Satisfactory as this solution was for all concerned, it left the railway with one small problem. In order to gain access to the swing bridge, trains from the west had to navigate a sharp curve, constituting an almost ninety-degree turn. Even today trains take this curve dead slow, accompanied by the screeching of wheel on rail. Without effective competition, the resulting delay must have barely been an irritant to the Great Western. However, the construction of the Toronto and Hamilton Railway introduced a further complication. That line approached the city almost in line with the swing bridge, which it shared with the Great Western main line. At a point only a few hundred feet north of the Desjardins Canal Bridge, the railway installed a switch merging the London and Toronto routes into the solitary pair of metals laid across the bridge. While there were a multitude of contributory factors to the disaster, that switch, placed where it was, sealed the fate of the train’s passengers and crew.
The train that approached that switch in the late afternoon of March 12, 1857, was about to demonstrate how a long chain of decisions — some made years earlier, some days before, and some mere moments earlier — can combine to produce disaster. The determination to build the railway and to locate the crossing of the canal at that precise point, the choice of equipment manufacturer, bridge designer, railway contractor, etc., the decision to move the engine slowly forward without coming to a complete stop at the switch. For the passengers, the choice to travel or not, for some of the crew, the decision to step on or off, determined individual destinies.
Schenectady Locomotive Works, where the fatal engine Oxford was built. The building at the left in the 1870s advertisement would have been where assembly took place in 1853. The Schenectady plant was later absorbed into one of the most famous locomotive builders: The American Locomotive Company (ALCO).
Public Domain.
The magnificent locomotive at the head of the train had been manufactured by the Schenectady Locomotive Works expressly for the GWR. The twenty-three-ton engine was resplendent in the company’s green livery and had only a few days earlier been returned to service after an extensive six-week refit. The wood-burner sported the massive spark-arresting stack and imposing headlight so characteristic of North American engines of the time. With two huge coupled driving wheels on either side — each the height of a tall man — and a leading four-wheel “pony truck” designed to help hold the engine on the line’s indifferent track, the Oxford would have been an impressive sight. She would also have sported a sturdy cowcatcher — an absolute essential on the Great Western.
No records survive of Oxford’s comprehensive refit at the Great Western’s Hamilton shops but it is known that the axle was examined and showed no sign of imperfections. It was not replaced. In light of ensuing events it is a safe bet that it harboured a hidden defect that escaped attention. In an era of soft iron, such components wore easily and required frequent changes. But, it was more than just wear that caused problems with heavy metal pieces. The casting process was crude. Impurities were captured in the web of cooling metal and uneven temperatures led to many castings being rendered unusable by obvious cracks and fissures. Others, while visibly satisfactory, harboured hidden blemishes that would only reveal themselves under the stress of working conditions. Engineer Burnfield’s practiced hammer could reveal the subtle difference in ring between a sound wheel and one in which such a fault was beginning to emerge. However, the immense weight of the axle casting made detection far more difficult.
Such a fault clearly existed in Oxford’s front axle. Somewhere along the route the fissure lengthened and eventually the axle cracked into two pieces. Probably the only evidence would have been a grinding sound inaudible above the clanking, roaring, vibrating racket of a steam locomotive in motion. Despite the break, the locomotive held the track. When the axle was examined after the accident it was determined that the fracture was fresh and that the two broken ends, held together by the tracks on either side, had grated against each other for some time — rounding the ends and inescapably shortening them.
Although not constrained by the sharp curve the mainline trains had to negotiate, the Toronto to Hamilton train slowed almost to a standstill as it approached the Desjardins Canal Bridge. In the wake of serious accidents in which trains had rushed into open drawbridges, government regulations actually required all trains to come to a complete halt for three minutes before advancing over a draw or swing bridge. Astoundingly, only two years earlier the GWR had managed to secure legislative sanction to ignore that provision. Had the train obeyed the regulation it is almost certain the accident would have been averted. That is not to deny that the train was advancing at no more than a walking pace when it passed the critical switch. In fact, it was the custom of the switchman, who was ending his shift, to hitch a ride by clambering aboard the rear car as it passed. Had it been doing much more than six-miles-per-hour he would not have been able to. As it was, no sooner had he pulled himself onto the bottom step than he dropped off again. Something was not right!
Most likely the sudden shift in gauge caused by the blade of the switch caused the broken axle to twist out of line close to the left-hand front wheel. The right wheel, still attached to its section of axle, mounted the rail and dropped on the outside. Just a few feet from the bridge, engineer Alexander Burnfield realized something was very wrong. He instantly threw his engine into reverse and had time to sound just a short single blast on the whistle, signalling the train crew to apply brakes. But the outcome was inescapable. The wheels of the engine, rotating slowly but inexorably, slipped between the ties — plowing them ahead and tilting the engine over to the right. The giant smokestack grazed and then fouled the wood lattice on the right side of the structure. What happened next takes far longer to describe than it did to occur. In a matter of a couple of seconds it was over, according to one contemporary account, scarcely sufficient time to say, “May the Lord be merciful!”
This departure announcement, including the 4:10 p.m. train bound for Hamilton, was published in the Hamilton Spectator a week before the tragedy. For a population unaccustomed to the reliability of railway travel, the advertisement must have promised both punctuality and predictability.
Hamilton Spectator, March 5, 1857.
Heeling over to the right, the engine tore out a large section of the wooden side and floor of the bridge, performing a somersault as it slipped into the sharp abyss. Engineer Burnfield and Fireman Knight either jumped or were thrown out as it plunged. Either way, they were carried through the shattering ice by the massive weight of their now-upside-down mount, to sink to the bottom of the canal and instant death. Oxford dragged her tender with her. The leading baggage car, catching the corner of the sinking tender, was thrown to its left, whipsawed down the embankment, and skidded across the ice.
Next followed the leading passenger car, carrying about fifty people. It was this vehicle that sustained the most severe damage and accounted for the greatest loss of life — in fact, only a handful survived its fall. Dragged over the edge of the forty-four-foot abutment, the car had slowed sufficiently to teeter for a fraction of a second before slipping, leading edge down, through the gap in the bridge to the ice below. As it was falling it began to somersault — a movement that accelerated as the front of the car pivoted on the ice. Now upside down, the roof of the carriage smashed into the ice with a sickening thud. The wooden body was crushed and its window glass splintered. By unhappy fate, those who survived the impact were trapped in the darkness of the over-turned vehicle, which had penetrated, but not passed through, the ice. Above them were the unyielding floorboards of the car and beneath them frigid water and slabs of ice.
The second car fared better. The leading end slid over the abutment and grated down its face. The rear truck snagged on the twisted metal of the torn track, slowing the momentum momentarily before it parted from the body. The car ended up almost vertically suspended, with one end crushed on the ice and the other lodged against the stonework of the bridge. But if the car sustained less damage its unhappy occupants still suffered horrendous injuries as they plunged down the height of the upended vehicle accompanied