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Slow Train to Eternity

Late in the afternoon of March 12, 1857, the Great Western Railway train for Hamilton stood at the line’s temporary Toronto terminus at the foot of Bathurst Street. Shortly after 4:00 p.m. Samuel Zimmerman hauled himself aboard. Despite the early signs of a paunch — the consequence of an appetite for the very best in refreshment — Sam, just short of his forty-second birthday and recently married to a woman many years his junior, was assuredly in the prime of his life. No further triumphs would be possible because he, along with the majority of his fellow travellers, had less than two hours left to live.

Zimmerman was in a convivial mood; he nearly always was. He was a most hospitable man by nature — his wide-flung business interests and his generosity were legendary, and intertwined. He had travelled the short distance from a local hotel to the station by horse-drawn cab in the company of representatives of the Canada Southern Railway. They had passed the previous hours hammering out final arrangements for the construction of the Canada Southern, a line intended to provide serious competition for the Great Western. Zimmerman had the new charter in his pocket. His role as one of the chief contractors of the Great Western had contributed massively to his considerable affluence, and he had no ill will toward the Great Western, but Zimmerman was not one to dwell on the past when there was new money and more friends to be won.

Among those who travelled to the station with Zimmerman was Captain Henry Twohy. Although he had no reason to board the train he seemed to have been caught up in the general enthusiasm of the moment and, doubtless influenced by the flow of spirits that lubricated most business dealings of the time, he accepted the boisterous invitations of his friends to continue the celebration in Hamilton. Perhaps the sharp chill of the cab ride helped sober him a little or perhaps, as he later claimed, he really did remember previous commitments. In either case, he made his excuses, left the train, and almost certainly saved his own life.

By the time of this 1867 photograph the Great Western Railway’s Toronto station had been established at the foot of Yonge Street. Ten years earlier trains were departing from a temporary platform at Queen’s Quay, before the line was extended from the outskirts.

Public domain.

As departure time approached, the two passenger cars began to fill. The stuffy heat of the wood-burning stoves offered a welcome relief from the still-freezing mid-March temperatures on the unprotected platform. Among the other passengers was Thomas Street, a well-known financier and former member of Parliament. While Zimmerman would have contended he was the wealthiest man in Canada, some suspected the claim owed more to his flair for self-promotion. If Zimmerman wasn’t the richest Canadian, then Thomas C. Street might have been. Both Zimmermann and Street lived in Clifton (today Niagara Falls, Ontario), and both had been highly influential in the commercial development of that city. But there the similarity ended. Street was every inch the pragmatic and low-key patrician. Zimmerman, on the other hand, flaunted his deal-making triumphs and revelled in his influence. To use a modern-day analogy, contrast the quietly assured financier Warren Buffet with the personality of real-estate tycoon Donald Trump. Sam was “The Donald” of his time. Although the men obviously knew each other, Street chose to sit in the leading passenger car — Zimmerman in the rear car.

Among the other passengers was a well-known ship’s captain, turned wealthy shipping magnate, James Sutherland. Also boarding in Toronto were the recently married son of Hamilton’s first mayor, a number of off-duty railway officials, and a cross-section of the newly mobile public.

As the time for departure neared, engineer Alexander Burnfield dropped from the warmth of his cab and made the mandatory trip around the locomotive armed with a hammer, which he dutifully tapped against each of the wheels. The standard test of the cast-iron wheels relied on a clear bell tone to indicate soundness. If the metal was cracked — even if the blemish was not visible — the hammer would make a duller noise. The engineer was quickly satisfied that the engine passed the routine examination, hardly surprising since the imposing engine Oxford had only recently been returned to service after a complete overhaul.

Burnfield clambered back aboard and peered back through the escaping steam to await Conductor Barrett’s final bellowed “ALL ABOARD!” and permission to get underway. That received, he gave a last blast on his whistle and eased open the throttle.

The 4:10 to Hamilton was scarcely an express hell-bent for eternity. Scheduled at a respectable, albeit leisurely pace that would see it reach Hamilton roughly two hours later, it ambled over the flat plains north of Lake Ontario stopping at all local stations. Still, although advertised as an “accommodation” train, it was by no means intended to attract the rustic provincial traveller. The train consisted of a leading baggage car and two first-class cars. The Great Western was never mean in its accommodation — it was, after all, the first railway in the world to introduce a sleeping car.

Great Western Railway locomotive Spitfire, a contemporary to the ill-fated Oxford, was typical of the 4-4-0 locomotives built in North America during the early years of railroading.

U.S. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-93788.

Although most passengers intended to make the complete Toronto to Hamilton trip, the train stopped at Mimico, Port Credit, Oakville, Bronte, Wellington Square, and Waterdown to drop off or pick up passengers. At Wellington Square Alfred Booker climbed on board. Booker was a fire-and-brimstone evangelical Baptist, of the old school — a man who would not flinch from casting the mote from the eye of an offending brother. Every inch the archetypical Victorian cleric, the feisty Booker had presided over a late afternoon outreach ministry in neighboring Wellington (now a part of Burlington, Ontario) and was on his way home for a deserved rest. On the platform he would have passed a gentleman who stepped down to take a “breath of air,” though more likely he either felt the need to clear his head of the effects of the travellers’ comfort or to augment his supply. In either case, he was sufficiently befuddled that when the train left it did so without him. He might be excused if the thought of what might have become of him had he stayed abroad led him to drink. At that point, the majority of those on board had only about fifteen minutes to live.

A few minutes later the complement was approaching the boundary between modern-day Burlington and Hamilton, where the track layout became a little complex. The main line of the Great Western stretched from Niagara Falls to Windsor — the line between Toronto and Hamilton was an offshoot of that central route, added a few years later. The peculiar geography of the western end of Lake Ontario makes Hamilton a natural intermediate station along a straight line linking Niagara and the west. Building the line from Niagara to Hamilton was relatively easy. The direct approach to Hamilton, however, required some pretty heavy engineering.

The city sits at the mouth of the Dundas Valley — a giant cleft in the Niagara Escarpment, several miles across. This formation is riddled with small creeks gushing from the side of the almost vertical walls of the escarpment, like miniature Niagara Falls. Toward the western end of the valley’s mouth the creeks accumulate into the shallow marshland known as Cootes Paradise. At its eastern end, the valley exits into one of the very best natural harbours in the Great Lakes. Separating that harbour from both lake and marsh are two narrow ribbons of land. Closest to Lake Ontario is the “Beach Strip,” an exaggerated three-mile long sandbar that provides effective shelter from the storms of Lake Ontario. Between harbour and marsh, at the western end, is a more substantial formation known as the Burlington Heights. The Heights constitute a 300-foot-high natural embankment blocking most of the mouth of the Dundas Valley. At the northern end, however, it collapses into a swampy morass through which the waters of Cootes Paradise could seep into the bay.

To satisfy the financial interests of the line’s promoters, the engineers of the Great Western chose to approach the city along the northern boundary of Cootes Paradise. That entailed carving a rock ledge into the escarpment and gradually dropping the line so that it was only fifty to a hundred feet above the level of the lake at the point where the Heights fell off. Having skirted the Heights, the line could then be built just above water level, passing beneath Sir Allan MacNab’s elegant “castle” to the wharves and terminus at the western end of Hamilton Harbour.

Although the plan entailed some pretty heavy construction, the only major difficulty was dealing with the swampy ground where the Heights petered out. Through this spot the Desjardins Canal Company had expanded the Grindstone Creek to enable their boats to reach the harbour from Cootes Paradise. After abandoning an expensive attempt to bridge the swamp, the railway company made an offer. In exchange for the right to a solid embankment closing-off the canal company’s route, the railway would provide a new route by boldly cutting through the middle of the Heights. Part of this agreement required the Great Western to build two new bridges over the new cut — a “high level” suspension bridge for carriages and wagons and a low-level swing bridge to carry the railway into Hamilton.

Satisfactory as this solution was for all concerned, it left the railway with one small problem. In order to gain access to the swing bridge, trains from the west had to navigate a sharp curve, constituting an almost ninety-degree turn. Even today trains take this curve dead slow, accompanied by the screeching of wheel on rail. Without effective competition, the resulting delay must have barely been an irritant to the Great Western. However, the construction of the Toronto and Hamilton Railway introduced a further complication. That line approached the city almost in line with the swing bridge, which it shared with the Great Western main line. At a point only a few hundred feet north of the Desjardins Canal Bridge, the railway installed a switch merging the London and Toronto routes into the solitary pair of metals laid across the bridge. While there were a multitude of contributory factors to the disaster, that switch, placed where it was, sealed the fate of the train’s passengers and crew.

The train that approached that switch in the late afternoon of March 12, 1857, was about to demonstrate how a long chain of decisions — some made years earlier, some days before, and some mere moments earlier — can combine to produce disaster. The determination to build the railway and to locate the crossing of the canal at that precise point, the choice of equipment manufacturer, bridge designer, railway contractor, etc., the decision to move the engine slowly forward without coming to a complete stop at the switch. For the passengers, the choice to travel or not, for some of the crew, the decision to step on or off, determined individual destinies.

Schenectady Locomotive Works, where the fatal engine Oxford was built. The building at the left in the 1870s advertisement would have been where assembly took place in 1853. The Schenectady plant was later absorbed into one of the most famous locomotive builders: The American Locomotive Company (ALCO).

Public Domain.

The magnificent locomotive at the head of the train had been manufactured by the Schenectady Locomotive Works expressly for the GWR. The twenty-three-ton engine was resplendent in the company’s green livery and had only a few days earlier been returned to service after an extensive six-week refit. The wood-burner sported the massive spark-arresting stack and imposing headlight so characteristic of North American engines of the time. With two huge coupled driving wheels on either side — each the height of a tall man — and a leading four-wheel “pony truck” designed to help hold the engine on the line’s indifferent track, the Oxford would have been an impressive sight. She would also have sported a sturdy cowcatcher — an absolute essential on the Great Western.

No records survive of Oxford’s comprehensive refit at the Great Western’s Hamilton shops but it is known that the axle was examined and showed no sign of imperfections. It was not replaced. In light of ensuing events it is a safe bet that it harboured a hidden defect that escaped attention. In an era of soft iron, such components wore easily and required frequent changes. But, it was more than just wear that caused problems with heavy metal pieces. The casting process was crude. Impurities were captured in the web of cooling metal and uneven temperatures led to many castings being rendered unusable by obvious cracks and fissures. Others, while visibly satisfactory, harboured hidden blemishes that would only reveal themselves under the stress of working conditions. Engineer Burnfield’s practiced hammer could reveal the subtle difference in ring between a sound wheel and one in which such a fault was beginning to emerge. However, the immense weight of the axle casting made detection far more difficult.

Such a fault clearly existed in Oxford’s front axle. Somewhere along the route the fissure lengthened and eventually the axle cracked into two pieces. Probably the only evidence would have been a grinding sound inaudible above the clanking, roaring, vibrating racket of a steam locomotive in motion. Despite the break, the locomotive held the track. When the axle was examined after the accident it was determined that the fracture was fresh and that the two broken ends, held together by the tracks on either side, had grated against each other for some time — rounding the ends and inescapably shortening them.

Although not constrained by the sharp curve the mainline trains had to negotiate, the Toronto to Hamilton train slowed almost to a standstill as it approached the Desjardins Canal Bridge. In the wake of serious accidents in which trains had rushed into open drawbridges, government regulations actually required all trains to come to a complete halt for three minutes before advancing over a draw or swing bridge. Astoundingly, only two years earlier the GWR had managed to secure legislative sanction to ignore that provision. Had the train obeyed the regulation it is almost certain the accident would have been averted. That is not to deny that the train was advancing at no more than a walking pace when it passed the critical switch. In fact, it was the custom of the switchman, who was ending his shift, to hitch a ride by clambering aboard the rear car as it passed. Had it been doing much more than six-miles-per-hour he would not have been able to. As it was, no sooner had he pulled himself onto the bottom step than he dropped off again. Something was not right!

Most likely the sudden shift in gauge caused by the blade of the switch caused the broken axle to twist out of line close to the left-hand front wheel. The right wheel, still attached to its section of axle, mounted the rail and dropped on the outside. Just a few feet from the bridge, engineer Alexander Burnfield realized something was very wrong. He instantly threw his engine into reverse and had time to sound just a short single blast on the whistle, signalling the train crew to apply brakes. But the outcome was inescapable. The wheels of the engine, rotating slowly but inexorably, slipped between the ties — plowing them ahead and tilting the engine over to the right. The giant smokestack grazed and then fouled the wood lattice on the right side of the structure. What happened next takes far longer to describe than it did to occur. In a matter of a couple of seconds it was over, according to one contemporary account, scarcely sufficient time to say, “May the Lord be merciful!”

This departure announcement, including the 4:10 p.m. train bound for Hamilton, was published in the Hamilton Spectator a week before the tragedy. For a population unaccustomed to the reliability of railway travel, the advertisement must have promised both punctuality and predictability.

Hamilton Spectator, March 5, 1857.

Heeling over to the right, the engine tore out a large section of the wooden side and floor of the bridge, performing a somersault as it slipped into the sharp abyss. Engineer Burnfield and Fireman Knight either jumped or were thrown out as it plunged. Either way, they were carried through the shattering ice by the massive weight of their now-upside-down mount, to sink to the bottom of the canal and instant death. Oxford dragged her tender with her. The leading baggage car, catching the corner of the sinking tender, was thrown to its left, whipsawed down the embankment, and skidded across the ice.

Next followed the leading passenger car, carrying about fifty people. It was this vehicle that sustained the most severe damage and accounted for the greatest loss of life — in fact, only a handful survived its fall. Dragged over the edge of the forty-four-foot abutment, the car had slowed sufficiently to teeter for a fraction of a second before slipping, leading edge down, through the gap in the bridge to the ice below. As it was falling it began to somersault — a movement that accelerated as the front of the car pivoted on the ice. Now upside down, the roof of the carriage smashed into the ice with a sickening thud. The wooden body was crushed and its window glass splintered. By unhappy fate, those who survived the impact were trapped in the darkness of the over-turned vehicle, which had penetrated, but not passed through, the ice. Above them were the unyielding floorboards of the car and beneath them frigid water and slabs of ice.

The second car fared better. The leading end slid over the abutment and grated down its face. The rear truck snagged on the twisted metal of the torn track, slowing the momentum momentarily before it parted from the body. The car ended up almost vertically suspended, with one end crushed on the ice and the other lodged against the stonework of the bridge. But if the car sustained less damage its unhappy occupants still suffered horrendous injuries as they plunged down the height of the upended vehicle accompanied by falling baggage and seats torn from their moorings to land against the still glowing remnants of the stove.

The locomotive, its fire and steam quenched by the freezing water, had vanished from sight. The carriages settled in their precarious position. Sixty souls were dead or dying. The deceased were beyond complaint; the survivors momentarily mute. Over the darkening scene, quietness settled.