The Spuyten Duyvil curve, where a Metro-North train derailed Sunday morning, played a role in another deadly rail accident more than 130 years ago.
The New York City-bound Atlantic Express was running 35 minutes late when it sped out of Albany on January 13, 1882, and had nearly made up its lost time before reaching Spuyten Duyvil, according to The Catskill Archive, a web site chronicling history from New York’s Mid-Hudson region.
The train, carrying 13 cars and many legislators who were trying to get to New York that evening, had passed Spuyten Duyvil and had gone about a third of a mile, when one of the air-brakes gave out, and the train was miraculously brought to a stop about two hundred yards from the notorious curve, one of the sharpest on the line.
But that’s when the good fortune ended. The darkness, and a missed signal, kept operators on an approaching train, the Tarrytown Special, from seeing the Atlantic Express stuck on the track. The Tarrytown Special barreled into the stalled train, compressing the railroad’s two rear cars and igniting a fire that killed a dozen passengers.
Among those killed were burgeoning railroad tycoon and State Senator Webster Wagner. He was “burned to a crisp in one of his own luxurious cars,” according to a headline.
Volunteers tried to put out the fire with mounds of snow.
“The number `thirteen’ seems to run like a theme song through the history of this occurrence,” read one news report from the disaster. “It was Friday the 13th, there were thirteen cars on the express, and the local was running thirteen minutes behind the express.”