"On Saturday, November 4, 1972, the Central Railroad of New Jersey westbound station at Elizabeth, NJ was destroyed in a spectacular derailment.
The cause of the 2:15 PM wreck was determined to be a boxcar which was too high to make it under the Penn Central's (originally Pennsylvania Railroad) Northeast Corridor bridge.
The car was about midway through the 81-car freight train bound for Philadelphia and Chicago. Cars of excess height were suppose to travel on tracks 2 and 3, which had a lower roadbed. This day the train was routed west on track 4."
Because the derailment occurred during the middle of a weekend afternoon, not near a rush-hour, and after a recent passenger train had departed the station .... the only people in the station were members of the CNJ Police Department in their small office in the corner of the station. While some were trapped in debris, everyone lived. This could have been a very terrible accident.
That C&O gondola full of scrap metal blocks, is inside the station (this is a street view of the station) ...
Cleanup crews prepare to re-truck the C&O gondola using CNJ wreck crane number 6. In the background, Penn Central GG-1 4931 passes overhead with a passenger local .....
The car that started it all, Missouri Pacific number 38487, lies partially buried in the station .....
The cars not involved in the wreck have been removed while cleanup workers await the arrival of wreck cranes .....
Another Missouri Pacific car, number 753322, is being extracted from the station building (the beautiful clock tower is part of the eastbound station, across the tracks from the accident ....
I told you to check and recheck those clearances before building the new deck!
