The Aftermath of a Fatal Train Crash
The Ransom Train Wreck in 1905
While it was relatively easy for the company to recover, the families felt the impact of the accident that killed 26 people and injured 12 for decades.
Community Reaction to the Wreck
The first report of the wreck to reach Thurmont on Saturday, June 17 said 40 to 60 people were killed. While this was a high number, the wreck was, and remains, the worst accident in the history of the Western Maryland Railway.
It could have been worse. Reports credit the Engineer George Covell of the Thurmont Express with reducing the casualties, though he didn’t survive himself. He applied the emergency air brakes as soon as he recognized the problem. The track was curving at the collision point so that “the force of the impact was much less upon the coaches than it would have been in a direct line. Railroad men say it is extremely probable that if the collision had occurred on a straight track the coaches would have been telescoped and the passengers subjected to frightful loss of life,” according to one newspaper report.
The towns affected the most by the wreck were Thurmont and Catoctin Furnace, having 17 of their men killed and seven injured. It also left 13 women widowed and 38 children childless.
“Close family ties and friendships existed among these people. No one was untouched by the tragedy which left a number of widows and fatherless children and dominated thinking in the village for Catoctin Furnace for years,” Elizabeth Anderson wrote in Faith in the Furnace.
Retrieving the Dead from the Wreck
Residents poured out to the local train station in a macabre replay of the townspeople’s regular Wednesday ritual.
“Many of the locals would go to the Thurmont station every Wednesday and take baskets with good things to eat,” Wireman said. “They sent them down the line to their family who were working on the railroad.”
On this June night, food was far from their thoughts as residents gathered to await word of whether their sons, fathers and brothers were among the casualties.
Some survivors arrived after midnight, bringing more accurate and horrifying accounts.
On Sunday, June 18, word spread that a train would arrive with the dead at 7 p.m. The train didn't arrive until about 12:30 a.m. Monday, but the people were still waiting, as was a hearse.
“During that whole of Sunday great throngs of people were at the station waiting for the train that should bring home the silent disfigured forms of those who had gone forth strong and well. It was about 12:30 a.m. when the first shipment of bodies arrived and then came the long procession of hearses and wagons through the town and in the peaceful moon light wended their way to the Catoctin grief stricken homes where the majority of the dead men lived in life,” reported The Catoctin Clarion.
Burying the Dead
Seventeen funerals were held in Thurmont over the next two days. Out of respect for the town’s loss, all the local businesses in Thurmont closed during the funerals.
“Thurmont is an old town and in her long existence has passed through many and varied experiences but never in all her history has she felt such a blow as fell upon her Saturday evening last when the inexpressibly shocking disaster on the WMRR meant so much to her homes and people. Almost three-fourths of the victims of that ill-fated wreck resided in Thurmont and Catoctin; hard-working industrious men, fathers and sons, wage earners and the support, in many instances, of large families,” reported The Catoctin Clarion.
A view of the Ransom train wreck
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