and eventually get tossed. My mother told me, there was a young woman from their neighborhood on the Rockville Center train. Dad saw her decapitated corpse and it went straight into a frozen mental image. The other one that crushed him was the man Newsday depicted, crushed up against a window, with the caption"On his way home".
Today, rescue workers would get mandatory serious counseling or group therapy after such an event. In 1950, postwar, they were told to "suck it up and deal with it". My Dad wasn't a drinker, but I know it made an indelible mark on his 43 year career in the track department.

Many, many horrific stories.

After a train went to the bottom of Jamaica Bay, the LIRR installed brake trippers on those drawbridge signals. After the Port Washington wrecks (a bumper block and a DD-1 freight vs. MU head-on in the yard) the LIRR installed 3-aspect speed control on that branch. Rockville Centre and Richmond Hill brought the expansion of ASC to most electrified branches.

These wrecks did pave the way to government acquisition of private railroads, a concept which was up to then, widely rejected as Socialism. Access to unlimited taxation funds assured their survival.

Still is.

Many rail safety laws are written in blood - just look at how many people the NYC gouged before they finally built the High Line. Pretty much all regulations are.