LwS S2, E7: Angola
“Frightful railroad disaster, two passenger cars on the Lake Shore Railroad thrown down an embankment of fifty feet, near Angola, NY, forty-eight persons burned to death” said the caption below this lithograph from Frank Leslie’s Weekly. The train derailment and subsequent disaster that resulted in so many horrible deaths was one of the worst in railroad history up to that time.
At the time of the tragedy, the Village of Angola had two passenger stations. The first was that of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, which by 1914 had been taken over by the New York Central. The other station belonged to the Nickle Plate Road, but this small clapboard building was also used by the Pennsylvania Railroad for a time as part of their Chautauqua Branch.
John visited Angola on July 22, 1951 to record trains of the NKP and PRR. Neither railroad used the station any longer except for the rare occasion of a flag stop. For the most part, the trains of both railroads ran past the NKP station at full speed, and this is what John set out to capture on the evening of the 22nd.
Here is the original page of notes John wrote for his Angola recordings. Sadly, he only recording 9-10 minutes worth of footage. If the information I was able to find in a NKP timetable is accurate, John would have arrived at the Angola station close to 6:00 pm and made his last recording around 8:30 pm. Since the 22nd of July in 1951 was a Sunday, it’s possible John needed to pack up and head back to Buffalo if he had to work in the morning.
Another lithograph of the Angola disaster from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper from January 4, 1868. Note how the artist embellished the scene to make it look more dreadful than it actually was. By the artist’s account, two additional cars derailed and got very close to plunging into the Big Sister Creek ravine.
The lithograph above appeared in the January 11, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly. The individual images have been enlarged from the full page. Click on each image to view them full-screen.
Could this lithograph depict what it was like inside either of the cars as they tumbled into the Big Sister Creek ravine?
Possibly one of the most dangerous jobs when working for a railroad was that of a brakeman. In the early to mid-19th century, hand brakes were the only way to slow down and stop a train outside of having the steam engine at the front throttle down and apply its brakes. Men who held this job had a better chance of a serious accident that often resulted in death more than any other job on the railroad.
Photo courtesy of Industrial History
The examples shown above depict what the interior of the cars on the New York Express may have looked like. Even though George Pullman had invented his luxurious sleeper cars in 1862, they were obviously not used on a trip from Cleveland to Buffalo due to the fact that a train could make that run in less than a day… even at 30 mph. Keep in mind that there were extravagant passenger cars in use in the mid-19th century, but those would have been intended for use by wealthy and prestigious first-class passengers.
The top three photographs show the Union Depot in Erie, PA. While the date of the upper left photograph is unknown, the engine and its train waiting at the depot platform are an excellent example of what the situation may have looked like on December 18 when the New York Express was stuck at the Depot for over two and a half hours. The bottom two images show more examples of the type of engines used in the mid-19th century. The middle picture was taken at Hanover Junction, PA.
According to Wikipedia, “The station, known as Union Depot, consisted of a brick Romanesque Revival structure facing Peach Street between two sets of railroad tracks. It stood 40 feet (10 m) tall, topped with a distinctive cupola, and its platforms extended 480 feet (150 m) towards Sassafras Street along both sides of the depot. The depot was equipped with the modern amenities of the day including outdoor gas lighting, a barber shop, gentleman's and ladies' parlors, and a dining room; the second floor contained offices and sleeping quarters for railroad officials.”
Above are the two passenger station’s that served Angola, NY. The top images show the depot that would have been in use by the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, while the bottom two were used by the Nickel Plate Road and the Pennsylvania. By the time John arrived in Angola in 1951 to make his recordings, the NKP station was no longer in use by either railroad.
The NKP station still exists, but it was moved from it original location to a piece of land further away from the Norfolk Southern tracks that run through the Village. The beautiful painting showing the NKP depot with a passing diesel engine is courtesy of the Village of Angola Facebook page.
The final image (courtesy of Google Earth), shows the NKP depot in its current state. The view is looking up from South Main Street.
The Google Earth images above (plus the image showing the CSX train crossing over the Big Sister Creek Bridge), will help you to better understand where the Angola LS&MS depot was in relation to the distance to the Big Sister Creek bridge. It’s deceiving, but the bridge is a little more than a mile away from the depot.
The view showing the former location of the NKP depot is the approximate spot where John made his Angola recordings.
Above are two seasonal views of the Big Sister Creek bridge courtesy of angolahorror.com. The third image (courtesy of Bridgehunter.com) shows the Big Sister Creek bridge as it looked around the time of the disaster.
According to the North American Rail Products website, a “frog” is defined as follows; “A track structure used at the intersection of two running rails to provide support for wheels and passageways for their flanges, thus permitting wheels on either rail to cross the other. “
A “Frog Angle” is the angle formed by the intersecting gauge lines of a frog.
It’s while running over a “frog” that the axle and wheels of the last car on the New York Express catastrophically failed and caused the derailment.
Today, plaque in Angola commemorates the tragedy and ensures that event isn’t forgotten. In Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, a marker has been placed to remember the unidentified victims of the Angola Horror and the spot where they are buried.
Above are the many newspaper articles that appeared in Buffalo and other cities telling of the disaster that occurred in Angola. Also included are articles describing other derailments and mishaps that took place on the Buffalo and Erie Railroad.
Clicking on each image will open the article in a lightbox window. Unfortunately, you will not be able to pinch and zoom the image when viewed on a mobile device, and the lightbox window has no zoom control buttons. This is a major bug with Squarespace, the site’s authoring environment.
My best advice would be to “right-click” on the longer articles then click “Save image as…” when the pop-up window appears. Doing so will allow you to save the article to your device then open it in an image viewer of your choice.
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