The following article is copyrighted by Knoxville News Sentinel and reprinted with their permission. The orginal article is located at http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/jul/10/history-buffs-relatives-gather-to-honor-victims/

BY RICHARD LOCKER locker@commercialappeal.com Tuesday, July 10, 2007

NASHVILLE — Historians and descendants of victims and rescue workers gathered along a peaceful Nashville greenway Monday to mark the 89th anniversary of the worst passenger-train wreck in U.S. history: the head-on crash of two trains — from Memphis and Nashville — that killed 101 people.

The setting, at Dutchman’s Curve just north of the still-standing White Bridge on which onlookers stood to watch the rescue, belied the chaotic scene just after 7:20 a.m. July 9, 1918. The Commercial Appeal’s report the next day described the dead and dying strewn in the cornfield along the track, those unhurt or with lesser injuries fleeing in panic and the two engines “unrecognizable masses of twisted iron and steel. ... The dead lay here and there sprawling where they fell. The dying moaned appeals for aid or speechless rolled their heads from side to side and writhed in agony.”

The crash of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway trains seriously injured more than 100 others. Many of the casualties were among 143 Memphians who had departed the city’s Union Depot 11 hours earlier, headed to new jobs at a Nashville plant making gunpowder for World War I raging in Europe. Victims also included young military recruits who joined the eastbound train at several West Tennessee towns.

The disaster occurred 5 miles west of downtown Nashville in what is today a greenspace along Richland Creek wedged between St. Thomas Hospital, St. Mary’s Villa retirement community and the Lions Head Village and Belle Meade shopping centers. The track is owned by CSX Railroad, whose freight trains traverse it daily.

Monday’s ceremony, attended by about 40 people, reflected the renewed interest in the great wreck, led by Betsy Thorpe. The longtime Shoney’s waitress, who says she loves history and storytelling, first learned of the wreck reading a history of her West Nashville neighborhood.

“I went out to look at the historical marker and there wasn’t one (at the site), so I started the process earlier this year,” Thorpe said.

The Metro Historical Commission approved the marker in May, and Thorpe is on a quest with others to raise the $2,000 it will cost. She hopes it will be erected before the 90th anniversary next year.

The federal government’s investigation of the crash blamed the accident on the NC&St.L No. 4 that left Nashville at 7:07 a.m., seven minutes late. No. 4 was to have waited on a stretch of double track for No. 1 to pass. Its crew mistakenly believed the No. 1, which was 30 minutes late, had already passed.

Terry Coats, vice president of the NC&St.L Preservation Society, told the group that a series of small mistakes culminated in the tragedy — not just one error.

Both trains were traveling at about 50 miles per hour when they rounded Dutchman’s Curve. Survivors said, and the investigation confirmed, that there was no time for either of the engineers to brake.

The report by W.P. Borland, chief of the Interstate Commerce Commission’s Bureau of Safety, also noted that all but two of the cars of both trains were of wooden construction, and six were destroyed.

“The accident presents a more appalling record of deaths and injuries than any other accident investigated by the Commission since the accident-investigation work was begun in 1912,” Borland wrote. “Had steel cars been used in these trains, the toll of human lives taken in this accident would have undoubtedly been much less.”