Connecting the Windy City

decidedlygrim.net

April 25, 1946 – In the early afternoon tragedy comes to Naperville, at the time a town of about 5,000 residents, as two Burlington passenger trains come together at Loomis Street.  The first train of nine cars, carrying about 150 people, leaves Chicago and heads for Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska about two minutes before the second Oakland-bound train which carries 175 passengers in 11 assorted coach and sleeping cars.  Somewhere near Naperville a crew member of the first train observes something shooting out from the train’s undercarriage, and the engineer stops his train so that it can be inspected for damage.  The unexpected stop triggers signals behind the train that should have warned the second passenger train’s engineer of the blocked track ahead.  A flagman from the first train also is dispatched up the line as an additional means of warning the approaching train.  The engineer of that second train, 68-year-old W. W. Blaine, brings his train through a yellow caution signal and a red stop signal and past the flagman and just 90 seconds after the first train had rolled to a stop, Blaine’s train rips into the stopped train at a speed estimated to be about 45 miles-per-hour. Blaine later says that he put his train into emergency braking as it was traveling at 80 miles-per-hour, but there was not enough time to bring the speeding train to a stop.  The front truck of Blaine’s EMD ES-A locomotive is sheared off on impact, and the engine travels through three-quarters of the rear car of the stopped train, killing most of its passengers.  The locomotive continues forward for 205 feet, bending a light-weight dining car like a crushed aluminum can, causing more deaths.  The fireman on the second train dies instantly as he jumps from the cab a split second before the impact.  Immediately adjacent to the tracks is the Kroehler Furniture Factory and within minutes 800 employees respond to the disaster, along with 60 students from Naperville’s North Central College.  There is no hospital in rural Naperville at the time, and rescuers work throughout the day to free the injured and the dead from the mangled wreckage of the two trains.  The railroad dispatches a special train to the scene with doctors and nurses, but it is more than eight hours before the last car is opened with acetylene torches.  It would be 27 hours before trains began to roll through Naperville once again. Altogether, 47 people die in the wreck and another 125 are injured.  Subsequent investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission and a DuPage County grand jury culminate in no action being taken against the crews of either train or the Burlington Railroad.  In April, 2014 a sculpture, “Tragedy to Triumph,” was dedicated as a memorial to those who died on that spring day in 1946.  


April 25, 1914 -- In a conflict that began with a relatively minor incident in which neither Mexican authorities or United States sailors could speak one another's language, hostilities loom between the two countries, and young men head for the nearest recruiting posts, volunteering for the military. On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune reports that 1,000 applicants have made their way to the city, including Harold Witherspoon from Whiting, Indiana. The 17-year-old walks all the way from his home to enlist -- a distance of 23 miles. Within a block of the naval recruiting station at 205 Fifth Avenue (today's Wells Street) a packing case falls off the back of a truck and crushes his foot. He is accepted conditionally and sent to Lake Bluff to recover. If he fails to regain full health, he will go back to Whiting ... but not on foot. Of the thousand men who show up less than a hundred are accepted.



April 25, 1875 – With memories of the city’s destruction four years earlier, Chicagoans understandably love their beer, especially with a large share of the milk watered down and the drinking water suspect.  On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a feature on the principal beer manufacturers in the city.  They include:  


T. D. Stuver – the agent for Porter’s Joliet Ales and Porter, located on Randolph Street, an agent for “the celebrated Joliet malt liquors … begun at Joliet by Mr. Ed. Porter some twenty years ago, and, though first-class at first, have improved in excellence as in quantity these many years, until now they fairly rival the more costly English stocks of Bass and Burton and are acknowledged to be ahead of any other body ales in the United States.”  Four wagons deliver pale stock ale, “one of the healthiest and most palatable beverages, ever used or invented to refresh thirsty humanity.”