The horrific LIRR Thanksgiving crash, 75 years ago, that spurred a turnaround in the railroad's passenger safety

It was the crash that doomed the Long Island Rail Road — and, ultimately, saved it.

A pivotal moment in Long Island and metro New York transportation history; one that led state officials to wrest control of the beleaguered, bankrupt LIRR from its long-absentee owner, the Pennsylvania Railroad, leading to millions of dollars in safety improvements and system upgrades and the creation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in the 1960s.

Got a complaint your train's running late? Back in 1950, then-Queens District Attorney Charles P. Sullivan suggested a ride on the LIRR was "an open invitation to the morgue."

Seventy-five years ago next week, the LIRR suffered what remains the worst crash in its history: the Nov. 22, 1950, Thanksgiving Eve crash on the Kew Gardens-Richmond Hill border in Queens. The final toll: 78 dead, 363 injured. It remains one of the 10 deadliest railroad accidents in U.S. history and the second-deadliest crash in state history, behind the 1918 Brooklyn Rapid Transit subway crash on the Brighton Beach line that killed 102, injured 250.

It also marks the divide for the LIRR; between what it was, and what it later became.

The Long Island Rail Road this week declined to make President Rob Free available for an interview. But historian and author Andy Sparberg, an Oceanside resident who spent 25 years with the LIRR and who teaches mass transit history at the City University of New York's School of Labor and Urban Studies, last week recalled how his father was a daily commuter on the railroad in the years immediately following the Kew Gardens crash.

"He said passengers would not sit in the front or rear cars for years after," Sparberg said, "afraid of another collision."

And historian David M. Morrison, of Plainview, a retired LIRR branch manager and author of 11 books on the railroad, last week said: "The Nov. 22, 1950, wreck was a signal event in the history of the Long Island Rail Road. [It] sends up a red flag at the Long Island Rail Road that somebody had to do something ... The state took over. It had to."

After the crash, the LIRR went from being one of the deadliest commuter railroads in the United States, if not the world, to being one of the safest.

A railroad plagued by crashes

Incorporated in 1832, the original intent of the Long Island Rail Road was to provide a link between New York City and Boston via ferry service. The railroad was actually built to run from Manhattan to Greenport solely so you could then catch the ferry there to Boston. That was eventually phased out, with the advent of a rail route through Connecticut.

The Pennsylvania Railroad bought a controlling interest in the LIRR in 1900, eyes set on Manhattan — and with designs to build what would be the original Penn Station, which opened in 1910. That's when the railroad's problems began in earnest.

Despite investments that included electrification and the purchase of new rail cars and engines, the Pennsylvania Railroad soon found itself handcuffed by legislation that forbade fare increases for much of the next three decades — a situation that became a crisis following World War II, when suburban commuting by automobile and bus boomed and ridership plummeted, Morrison and Sparberg said.

The Pennsylvania Railroad operated in the red for the first time in 1946. On March 2, 1949, the PRR placed the LIRR into bankruptcy.

For riders, the mismanagement and neglect leading to that bankruptcy had become more apparent with each and every passing mile.

According to the website Trains Are Fun, which documents LIRR crashes as far back as 1865, between 1912 and the end of 1950, the railroad saw more than two dozen major crashes — head-on collisions, derailments, grade-crossing accidents — with at least 10 of them fatal.

The Jan. 7, 1912, crash at Hempstead killed a conductor. The Sept. 22, 1913, collision in College Point killed two motormen. A troop train derailment leaving Camp Upton on April 15, 1918, killed three soldiers and injured another 36. A fatal grade-crossing crash Nov. 15, 1928, in Greenport killed four brothers in a farm truck. A fatal grade-crossing crash on Nov. 12, 1941, left seven dead in Mineola. A head-on collision with a freight train in Port Washington on Aug. 3, 1940, left two dead, 27 injured. And the infamous Great Pickle Works Wreck saw the eastbound Shelter Island Express, loaded with 350 passengers, jump a misaligned siding switch and crash into Golden's Pickle Works on Friday, Aug. 13, 1926, in Calverton, killing six — including a mother and her two children.

One person was scalded to death by 600-degree steam from a broken pipe; another suffocated in a pile of salt used to brine pickles.

In 1950, it all got worse.

On Feb. 17, two trains collided head-on just west of the Rockville Centre station, killing 32 and injuring at least 150. A Jamaica Bay trestle fire was sparked when a passenger tossed a cigarette out a window. An unoccupied train car escaped a work yard in Queens, running down Atlantic Avenue, crossing a street — and coming to rest hovering over traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway. On Aug. 5, a passenger train collided head-on with a freight train in Huntington, injuring 46.

"The Pennsylvania Railroad was showing you it didn't care about the Long Island Rail Road," Morrison said. "It must've created dismal morale among railroad employees and maybe there was an attitude of, 'It ain't my job, what am I going to do?'"

Modern safety improvements, among them the installation of Automatic Speed Control — or ASC, which would help slow or even stop trains to prevent collision — were not installed on the LIRR. Morrison and Sparberg agreed: the Pennsylvania Railroad didn't want to — and, couldn't afford to — spend the money.

Night of horror

The Thanksgiving Eve crash occurred when the Hempstead-bound 6:09 p.m. train out of Penn stalled short of Jamaica. A flagman descended to the tracks to set out a red lantern and light a warning fuse in the darkness — only to have the trailing Babylon Express run the stop.

The ensuing investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which included representatives of Nassau County, trustees of the LIRR, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, the American Labor Party and others, determined the engineer of the Babylon train, killed in the crash, was working his 22nd consecutive day when his train "telescoped" through the stopped Hempstead train at more than 30 mph.

On the 50th anniversary in 2000, Bob Hollingsworth, then 75, said of the crash he'd covered as a young reporter for Newsday: "It was absolute pandemonium. Debris strewn around, a maelstrom of people, ambulances, fire trucks. Confusion. Total chaos. It is, I think, the single worst thing I've ever seen."

Attorney George R. Cohen was killed in the crash two weeks after winning a $150,000 settlement against the railroad on behalf of a victim killed in the Rockville Centre crash. Frank Zachmann, a four-sport athlete at Baldwin High School who'd be inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame in 2018, survived a World War II bomber crash only to be killed on that train ride home. He was 33.

A delay caused Bernard Bahn, 31, of Lynbrook, to miss his usual 5:21 p.m. train out of Penn. He caught the 6:09 — and was killed.

The dead included a 21-year-old from Floral Park whose only brother had been killed in World War II; a young Levittown couple, Dolores and John Barnes; and George L. Brown, 45, of Baldwin, and his son, Stephen P. Brown, 19, home from college for Thanksgiving, having met his dad at Penn Station.

One survivor, Winifred Cannon, of Orient, was 23. In 2000, Cannon recalled she couldn't take her usual seat, delayed after buying a container of clam chowder at Horn & Hardart. Charles Webb, also from Orient, said he'd moved to a different train car after running into an acquaintance on the platform at Penn.

"She saved my life," Webb, then 94, said in 2000.

Also in 2000, Donald Rynd, of Cutchogue, then 83, told Newsday he always sat with friend William Bentley, but couldn't find him in the madding crowd that night at Penn — and so moved to a different seat on the train. On Thanksgiving Day, 1950, Newsday featured a photo of a man, silhouetted in a train window.

Seemingly asleep, blood trickled down the side of his head. The caption read: "On His Way Home." That man was dead.

The picture carried no identification. In 2000, Rynd said he knew who the dead man was.

"It was Bill," he said.

State steps in

In the aftermath of the Kew Gardens crash, the district attorney, Sullivan, dubbed the LIRR the "Death Valley Railroad," adding: "In the minds of local citizens ... a ride on this railroad is an open invitation to the morgue."

Then, it all changed. Following the Thanksgiving Eve crash, Gov. Thomas Dewey condemned the railroad, two of the railroad's trustees resigned and New York City Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri publicly asked for "an honest reorganization of its stepchild line" — the Long Island Rail Road.

The state stepped in, with officials providing direct oversight of the LIRR. And, with a state infusion of funding, the railroad began a massive capital improvement campaign that led to almost $60 million in safety upgrades, including new train cars, modernization projects and installation of that new ASC system — the latter of which remained in effect until the recent federally mandated switch to a Positive Train Control system, which the LIRR completed in 2020.

In 1966, according to the New York State Department of Transportation, the state took over railroad operation completely, having formed the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority in 1965, later becoming the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968.

The Pennsylvania Railroad, which merged with the New York Central Railroad in 1968, after more than 10 years of negotiation, filed for bankruptcy in 1970. It was succeeded by the Penn Central Transportation Company, which also failed, to be nationalized as the Consolidated Rail Corporation — or, Conrail.

Conrail went bankrupt in 1999. Passenger service once associated with the PRR is now operated by Amtrak.

Though there have been tragedies on the LIRR — the Colin Ferguson mass shooting on the LIRR left six dead, 19 wounded, on Dec. 7,  1993, and a horrific grade-crossing collision in Herricks killed nine teens on March 14, 1982 — the lone passenger death as a result of a crash or derailment on the LIRR occurred in 1962, when a train collided with a 120-ton construction crane too close to the tracks in Woodside.

"Consider how many people die in automobile accidents on the Northern State, the Southern State and the Long Island Expressway every year," Morrison said. "Every year, I'm sure, there are fatalities of people driving into the city and yet the Long Island Rail Road, running 750 trains a day, gets it done safely ... The operating rules of the LIRR are written in blood. Those rules would prevent a horrific accident like what happened in 1950."

As Sparberg said: "In my opinion, the railroad today is very safe. ... There's no doubt the Kew Gardens crash saved the LIRR."