The Hammond circus train wreck occurred on June 22, 1918, and was one of the worst train wrecks in U.S. history. Eighty-six people were reported to have died and another 127 were injured when a locomotive engineer fell asleep and ran his troop train into the rear of a circus train near Hammond, Indiana. The circus train held 400 performers and roustabouts of the Hagenbeck–Wallace Circus.
Circus train wreck
The train used by the Hagenbeck–Wallace Circus used old wooden cars that were lit with oil lamps. The circus train had two train segments; the segment that was loaded with animals had been dispatched earlier, leaving the train with all the performers and workers on the tracks. The cars were being moved to a spot near Hammond, Indiana, so a mechanical problem could be addressed, and some of the cars had been left on the main line track.
In the early morning hours of June 22, 1918, engineer Alonzo Sargent was at the throttle of a Michigan Central (then a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad) troop train pulled by MC/NYC class K80r 4-6-2 "Pacific" number 8485, pulling twenty empty Pullman cars. Sargent, who was aware that his train was closely following a slower circus train, had slept little if at all in the preceding twenty-four hours. The effects of a lack of sleep, several heavy meals, some kidney pills, and the gentle rolling of his locomotive are thought to have caused him to fall asleep at the controls.
At approximately 4 a.m., Sargent missed at least two automatic signals and warnings posted by a brakeman of the 26-car circus train, which had made an emergency stop to check a hot box on one of the flatcars. Sargent's train plowed into the caboose and four rear wooden sleeping cars of the circus train at a rail crossing known as Ivanhoe Interlocking ( east of downtown Hammond and the Indiana-Illinois border) at an estimated speed of . According to a contemporary newspaper report, “The engine and tender of the moving train passed completely over and through the wreck. The engine left the rails but did not overturn.” Upon impact, the circus train's lamps ignited the wooden cars and the fire quickly spread. at the intersection of Cermak Road and Des Plaines Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois, in a section set aside as Showmen's Rest, which had been purchased by the Showmen's League of America only a few months earlier. The section is surrounded by statues of elephants in a symbolic mourning posture.
Only five of those buried had been formally identified, The more recent graves at the location belong to people who traveled with the circus and wanted to be buried there after they died.
Aftermath
The train wreck occurred on a Saturday, and its effects caused the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus's show in Hammond and another in Monroe, Wisconsin, on June 24 to be canceled. However, the circus performed on June 25 in Beloit, Wisconsin, with other circuses providing some of the acts.