Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
Speaker 1: very much for tuning in. Today's episode is about train Rex.
Speaker 1: Now these days, that can mean any number of things. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Hi, I'm no. So basically par for the
Speaker 1: course then for us, Huh, train Rex, get it right?
Speaker 1: I was being self deprecating. I think we do a
Speaker 1: fine job. Ben, I don't know why I said that.
Speaker 1: Strike from the record. Let's let's carry the motion. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know. The one person who has made a dare
Speaker 1: I say, a career saving us from train Rex is,
Speaker 1: of course, our super producer, Casey Pegram. I'll open open
Speaker 1: today's episode with a question for you, Casey, Will you
Speaker 1: ever forgive us? I wonder about that sometimes have you
Speaker 1: seen have you seen first Reform? Been? Um, what's it about?
Speaker 1: It's it's the joke's not gonna work. There's it's Ethan Hawk.
Speaker 1: He becomes like convinced that you know, the world's gonna end.
Speaker 1: And he's like this preacher who's like isolated and alienated,
Speaker 1: and he uh, he changes the sign out in front
Speaker 1: of the church. Who will God forgive us? So that
Speaker 1: came to mind. I have seen that. Actually I remember.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit of a bummer, and there's
Speaker 1: a really cool psychedelic part where he's like floating through
Speaker 1: the clouds inexplicably, which I quite enjoyed. Spoiler alert, NOL.
Speaker 1: Is that a spoiler? It is kind of because the
Speaker 1: movie is so anchored in realism that when that sequence
Speaker 1: comes up, it's kind of like, whoa, Okay, we're shifting
Speaker 1: modes here. Great, I'm just gonna read the wiki. That's fine.
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it possible to spoil an art film though?
Speaker 1: That that's the question that I put to the group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's true only if it's like a poorly
Speaker 1: made art film, I think, because an art film should
Speaker 1: be appreciable, you know, even if you know everything that's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, that's a good point. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like saying you've spoiled a portrait, you know. Actually, Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I wish we were I wish we were hanging out
Speaker 1: at a bar or something so we could talk over
Speaker 1: this with some cocktails. Uh, those those days will come
Speaker 1: one day, sooner or later, we'll be We'll be back
Speaker 1: at our favorite spots or maybe we'll have a pizza party.
Speaker 1: But today we thought it would be interesting to talk
Speaker 1: about train wrecks in I don't and I don't know
Speaker 1: man an unusual lights because nowadays, usually when we hear
Speaker 1: the term train wreck, we think of it as its
Speaker 1: current meaning, which is always going to be something that
Speaker 1: has gone catastrophically wrong. Right, like, Oh, I went on
Speaker 1: a blind date. How was it? It was a train wreck.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you were on an AM track
Speaker 1: that went off the rails. Admit that you guys didn't connect,
Speaker 1: right like, we don't really talk about the physical ones. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the amtrack off the rails situation is terrifying
Speaker 1: and would leave you with some pretty serious PTSD if
Speaker 1: you walked away from it alive. A bad date is
Speaker 1: really just kind of mildly inconvenient and and maybe a
Speaker 1: bit embarrassing, probably for more for one side than the other.
Speaker 1: I would argue, the one who is completely falling flat
Speaker 1: uh and not connecting or being connected with, but definitely
Speaker 1: not caused for too much alarm. I think we've all
Speaker 1: been there. Yep, well said, Today we are talking about
Speaker 1: literal train wrecks, actual locomotives, uh in rex. But we
Speaker 1: cannot call these accidents. They're not trained accidents. And you'll
Speaker 1: see what we mean in in a moment. Uh it's
Speaker 1: weird to say this, but well we'll just give you
Speaker 1: this first sentence to open this up. From eighteen until
Speaker 1: about the nineteen thirties, train rex were wildly popular. Isn't
Speaker 1: that weird? They were popular? Yeah. I mean you could
Speaker 1: almost call it a spectator sport, in line with something
Speaker 1: like demolition derbys or monster truck rallies or something like that.
Speaker 1: It really capitalizes on people's kind of animalistic uh need
Speaker 1: to see things go horribly horribly wrong. Uh maybe there's
Speaker 1: a little schadenfreud involved. Um. I don't imagine that these
Speaker 1: uh that these involved anybody being hurt, because you know,
Speaker 1: there had to be some kind of uh checks and
Speaker 1: balances to keep that from happening. But this is the
Speaker 1: idea of train wrecks as a pastime. Not the same
Speaker 1: as train spotting, mind you, that's a much more banal
Speaker 1: and uh innocuous pastime. This is very active and required
Speaker 1: a lot of pre planning. Um. And I can't believe
Speaker 1: how long it it went on. It just seems like
Speaker 1: such a recipe for disaster. Yes, literally, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting point. We have to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: this occurs in a time when other public spectator sports
Speaker 1: included things like barn dog fights and bare knuckle boxing,
Speaker 1: even public executions. We're talking about a specific train wreck
Speaker 1: that set the stage for this. One of the first
Speaker 1: purposeful train wrecks staged four staged for the public, happened
Speaker 1: in was the brainchild of a railroad equipment salesman named A. L.
Speaker 1: Street or Over in Ohio, and this really set the
Speaker 1: precedent for all of the other stage train wrecks that
Speaker 1: would come after in the following decades. There's a book
Speaker 1: that examines this, which I have in full disclosure I
Speaker 1: I haven't read, in Totality by James J. Riisdorf, called
Speaker 1: the man who wrecked one hundred and forty six local motives.
Speaker 1: And according to this historian, Streeterer's initial wreck in was
Speaker 1: so successful that the very next year there were at
Speaker 1: least six other staged train wrecks. Weird, it's super weird
Speaker 1: um and the kind of mother of all stage train wrecks,
Speaker 1: or at least you know, the one that kind of
Speaker 1: lives on in infamy. Um. You may have even heard
Speaker 1: the name is known as the crash at Crush Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was a big deal, as you can imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of moving pieces literally uh and figuratively involved
Speaker 1: in doing something like this. So why don't we take
Speaker 1: a step back and talk about kind of what led
Speaker 1: to this monumental public train wreck. Yes, let's so. As
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier, entertainment was kind of hard to
Speaker 1: come by in the eighteen Indes, especially out in Texas
Speaker 1: that were about two million European American settlers there, and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do something other than eat, sleep,
Speaker 1: and work, you would be hard pressed to find some
Speaker 1: good diversions. If you were dude, you could join some
Speaker 1: sort of farmers organization that would give you business support
Speaker 1: and networking opportunities. But often people had joined just so
Speaker 1: they could socialize. On the other side of the gender divide.
Speaker 1: At the time, women had the Christian Temperance Union and
Speaker 1: this would be like, uh, the same thing, right, your
Speaker 1: network you socialize you You could also after the first
Speaker 1: uh college football game was played in you could pick
Speaker 1: a side and you could root for that. That explains
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why sports have been so historically popular.
Speaker 1: But other than that, you're kind of s ol since
Speaker 1: we're family show that stands for straight out of luck.
Speaker 1: It does indeed, UM. So, as we said before, UM,
Speaker 1: the kind of precedent for this bizarre spectator sport was
Speaker 1: established by a l streeterer who had staged the first
Speaker 1: crash back in Ohio a year before. UM and William Crush,
Speaker 1: who was a railway agent, was inspired by that and
Speaker 1: also really thought that this was something that could kind
Speaker 1: of create that college football rivalry UM type scenario that
Speaker 1: maybe was sort of lacking at the time. UM and
Speaker 1: he decided to go all out and create a of
Speaker 1: a hugely UM marketed UH spectacle UM using the concept
Speaker 1: of a staged train wreck. And you ask yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: surely there must have been some injuries. This doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like something that would go over without some kind of
Speaker 1: carnage bleeding out into the spectators. And that's true. There's
Speaker 1: a apri that talks UH. Really the only thing we
Speaker 1: could find about a flying bolt that caused UM an injury,
Speaker 1: But that's about it. UM. So the idea of kind
Speaker 1: of recreating that and maybe making it a little more
Speaker 1: safe sort of it was Crushes kind of uh modus
Speaker 1: operandi here. And it's funny too because Crush was actually
Speaker 1: a pal of P. T. Barnum. So he came honestly
Speaker 1: by his fascination with the spectacle and the idea of
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a larger than life um event
Speaker 1: that would bring people from far and wide. Just so
Speaker 1: happened that instead of you know, animals and the circus
Speaker 1: and acrobats, he wanted to do it with two colliding trains. Yep,
Speaker 1: you see. Crush worked specifically for the Missouri Kansas Texas
Speaker 1: Railroad Company. The street name for the Missouri Kansas Texas
Speaker 1: Railroad Company is the Katie. And he said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: portray this as a gladiatorial battle. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: thirty five ton locomotives that ram into each other. And
Speaker 1: for public safety, we're not going to hold this, you know,
Speaker 1: in a in your normal um on your normal train
Speaker 1: tracks near town, right, We're going to hold this in
Speaker 1: a special pop up town that we're building just for
Speaker 1: the occasion. And in what I can only describe as
Speaker 1: a burst of humility, Crushed decided to name the town Crush.
Speaker 1: It came at a good point it wasn't like, um,
Speaker 1: a dollop of swag on top of a successful financial Sunday,
Speaker 1: because the Katie was doing okay at this time. It
Speaker 1: had one point two million in passenger sales and three
Speaker 1: million in revenue for freight earnings as of but it
Speaker 1: was still kind of worried about its future. The country
Speaker 1: was recovering from a depression in eight three and a
Speaker 1: quarter of the country's railroad companies during that depression and
Speaker 1: right after it had to file for bankruptcy. So so
Speaker 1: Crush wanted to promote the Katie. Yeah, he was really
Speaker 1: looking at this. It's it's it's it's it's the strangest logic,
Speaker 1: But he was looking at this as a way to
Speaker 1: promote the railway and the railway line and kind of
Speaker 1: get people excited about train travel and freight by staging
Speaker 1: a an epic catastrophe where he could kind of control
Speaker 1: the variables. I guess, um, But yeah, I don't quite
Speaker 1: understand the logic there, but you know it, it did
Speaker 1: seem to get people's attention. Um. So you know, his
Speaker 1: motivations are a little sketchy in my opinion. Um, but
Speaker 1: he was able to sell the managers of the uh
Speaker 1: the Katie um on his schemes. So all of this
Speaker 1: preparation went into creating this pop up town at Crush
Speaker 1: and assembling um all of the infrastructure that was needed
Speaker 1: to do that. Uh. He found two thirty five ton
Speaker 1: steam engines that were being decommissioned being replaced by two new,
Speaker 1: more modern sixty ton engines and was able to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, commandeer them to use for this uh. For
Speaker 1: this event. He did have some consultants from the company
Speaker 1: and engineers that he was able to kind of talk
Speaker 1: through the logistics of making this as safe as possible.
Speaker 1: There was the mild suggestion that this collision could cause
Speaker 1: an explosion UM that you know, would would not go
Speaker 1: over particularly well with people watching, but that that was
Speaker 1: sort of tamped down and they were able to you know,
Speaker 1: kind of move on from that absurd scenario. Literally one
Speaker 1: guy brought that up, and everyone else was like, I
Speaker 1: want to step back here, uh and note uh. The
Speaker 1: thing about the motivation that I find interesting is that
Speaker 1: even today, historians are not sure what actually motivated Crush
Speaker 1: to take this line of marketing and spectacle, because if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's a lot like Delta saying Hey,
Speaker 1: we want to get Delta in the forefront of people's minds,
Speaker 1: so let's like wreck some planes. You know, it's counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: This this is weird because eventually when they when they
Speaker 1: do decide, when the one engineer is like, hey, explosions
Speaker 1: are bad, gets shut down? What the next steps are are? Are?
Speaker 1: You know? They're They're pretty interesting and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of work that goes into it. I have to respect
Speaker 1: the hustle. They paint one engine red with green trim,
Speaker 1: and they paint the other one green with red trim,
Speaker 1: so you've got a nice oppositional vibe. And then they
Speaker 1: lay a line of track fifteen miles north of Waco, Texas,
Speaker 1: which now is you know, best known for the David
Speaker 1: Koresh massacre. And they placed it on purpose beyond this
Speaker 1: kind of natural amphitheater of these three tall hills. Crush
Speaker 1: drills wells. He runs pipes for spigots so they can
Speaker 1: have water, and then they can build a lemonade stand.
Speaker 1: He's got like a lemonade specialist guy who comes in
Speaker 1: from Dallas to do this. They make a restaurant, they
Speaker 1: build a wooden jail, and the main attraction is the trains,
Speaker 1: of course, but they also want people to stay and
Speaker 1: get the build up and really feel the vibe and
Speaker 1: the energy. So they build a midway. Basically, they've build
Speaker 1: a carnival row and you know what that is. That's
Speaker 1: like the games, Right, let's throw the darts at the thing, guests,
Speaker 1: somebody's weight. Are you strong enough to hit the bell
Speaker 1: when you, you know, bring down the hammer. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether they had a dunking tank, but those things,
Speaker 1: I don't know. They always stole the show for me.
Speaker 1: They're so intense. Do you think they had ski ball Ben,
Speaker 1: because that's that's a really important midway future for me.
Speaker 1: But that might be more modern. I went out, we
Speaker 1: should do an episode in the history of carnival games
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff, because a lot of them,
Speaker 1: you know, I've youre notoriously rigged and it's you know,
Speaker 1: sucker is born every minute and all that. But again,
Speaker 1: a lot of this had to do with his friendship
Speaker 1: with P. T. Barnum and the massive popularity of the
Speaker 1: Midway plaisance. I think his house pronounced that took place
Speaker 1: in the World's Fair in Chicago, and he actually borrowed
Speaker 1: a tent um that he used to house a restaurant
Speaker 1: and he borrowed that tent from his pal P. T. Barnum,
Speaker 1: and they had cigar stands and you know, like a
Speaker 1: medicine show situation, which I guess what is that, Like,
Speaker 1: is that kind of a music thing or does that
Speaker 1: have to do with selling fake snake oil kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what a medicine show is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually I did a satirical medicine show a few years back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it will be think of it kind of like a
Speaker 1: variety show. So they're selling you know, the Reverend Honorable
Speaker 1: Doctor peg Rooms, Uh, snake lubricant. Uh. Well, you know
Speaker 1: that's based on the secrets of the Far East or
Speaker 1: ancient Native American communities. It's it's pretty tension with racism, uh,
Speaker 1: and and the medicine. The one rule of medicine shows
Speaker 1: is the medicine never works, but people are mainly there
Speaker 1: to see the you know, the pomp and circumstance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the character and the Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz that that ultimately is this a spoiler? Can you
Speaker 1: spoil a movie that old that ultimately ends up being
Speaker 1: the great and powerful as in the Oz universe part,
Speaker 1: but he's got a traveling medicine show. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: sort of you know, ends up portending the fact that uh,
Speaker 1: the Great Powerful Laws is in fact a fraud. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the idea of of special tonics and the
Speaker 1: like uh that could cure what ails you. So this
Speaker 1: was a real happening scene UM for the time. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of excitement around it. UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I initially was reading into this, I pictured that
Speaker 1: this would be something that we use actual railroad lines,
Speaker 1: and that just seemed absurd to me. So it's good
Speaker 1: to know that they at least had a method to
Speaker 1: this madness. So on Stept number fifteen, what was dubbed
Speaker 1: the Duel of the Iron Monsters UM kicked into full gear.
Speaker 1: It drew spectators from all over uh nearby Texas and
Speaker 1: and of course in Texas, and by ten in the
Speaker 1: morning there were ten thousand people that had already shown up,
Speaker 1: and the new spectators kept showing up every few minutes
Speaker 1: in um in train cars. And it was a real
Speaker 1: mix of social uh strata. You know, you had men, women, children, lawyers, doctors, merchants, farmers, artisans,
Speaker 1: clerks representing every class and every grade of society. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is a quote from the Galveston Daily News
Speaker 1: of the time. Uh. And they were quote clustered around
Speaker 1: the lunch stands, discussing with eager anticipation the exciting events
Speaker 1: that they had come so far to see. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. So I think you said by ten
Speaker 1: am there was a crowd of ten thousand people and
Speaker 1: everybody who went to see this they paid the katie
Speaker 1: two dollars to travel there by train from anywhere in Texas.
Speaker 1: So this could be a really good deal because you know,
Speaker 1: Texas is huge. So if we if we do the
Speaker 1: math real quick, then we say we have forty thousand
Speaker 1: people they're paying two bucks apiece, so that's eighty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and then we adjusted for inflation. Calculation gives us, Casey
Speaker 1: Drummer will please, two million, four hundred and fifty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred thirty eight dollars and ten cents. So they're
Speaker 1: they're making bank, you know what I mean, Like this
Speaker 1: is not entirely just for the love of the art
Speaker 1: of train Rex. There's no nobody like, uh, those characters
Speaker 1: from that what was that old film crash, The people
Speaker 1: who like have a predilection a bit of a bit
Speaker 1: of a kink based on the the J. G. Ballard
Speaker 1: novel and directed by David Cronenberg. That that one always
Speaker 1: gave me the creeps. Casey on the case, Um, creep
Speaker 1: me out to the JFK vibe? Was that the one
Speaker 1: they're like recreating famous accidents or something. Yeah, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember. James Dean certainly is one of them. Um,
Speaker 1: what was it? There was an actress that was beheaded
Speaker 1: in a car accident. I'm trying to remember who that was.
Speaker 1: That's in there as well. Boy, Yeah, Casey on the Case,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a wild win. So yeah, as you said, well,
Speaker 1: they've made this an event. By there were ten thousand
Speaker 1: people there at ten. By four pm, which was showtime,
Speaker 1: forty thou people came. And the weird thing about this
Speaker 1: is that population of forty eight means that for one afternoon,
Speaker 1: this entirely made up town of Crush was the second
Speaker 1: largest city in all of Texas. That's that's probably my
Speaker 1: favorite fact from the Smithsonian article about this. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely up there for me. My my one
Speaker 1: of my favorite facts from the Smithsonian article, and just
Speaker 1: from this the day's goings on was um. When it
Speaker 1: was time for the actual main event to take place
Speaker 1: around four o'clock, the two trains approached each other slowly
Speaker 1: and touched cow catchers, the little thing on the front
Speaker 1: of the trains you also see on the front of
Speaker 1: police cars. Um in some sort of weird anthropomorphized like handshake,
Speaker 1: you know, uh that they were about to do battle, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. And then they and then they began
Speaker 1: to back up, uh for the distance of one mile each.
Speaker 1: Just after five pm, William Crush himself comes out. He comes,
Speaker 1: he comes in riding on a horse, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's waving his hat. And that's the signal for the
Speaker 1: trains to start. So the engineers, the conductors, they get
Speaker 1: the trains moving and then they do their best to
Speaker 1: put all the gas on right. They tie down the
Speaker 1: whistle cords, so these trains are screaming along. They like
Speaker 1: open up the throttle all the way the equivalent of
Speaker 1: redlining an engine, right. And then after they do this,
Speaker 1: these guys literally jump out the vehicle because of course
Speaker 1: they don't want to be at it. No um and gosh,
Speaker 1: this is this the story is about to take a
Speaker 1: bit of a dark turn. They the trains got up
Speaker 1: to about fifty miles per hour in speed. UH. They
Speaker 1: were rigged up with box cars, as they would be,
Speaker 1: but they were empty uh and and made of wood UM,
Speaker 1: and the collision was really one for the books. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that even the two hundred yards that
Speaker 1: separated the crowd observing from this uh hillside natural amphitheater
Speaker 1: was not nearly enough UM to separate them from the
Speaker 1: chaos that was about to ensue. UM. As that one
Speaker 1: gentleman predicted he probably was doing a bit of it.
Speaker 1: I told you so. At this point, both of the
Speaker 1: trains boilers immediately exploded UM and flung the debris and
Speaker 1: shrapnel from these explosions through the air like rockets. UH,
Speaker 1: not to mention all of the splinters from the exploding
Speaker 1: box cars UM, and it came down like a hammer
Speaker 1: onto the assembled crowd. There were injuries and fatalities, as
Speaker 1: reported by someone who observed the event. UH. Ten pounds
Speaker 1: section of brake chain hit a teenager in the skull. UH.
Speaker 1: A young girl was struck by a chunk of iron
Speaker 1: and fractured her skull, and she died on the way home.
Speaker 1: In an attempt for medical care, the official event photographer
Speaker 1: took a bolt and iron bolt to the eye. However,
Speaker 1: he did not die. Oddly enough, the reports said tell
Speaker 1: us that he stood up and this guy's name is
Speaker 1: Jarvis Dean. He instructed his photography team to take photos
Speaker 1: while he was, you know, while he's digging this bolt
Speaker 1: out of his eye. And there was a veteran there
Speaker 1: from the Confederate War. Remember that's pretty recent at this
Speaker 1: time in history. And this guy, you know, you imagine
Speaker 1: that he may be experienced something like PTSD. He said.
Speaker 1: This was more frightening to him. All the chaos and
Speaker 1: the smoke and explosions, Uh, terrified him more than Pickett's
Speaker 1: last charge at Gettysburg. All to say, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: William Crush is fired. He is beyond fired. He is
Speaker 1: like out the door. You're lucky that we're just firing
Speaker 1: you and not sending you to prison. But then something
Speaker 1: strange happens because the managers at the Katie start to
Speaker 1: realize this is getting them a lot of publicity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess there's no such thing as bad press. I
Speaker 1: don't know. This seems like the kind of bad press.
Speaker 1: That's just bad. But for some reason it caught on
Speaker 1: and it it upped the profile of this railway line
Speaker 1: in a way that that led to some some positive financials,
Speaker 1: you know for the company, and Crush was promptly rehired
Speaker 1: when they realized that this thing was you know, actually
Speaker 1: a weird kind of success. Uh. They dealt with the
Speaker 1: claims made by people who were injured. Uh, they even
Speaker 1: paid that photographer you mentioned, Ben who got a bolt
Speaker 1: through the eye ten thousand dollars. That's the equival out
Speaker 1: of three thousand today. Yeah. And also um gave him
Speaker 1: a lifetime railroad pass, which I don't know if that
Speaker 1: was me, I would be hesitant to to ever go
Speaker 1: near a train ever again. But we have to remember
Speaker 1: this was, you know, the primary mode of transportation in
Speaker 1: those days. So that's pretty pretty solid Um to be
Speaker 1: able to, you know, ride the trains for free for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. He also put a hilarious
Speaker 1: notice in the paper. He said, quote, having gotten all
Speaker 1: the loose screws and other hardware out of my head,
Speaker 1: I'm now ready for all photographic business, which which I
Speaker 1: think is h He's handling it with a plum. You know,
Speaker 1: the way that they handled this. It's callous, right, people died, Uh,
Speaker 1: But but the way that they handled this is so
Speaker 1: strange to me. I kept thinking over this week as
Speaker 1: we were getting ready for this episode. I kept thinking, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of motto would you make for that. Would
Speaker 1: you be like the Katie, we only crash on purpose,
Speaker 1: or would you be like the Katie train wrecks for
Speaker 1: train wrecks, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how they pulled this off, because if this happened,
Speaker 1: you know, in the modern day, or if this happened
Speaker 1: with some other kind of transit company, if FedEx was
Speaker 1: like watch us wreck these trucks and people were injured,
Speaker 1: then it would spell the end of the company, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That's like bankruptcy lawsuit territory. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, this accident, like you said, NOL made
Speaker 1: the Katie an overnight sensation. Uh. The historians that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier said, it's just incredible. You could still stage
Speaker 1: this in the modern day. You probably just wouldn't want
Speaker 1: it to be sponsored by a company. You could get
Speaker 1: to light rail trains going a hundred miles an hour
Speaker 1: and get them to smash into each other and would
Speaker 1: people still attend The answer is probably yes. Well let's
Speaker 1: not forget ben too. That like automobile races is like
Speaker 1: the lament Um there were constantly uh spectator injuries and
Speaker 1: not to mention driver injuries because those cars were prone
Speaker 1: to explode um because of the way they were built. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, those races persisted because I think there's
Speaker 1: something about the danger and the risk I think is
Speaker 1: what captures people's imaginations that you know, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little bit um you know of kind of like a
Speaker 1: thrill seeking situation, like yeah, you know, you can jump
Speaker 1: out of an airplane and you might die. You probably won't,
Speaker 1: but that little bit of risk makes it all the
Speaker 1: more enticing to people, especially you know, the blood lusts
Speaker 1: of kind of things like gladiator battles and even today
Speaker 1: like monster truck rallies or like we said, demolition Derby's
Speaker 1: where people want to see things explode and they want
Speaker 1: to witness mass destruction. It's something ingrained in us as people.
Speaker 1: That's a little unusual, but there it is. I think
Speaker 1: about that too with rubber neckers. You know, for quick morbidity,
Speaker 1: we all slowed down at accidents. Uh, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's so it's so strange that fascination that is common
Speaker 1: and I would dare I say universal in our species.
Speaker 1: What happened to the Katie? You might be wondering, Well,
Speaker 1: they earned more than ten million dollars by one They also, uh,
Speaker 1: they also became an economic force in their territory. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of success of smaller towns in
Speaker 1: Texas can be traced to the Katie. And they sort of,
Speaker 1: there's no other way to say it. They commemorated the
Speaker 1: crash at Crush there's an historical plaque and West Texas,
Speaker 1: which is just a few miles from the actual site,
Speaker 1: and overall the company considered this a success. Train collisions
Speaker 1: became like the big ticket show for state fairs across
Speaker 1: the country. People were writing songs about these staged crashes.
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, folks, how can I visit Crushed,
Speaker 1: Texas today? Well you can't. It really was a pop
Speaker 1: up town. You can visit. Wait, I think you can
Speaker 1: visit where it used to be, right, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's a marker that memorializes, you know, where the actual
Speaker 1: event took place, So you could consider that as visiting
Speaker 1: Crush but you know, in terms of it being like
Speaker 1: a unincorporated town, it does not exist anymore, but that
Speaker 1: area is still available, um to check out in West
Speaker 1: Texas where you can take a look at that marker.
Speaker 1: But you know, like like most things that seem sort
Speaker 1: of absurd, Like we've talked about the pastime of competitive walking, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know this this one waned as well. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, by the early thirties, when trains had become
Speaker 1: a little more old had I think there was also
Speaker 1: like a fascination with them as technology. H and just
Speaker 1: the you know, the the power and majesty of these
Speaker 1: iron giants. You know, it became a little bit less
Speaker 1: remark coball, and I think people moved on to other
Speaker 1: forms of destructive entertainment like boxing, sure, yeah, boxing, Uh,
Speaker 1: competitive eating contest uh, you know, demolition Derby's of course. Uh.
Speaker 1: Just a few years ago I traveled to our to
Speaker 1: our Atlanta Motor Speedway to watch someone redo all the
Speaker 1: stunts of cannonball run. They actually did it. You know,
Speaker 1: they threw the cars in the air, they did car chases, uh.
Speaker 1: And they had a big crowd because this sort of
Speaker 1: stuff fascinates us. Wait, wasn't Burt Reynolds actually in attendance
Speaker 1: at that event? Ben, Yeah, Yeah, I saw Burt Reynolds there. Um,
Speaker 1: this was toward the end of his of his days.
Speaker 1: But he was a really he was actually really humble,
Speaker 1: nice guy like he stayed and insisted on signing autographs
Speaker 1: for everyone. And I gotta admit, you know, uh, he
Speaker 1: looked great. He looks great for his age, his eyebrows
Speaker 1: on point. So hats off to you, Bert. This is
Speaker 1: where we draw the wild train of ridiculous history to
Speaker 1: a stop for today. We hope that you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: We hope that you, if you are in marketing or
Speaker 1: pr don't decide to recreationally wrecked trains for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the public or the entertainment thereof. But we would
Speaker 1: also love to hear your stories of some of the
Speaker 1: weirdest publicity stunts of all time. It can be small
Speaker 1: stuff like how Salvador Dolly gained some local notoriety by
Speaker 1: routinely jumping out of his window and falling into bushes.
Speaker 1: That's how he that's part of how he became known.
Speaker 1: By the way, is that weird? That is weird? It
Speaker 1: could It could also be a big thing like this
Speaker 1: recreational train wreck, or just any old thing that catches
Speaker 1: your eye, we'd love to hear about it. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: also find this as individuals. I am at how Now
Speaker 1: Noel Brown on Instagram exclusively, and I am at Ben
Speaker 1: Bolan on Instagram. You can see my adventures as I
Speaker 1: struggle with the decision whether or not to keep this
Speaker 1: quarantine beard and go full the Old Testament. You can
Speaker 1: also find me on Twitter at Ben Bullen h s W.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram, who
Speaker 1: I don't know if we mentioned this on air, but
Speaker 1: you've got some great lighting going on today, Casey, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ben. It's the natural light coming in through
Speaker 1: the window. Can't go wrong. Well, I'll tell you. It's
Speaker 1: framing your background. What is that? What's what's that French
Speaker 1: locale right there that you've seen? Yeah, that is the
Speaker 1: politoguts in Paris and the sin Well, the way you're lit,
Speaker 1: it almost looked like you're really there, Casey. And thanks
Speaker 1: as always, of course to uh the quister who is
Speaker 1: overdue for return appearance, as is our research associate, Extraordinary
Speaker 1: Gay Blusier, who we would love to have on very soon.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make that happen, um, and I do believe
Speaker 1: we will. Thanks to Christopher aciotis here in spirit, Eve's
Speaker 1: Jeff Coates, who else you Ben, Thanks to you as
Speaker 1: always for being my train buddy on on this here
Speaker 1: episode all right, and thanks to you as well, nol Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the caboose for this show is.
Speaker 1: I guess it's our ultra music. Let's see you next time, folks.
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