This newspaper clipping in one of the New York Public Library’s scrapbooks has no explanation, but I’m pretty sure I know what it’s about. The somewhat ominous caption “Park Avenue Tunnel Choked With the Debris” is probably describing the aftermath of the January 1902 crash between two trains in the approach to Grand Central Station. The approach for the New York Central trains at that time was partly in a tunnel and partly in an open cut, and the trains were all pulled by steam engines which produced dense black smoke and clouds of vented steam. The crash was the inevitable result: an engineer missed a signal that he couldn’t see.
This crash, the subsequent law that banned steam engines pulling trains in Manhattan after 1908, and the decision by the railroad to electrify the commuter lines and the entire station approach, eventually snowballed into the decision to replace the outdated Grand Central Station – the second station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue, with Grand Central Terminal. No good outcome is worth the fifteen lives lost in the crash, but at least the response to that tragedy help push the city towards modernity: safety and cleaner power.
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