DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells this one, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, there are publicity stunts, and then there is what happened on September 15th, 1896, out in McLennan County, Texas. William G.
Crush was a passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad — the MKT — and somewhere in that man's mind lived an idea so outsized it could only belong to Texas. He proposed staging a head-on collision between two full-sized locomotives. On purpose.
As a promotion. And somebody up the line said yes. The site they chose for this spectacle was, naturally, named Crush — for the man who dreamed it up.
Over thirty thousand spectators made their way out to watch. Thirty thousand people who looked at the invitation to see two trains destroy each other at full speed and thought, now that sounds like a fine afternoon. Around four o'clock, both locomotives were sent speeding toward one another.
The mechanics had done their calculations. They had their predictions about what would happen on impact. Here is where the story takes its turn.
Contrary to those predictions — contrary to everything the engineers figured — the steam boilers exploded. Not just a crash. An explosion.
Pieces of metal were hurled into that crowd of thirty thousand souls. Two persons were killed. Many others were injured, among them a man named Jarvis Deane of Waco, who had been standing there photographing the event when the debris found him.
One moment it was the most spectacular stunt anyone had ever conceived. The next, it was a catastrophe. William G.
Crush had his name on the place forever — and so did the day that proved the boilers didn't read the mechanics' notes.
What the marker says
A head-on collision between two locomotives was staged on Sept. 15, 1896, as a publicity stunt for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad. Over 30,000 spectators gathered at the crash site, named "crush" for MKT passenger agent William G. Crush, who conceived the idea. About 4 p.m. the trains were sent speeding toward each other. Contrary to mechanics' predictions, the steam boilers exploded on impact, propelling pieces of metal into the crowd. Two persons were killed and many others injured, including Jarvis Deane of Waco, who was photographing the event. (1976)