Sunday evening, July 13th, 1913 was a fairly typical summer evening for the Venice Short Line Railroad. Late-night crowds of beach-goers were returning to the city after spending the day at Santa Monica and Venice beaches, no different than things are today really.

    Among those revelers were John Franklin Wynkoop, a retired actor and playwright, and his wife, the actress known as Helen Coleman or Helen Truman, who was onstage at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., the night President Lincoln was shot by the assassin, John Wilkes Boothe.

    John, although born in New York, was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a lithographer, (see my webpage on Wynkoop & Company, Philadelphia, for information on their activities there.) John, following the family's artistic bent, became an actor and author. After many years of traveling the country, performing in town after town in the Midwest and on the East Coast, he and his wife decided to move to Los Angeles late in 1899.

    At 9:40 P.M. the Pacific Electric special train which John Franklin Wynkoop and his wife were aboard, homeward bound from the beach with a big Sunday crowd, rammed into two three-car train loads of passengers while rounding a curve at Vineyard Junction. Car No. 887, which headed the ramming train, telescoped car No. 874, at the rear of the two trains. The onrushing train crashed through the rear of the car, passed the outside shell and rammed itself half way through the car, killing and maiming as it went.

    When the dust began to clear, four cars were piled on top of each other and the street-lights had gone out. The wreck itself took place between two high embankments, the south one being only a few feet from the wrecked trains.

    It was more than two hours later before help arrived, owing to the inaccessible place in which it occurred. When it did arrive, ambulances and autos had to be stationed a block away. Most of the victims were carried out on litters improvised out of car seats. Police, trainmen and volunteers struggled through the wreckage in dim light trying to drag forth the bodies of the victims. They had only candles to see by and no tools to work with. The gathering crowd, many of them seeking relatives and friends, hampered the rescue work.

    More than one thousand people were involved in the wreck in one way or another. Ultimately, fifteen people died as a result of their injuries and over one hundred were injured.

    The Coroner's jury found, in two separate verdicts, that the accident could have been avoided by observance of the rules, by the employment of competent men, and by allowing more time between the running of trains. They found that Joseph Forster, motorman of the ramming train, was in no way responsible for the horror. The minority verdict, signed by George E. Mills, followed the line of the other verdict, but went even further by laying the responsibility for the tragedy at the door of Conductor Emil Bartholomai, who was the rear-end flagman on car No. 874, and who, said Mills, did not go back far enough or fast enough to protect his train.

    Officials of the Pacific Electric Railway acted with blinding speed to ensure that this kind of disaster would not occur again, letting out contracts to install blocking signals within three days of the accident. The City Council and the State Railroad Commission began detailed investigations into the wreck within 10 days.

    Nowadays the railway companies would have stonewalled the investigations once they got started, probably a year or two later, and fixes ordered by them would have taken years, if not decades to install. It seems that back in the old days they knew how to accept responsibility and take immediate steps to remedy the situation. Those days are long gone. Lawyers have stepped in with their billable hours, and finger-pointing is their weapon of choice. Creating confusion and prolonging everyone's misery until they tire of the situation is the accepted strategy today.

    There's a lot to be learned here from the way these people handled this crisis. It'd be nice to think that we could adopt the same principles, but I'm not holding my breath.

    Chris

Fifteen Dead and One Hundred Injured in Collision.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Monday, 14 July, 1913.

By the Pacific Electric, Official Statement as to Cause of Wreck.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Monday, 14 July, 1913.

Railway Blames Motorman and Flagman.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Tuesday, 15 July, 1913.

Different Finding, Exculpates Forster, Censures Railway.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Wednesday, 16 July, 1913.

Quick Action, Shoup Orders Block Signals At Once.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Wednesday, 16 July, 1913.

He Was on the Forster Train.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Thursday, 17 July, 1913.

Mr. Shoup's Statement.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Thursday, 17 July, 1913.

For Public Safety, Rush Order For Block Signals.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Saturday, 19 July, 1913.

Grim Specter, Fifteenth Fatality.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Saturday, 19 July, 1913.

City News In Brief, Recovering from His Injuries...
     From the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 20 July, 1913.

Important, To Guard Lives of Traveling Public.
     From the Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, 22 July, 1913.