Video: '81 Killed In Train Wreck (1951)'
(Tuesday, February 6, 1951, 5:43 p.m. EST; during the Woodbridge train derailment) — A Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train jammed with rush hour commuters derailed today crossing a temporary wooden trestle in Woodbridge, New Jersey, killing 85 people and injuring over 500.
The train was traveling faster than 50 mph when it hit the curve approaching the trestle, according to a subsequent inquiry. Eight of the train’s eleven passenger cars derailed.
The first two cars fell on their sides. The third and fourth cars crashed into each other as they hurtled down a 26-foot-high embankment. It was in these two cars that most of the 85 deaths occurred. The fifth and sixth cars were left hanging in mid-air over a street that glistened from rain.
Video: 'Woodbridge Train Wreck'
A report later concluded that the wreck was caused by “excessive speed on a curve of a temporary track.”
The Woodbridge train derailment remains New Jersey’s deadliest train wreck, the deadliest U.S. derailment since 1918 and the deadliest peacetime rail disaster in the United States.
