staged wrecks

[NW Mailing List]

There was an article I think it was in an old Railroad Magazine pulp of the
1930s or thereabouts about "Crash" Connelly if I recall the name correctly.
There are even a few DVD videos out there (I know because I have seen them
and may even have them, somewhere) where many of the details were
described. Raised money for some RRs which were scrapping locos as they
sold tickets and so forth.

One such event went sour as one of the boilers exploded violently sending
shrapnel all over the place and killed a few people. The one video I recall
has the staging done like an olde time cock-fight where each handler moved
their respective steed back and forth, blowing whistles, and doing this
several times before, with the stage now set and the combatants some
distance apart, started them off at each other and jumped before they got
running too fast. As I recall the one with the fatalities had the engineer
pull the throttle out too far, too fast and the engine just spun its
drivers until the other engine hit it. People were too close to that one
and was why there were deaths and also why those things ceased.

However, one Hollywood movie has a similar type of event shown as part of
the story: Denver & Rio Grande as I recall using two RG NG engines
somewhere in Colorado smacking into each other, beautiful living color.

Bob Cohen
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