Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster

Page editor Jessica LaRoque

Location

• Bridge over a gorge of the Ashtabula River in Ashtabula, Ohio, just outside the town center.
• The double track railroad bridge crossed seventy feet over the river below.  At the location of the bridge, the river is shallow at 3-4 feet.
• The latitude of Ashtabula is 41.873N.
• The longitude is -80.785W.
• See a satellite image of the current bridge from Google Maps here: Ashtabula River Railroad Bridge.
• The Ashtabula drains into Lake Erie at Ashtabula, Ohio.  See Ashtabula River on Wikipedia here.

History

• Deadliest bridge collapse in United States history.
• Built between 1863 and 1865.
• The bridge collapsed in 1876, after eleven years of use.
• Howe truss supported by two abutments.
• The designers of the bridge later commited suicide.

Details of the Collapse

• December 29, 1876, 7:28PM, during a snowstorm that left two feet of snow and produced 40 mile per hour winds.
• The bridge had been in use for eleven years.
• As the train crossed the bridge, the entire span collapsed, sending eleven railcars and one locomotive into the creek below.  The first locomotive, "Socrates,"  just completed the crossing the bridge, and was the only car that did not fall.  The conductor of the Socrates watched the rest of the train fall and sounded his whistle to alert people at the station.
• The train that fell in the collapse was a Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway train, The Pacific Express, no.5.  It was travelling with eleven railcars, two locomotives, and 159 passengers and crew.
• Some railcars hit each other mid-fall, some fell first and were crushed by cars landing on top of them.  After the collapse into the icy river, the oil lamps in the railcars ignited sending the cars up into a blaze. 
• Of the 159 passengers and crew, 64 were injured and 98 died, of which 48 were unrecognizable.  Many were burned alive in the flaming railcars.  The cars were left to burn, even after the fire department arrived, and there was some question of why the railroad officials had firemen help the wounded that were already out of the wreck rather than put out the fire.  Community members saw survivors in the wreckage and used pails to try and douse the fire.
• Although the train was only 500 feet from the station, the responders to the accident were unable to help much due to the storm and location.  The cars had collapsed 70 feet down a steep gorge covered in two feet of snow, and were on fire. 

About the bridge design

• Bridge had two abutments, on one each side of the gorge, which supported a 150 feet long wrought iron Howe Truss.
• The Howe Truss was very strong over long spans.  It was very popular for railroad bridges because of this and because it was much easier to construct that competing designs of the time.  The Howe Truss was usually built using a combination of iron and wood for different elements.
• The Howe Truss is named for William Howe, who developed the Howe Truss in the 1840s with his brother-in-law, Amasa Stone, Azariah Boody, and Daniel Harris.
• Iron railroad bridges were still uncommon in the 1850s.  Most were wooden or a combination of iron and wood.
• At the time the bridge was built, structural analysis was still developing, standard design specifications did not exist, and engineers were largely unaware of the phenomenon of materials fatigue and brittle fractures.
• Amasa Stone, president of the Cleveland, Painsville, and Ashtabula Railroad, designed the concept for the bridge.  It is unclear why he choose to make the bridge completely of iron, however he was known to have a dominating personality and may have wanted to innovate.  Also, his brother was a partner in the company that was providing the iron beams for the bridge. 
• Joseph Tomlinson prepared detailed specificaition drawings.  Stone and Tomlinson later testified that Stone's intention was to make a first-class bridge. 
• Tomlinson and Stone disagreed about some specifications for the stress allowable on compression elements that led to Tomlinsons resignation or firing: Tomlinson wanted a smaller allowable stress than what Stone preferred.  Tomlinson also later testified that iron that came from the mill was not the full size specified, but that it was used anyway.

Sequence of Events and Cause of the Collapse

Collapse Outcomes

Photo/Video/Personal Accounts

References

1.  Engineering/bridge design definitions from Virginia Tech: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/rkoors/definitions.htm.

2.  History of Bridge Building, Howe Truss information.

3. Gasparini, Dario A.  Collapse of ashtabula bridge on December 29, 1876. Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities (ASCE).  May 1993 (2):7, 109-125.

4. Bridge Disaster Timeline, Ashtabula Railway Historical Foundation.