Doomed to Fail - Ep 212: Death at Dutchman's Pass - The Great train wreck of 1918

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Let's go back to a time when trains weren't automated and there was A LOT of room for human error. We talk about the 'Swiss Cheese Model' of disasters all the time and this is a classic case. Late trains, overcrowded passenger cars, neglecting to look at a log book, having the "go" sign up when it should have been "stop" - this case has it all. We'll also talk about how the story was lost in the ends of WWI and the Jim Crow south.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Hello, hello, Taylor. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. It's a lovely day here in Austin. I did do some swimming earlier today. Nice. Which was very nice. Love it.

I um we spent the week in big bear which was very nice it looked amazing I was so did I said you pictures of me wearing goggles because I was so allergic to literally everything I had to buy a pair of goggles that you did not send me I couldn't see like half the time my left eye was totally shut and then like my right eye hurt so bad and I was taking so much medication and like antihistamine eye drops it was just like too many trees for me um how was my god tortoise doing he's good he's a little stress out on vacation, but he's better. He's walking around. I gave him an apple today, and he was so excited. Wait, you took him?

Yeah, I'm not going to leave him home alone. I saw the picture you sent of him in the bathtub, and I was like, oh, she must be going through like old pictures or something. No, he took a bath. I did, I did very much walk past the ring camera at the Airbnb, holding his crate

being like, I have the cooler. I have all the food, you guys. Just so they wouldn't think that I was sneaking in a bit. That's so funny. Okay. That is very cute. Very cute. For some reason, I thought, you know what?

I mixed up your trips and I thought the snake lady was going to take care of him, but that's your next trip. Yes. My next trip, Danielle Wall, who is the amazing high desert Danny in the Joshua Street area who will come to your house and remove a snake from your yard or your house at any time of the night. And she just does it by donation. It's wonderful.

And she's going to watch. Pen to Franklin's Ghost when I'm on my next trip, which is very kind. That's awesome. It's always good to have a snake friend or reptilian friend. Exactly, exactly. You want to introduce us? Yes, hello. Welcome to doomed to fail.

We bring you history as notorious disasters and failures. I'm Taylor joined my first. And we are here today to tell you a tale. And I don't know who goes first today. Is it me? I think it's me. I think we agreed that it would be like me, you, me, you. That's right.

That's right. yeah if you don't whatever who cares um cool um I do also want to say that um

your last episode got like a ton of lessons good job I know I know I saw that I think I think it's because of the name of it devil's venom like it's like pretty good yeah it's a great name it's like what is the devil's venom like where do I find it

is it in my soul right now um Is it just my blood mixed with holy water? Yeah, cool. Great job. Thank you. Are you going to give me an award? Maybe.

I don't know. Do you feel like you deserve one? Just for that? Probably not. Probably not. It's okay. So since I'm going on a plane this week, I don't have a plane crash story,

but I do have a train crash story. Fun! For you. Yeah, fun, right? I think we've done a couple times. I feel like we've talked about different types of trains. But, yeah, let me tell you about it. Because I just wrote, because everything is dangerous.

So, like, stay inside and then it's dangerous in there, too. It is. Might as well do something. This one happened in 1918, and it's just called the Great Train Wreck of 1918 in Nashville, Tennessee. It is the deadliest train disaster in U.S. history. Whoa. 101 people died like officially and then over like 170 people even more were injured so a lot of people were you know were hurt from it um there are worse train accidents that we can talk about later a lot of them are like internationally like in places like india where like you've seen the videos people are just like holding onto the train one of my favorites was some guy like walked over from the outside to an open window and try to grab someone one's iPhone and like steal it from them and then everybody just grabbed him and held him in place

and he was just like panicking and freaking out and I was like man you must things must be pretty dire if you risk your life for an iPhone like that while the train was moving this happened while's moving yeah I know wild yeah very dangerous I've seen like videos people just like laying on the top of the train and I'm like you're not indiana Jones yeah that's dangerous as shit rough so but this one this is the deadliest in the US so it's July 9th 1918. And it is a beautiful day. It's around 70 degrees and it's like a little bit humid but not the worst. Like it's just a nice day. Whether there's nothing to do with it. But I do want to talk about like the Swiss cheese model and I'll tell you all the holes because a lot of things

went wrong for this to happen. We're in and around Nashville, Tennessee, going in and out of the main station there. So we have two trains around Nashville in the morning. The train number four and train number one. Train number four is pulled by a locomotive number 282. It's a 46010 wheeler. So that means it has two small, like two rows of small wheels and then three rows of big wheels and no tailing wheels. It doesn't have nothing to do with it, but it's just like the kind of train that it was. Do you know what the small wheels are for?

I think for like turning on to like the other tracks. Okay. I don't know. do you know no that sounds good um i think i feel like it makes sense to me structurally engineering wise that like if you have the little ones those can like make those precision things then the big ones follow along you know yeah the tracks that's happening um train number four is pulling two male and baggage cars and then six wooden coaches for people um and so it is again 1918 so it is like near the end of World War I, and the wooden coaches are carrying civilians,

people signing up for the military, going to like base to get started, and a lot of African-American people headed to work at a munitions plant. Also to note that the cars are segregated, so the Jim Crow cars are in the front, and then the cars where the white people are in the back of that, like, six, those six wooden cars. got it um it departs union station in nashville at 7.07 a.m. And I looked it up because like every city has a union station and I was like, why is that? Like what is that? What does that mean? And it just means that usually several different railroad companies would, um, go in and create the station together. And it was just like a union of the different trains to build the station that you can go out of. That makes sense. Yeah. Um, and I know you haven't been to New York much, but if you fly into Newark, you take, you take, You can take the train from Newark to Penn Station, and it's, like, really easy to get into the city, actually, I think, easier than JFK or LaGuardia. But on the way from Newark to Penn Station, you pass Newark Penn Station, and you're like, why the fuck would you name was that? Why was you name the station before Penn Station, Penn Station?

And just call it Newark Penn Station. Call it something else. Anything else. Like, it's just so annoying. People, like, get off because they're confused, and they're like, wow, what does it make sense? Is it short for something different? No. It's just like this is the New York Penn Station and this is a New York Penn Station. And you're like, why would you need the Penn Station? It's always competing. Always just trying to do. What's wrong with you? New Jersey? Get over yourself. So a depressed union station at 7.07 a.m. Meanwhile, train number one is pulled by locomotive 281. They're the same kind of locomotive, same kind of train. It's heading into Nashville from Memphis. And it's kind of been out all night. It has one baggage car, six wooden coaches. and two steel sleeping cars.

It is 35 minutes behind schedule. It was scheduled to arrive at 7.10, but it's 35 minutes behind, which is our first hole. Got it. You know? So to get in and out of the station, there is a 10-mile stretch of single track.

So it can only hold, obviously, one train at a time because it's one track. You can just do one. It doesn't really make sense to me why you'd have that, why you wouldn't just make two tracks, but there's one track, goes both ways. So there's also in the track, there's a blind curve called the Dutchman's curve that I was like, why is it called that?

Is that like a cute name for like something dangerous? But it really is just because the land around the Dutchman's curve was owned by some, a farmer who was like Dutch or German. And they just named it that. Okay. Makes sense. That makes sense? Because like, you know how like a lot of people who were called Dutch were actually German because

they said Deutsch and people didn't. So like the Pennsylvania Dutch. are actually German. Seriously? Yeah. I don't know that. Yeah. Because they just like heard the word Deutsch,

which means German in German. And they were like, oh, they're Dutch. Yeah. I mean, I get it now. Anyway, so Dutchman's curve is a blind curve, a blind turn that we're going to talk about a minute. So the rules are that the inbound train, number one, coming into the Nashville,

has the right of way. And so the number four has to wait for the other train to come in. So the, they were told by like the train. by the union station people, the train number four needs to physically see train number one pass a certain point before it can go. So it needs to pass a point called Shops Junction, which is just like a junction. They see it go past that. Then they can go on and start going on that 10 mile one way thing. Shaps Junction also has a tower where there's a person kind of like

overlooking everything that's happening. But it's only one guy. It's a lot for him to look at. Yeah. Sounds like air traffic control. it is a lot of air traffic control and like there's no nothing's automatic obviously you know it's just like look around and like you have your they can telegraph each other like from tower to tower but it's not like even better than that you know what i mean yeah um so so that's what they're supposed to do number four is to wait so here's the next hole is that the number four conductor his name was james shorty eubank was collecting tickets it was really really busy So the train was like overcrowded and he was busy collecting tickets and he didn't have time to visually confirm that the number one had passed. So he kind of asked someone else to do it. Someone else said, yeah, maybe we should do it. But no one really was responsible. I mean, Eubank was responsible, but he passed it on to someone else.

But no one really took up the thing to actually be the person to visually confirm that it passed. And then someone on the number four did see a train. and go by. So they were like, that must be it, but it was the wrong train. It wasn't the one they were looking for, and they were like, we can probably just go. So they are approaching the Shops Junction where they think they may have seen a train go by. And the operator at Shops Junction, his name is J.S. Johnson. He has the clear sign up as like default, which you should have the stop sign up as default. You know? That's another hole. That's another hole. And it reminds me a little bit of, and I don't know why I'm going to be this, but like, just like the not having

automation when like we were talking about the Indianapolis being missing for like seven days. And I was like, your number one job in the Navy is to know where all your fucking boats are. You would think. You would think. You would think. You know, like, how many boats do we have? Someone right down. It's like, I feel like this is a lot for, for Johnson to have to look at in that tower. He's probably looking at like multiple junctions, multiple trains coming in. It is very, very busy. And again, like, the weather's great. He can see everything, but it's still very busy. And that also just made me think of, like, how many, like in places where there are more trains like that, like New York and Chicago and Nashville, like, I imagine there's times when

you cannot see that far because there's like fog, you know? Yeah. I mean, look, even to this day, like, yeah, now we have automated processes, but even those aren't going to be like full proof. I'm thinking about like when DC, the DC Metro situation happened where there's just like things got like tech went and got outdated and they run into each other. I mean, it's all fraught. It's very terrifying when you sling really big objects at each other. Yeah, exactly. And like the actual like the very last thing is like your eyes. If you can't press them later. So we're at the Chop's Junction. J.S. Johnson. He accidentally has a clear sign up, which is not going. good. He realizes that he had not seen number one. And so there is, it should not have been clear. It should have been the time. It says danger. It's like clear or danger. Should have been danger. But it was too late to stop train number four from going through. So he telegraphs to another tower. And the telegraph says he meets number one there. Can you stop him? And I think what he meant was like trying to stop train number four from going any further. But they weren't able to stop it because no one heard the emergency whistle that Johnson, like, turned on like there was no another thing is there should have been a crew member at the back of number four um just like being at the back make sure everything was okay back there but there was not because everyone was in the front taking all those tickets and doing everything else so no one heard it when they did it wow because i might also like super loud that also reminds me

of the titanic because if you remember the california was like two miles away from it but they like shut off all their like tel telecom stuff like at night and it was like so they were screaming into the night but like they could have heard it if somebody was just listening Oh, terrible. I hate that. I hate that. So number one, so number four is going down this 10 mile path. They're heading out of Nashville. And then they're heading into the Dutchman's curve. And they're going 50 to 60 miles per hour, which is pretty fast. Yeah, it's very fast. They're going pretty fast. And number one is coming the other direction. And it is also going the same speed. So they're both coming 50 miles per hour straight at each other. The engineer of number four, His name was David C. Kennedy. He did see number one coming for just a second. He slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. So David C. Kennedy was 71 years old, and he had been working for just like less than an hour before this happened.

They, when they found his body, he had the timetables and a watch underneath his body. Like he was like trying to do a good job, but like it just was like, it just was like, it just, he couldn't have stopped it in time you know um the engineer of number one never got a chance to hit the brakes at all he probably just turned the corner saw the train gasped and died that's probably the better way to do it though that's probably the better way to go it is but i have terrible news did his name was no he died his name was William lloyd it was his last day at work before retirement that's bad i know that sucks that's sucks. I think that happens in like police drama. I know. You know. So yeah, that's

terrible. So he didn't have a chance, didn't he probably barely saw it and died. They crashed head on, obviously. The explosion was heard for miles. Over like 50,000 people end up like coming and like trying to like either help or look or like be around it because that's like the thing to do. You know, right, right. You know, like there's just like, you know, if there's a disaster, you just go to it because you're, what else are you doing? Yeah. I don't know. It's 1918, being afraid of the war.

I'm not sure. So the engines exploded into the air. The first few cars telescoped into each other, which I know we've talked about before, where it just like scrapes into the other car, everything in it gets destroyed. Yeah. So scary.

Just the worst. So all of the baggage is destroyed. The three number, the three wooden cars on number one were thrown from the tracks, but the rest of them and the sleeper cars were okay. So only the first couple of cars from number one were thrown off the track. On train number four, the first five cars derailed, which is like the two baggage cars and the first two of the passenger cars

and then the others stayed on. But as you'll remember, that means that like most of the people who died were black people because they were in the front. Wow, that's right. You know, which is I think I'm talking about it later, part of the reason why this isn't like a more famous story because it's sort of like an underreported community. Yeah, of course.

you know so a shit down people died over 100 the cars the wooden cars specifically were crushed and splintered there was a fire obviously we talked about that i think in the circus train wreck as well that like when everything's made out of fire and your lamps are fire and your mode of energy is fire like you were going to catch on fire yeah it's all kindling yeah so one person um said that there was blood running down the aisle like water and then when they were like cleaning it up they were like Will-barrowing out limbs, you know? Like a lot of people were never identified by their bodies just because they were just so unbelievably torn apart. You know what I imagine is like the freakiest part if you were experiencing this. If you survive is like the quiet. Yeah. It's like everything's quiet, but then you look around and it's like a scene,

like the elevator scene from the shining. It's just like, yeah. And like I think like in those situations, like the first car, I've been in several car accidents and the first one I was ever in my friend and I got hit from behind we were like in a left turn lane and I remember I was holding a Diet Coke

and I remember looking at my Diet Coke and it was exploding in front of me I was like what is happening you know because we were spinning but I didn't know we were spinning the first thing I knew was like my Coke was exploding so weird it was so weird you're like what is going on

so it's definitely like the what is happening thing one guy was brought all the way to the morgue and then he was still alive they found him moving in his thing so good for him scary for the people at the morgue that day yeah no kidding um so of the people that we know kennedy who is the engineer of the of train number four he died in the collision he was thrown from the engine um and he's another one oh i think maybe it was him who had his his watch and timetable were found near him like he was trying to figure out where they were going um Lloyd the engineer

died as well um oh no that no Kennedy was the one um um one of the conductors another conductor died um the train porter our number four died he was like a prominent member of the black community in nashville his name was major george l hall major was just like a a nice nickname for him because everyone knew and liked j s johnson who's in the tower he um didn't wasn't injured obviously he wasn't near there but he was like really messed up for like the rest of his life obviously because that happened um and again a lot of the people who died were from the military they were being being sent to start basic training or they were in the gym crow cars in the front of the train so a lot of little things happened but then like who is fault is it like ultimately because there has to be someone who's fault it is you know it's a conductor yeah um no it's actually the engineer i don't if that makes if you have that it's enough for you wait what's interesting engineering the conductor the conductor i think was like in charge of the entire train but the engineer is in the locomotive in the front of the train you know so the the in train number four

you bank who was the conductor was the one who was supposed to do like the visual lookout to start he was also supposed to like check the timetables before he left he's supposed to do a couple of things that he didn't do and he was busy taking tickets but the engineer never would have like stopped his job to take tickets right right you know like he's one who's like pressing the gas whatever that means you know the i think he's shoveling coal in the engine no i think you have guys to do that i think you're pushing the buttons but but but i don't know if you're a a trade train conductor. Yeah, if you're a train conductor on a steam engine train from 1918, from 1918, please let us know. Please email us to fill a pot at Gmail. That's how that works. So ultimately, it was Kennedy of the engineer.

So engineer number four. So the engineer of the train coming out of Nashville, they're the ones who should have seen that number one wasn't there. They should have done a bunch of things. And so they said that like the conductor should have looked, should have done more things but in 1924 the u. were all the way up to the u.s. Supreme court and they ruled that it was the personal duty of the engineer

to positively ascertain another train had passed so it was specifically Kennedy's fault um even though a lot of things happened but like by the law was that did he get skewered um he was already dead oh he's already dead yep okay he was done it didn't matter he's dead so other things that happened

um you know that that like contributed to it so ultimately it was Kennedy's fault but other things that happened obviously like the shops junction tower should have had that dangerous sign up by default the whistle should have been louder um they both Kennedy and Eubanks so the conductor and the engineer number four should have checked the train registration register at union station because literally like a book that says like this train has arrived check you know yeah it's checking it off and they should look at it before but it wasn't necessarily a rule it was like a nice to do right right but like eventually they also are going to find that like the union station needs

a shit ton more rules and made me to follow them very precisely. Also, there wasn't anything automatic. Like I said, like, obviously, like, there's nothing, just people taking a look out for things and pressing buttons. And then also, a big part of it is that it's World War I, and there's so much train activity, you know? And, like, I always think about, like, there's so much train activity in wartime, which reminds me of, like, seven different stories. But did you know, Did you hear how, like, the train tracks in Russia are a different size than the rest of Europe? No. I feel like I heard that in the beginning of, like, a couple other things.

Maybe, maybe not anymore where they were during the World War II. So it was, like, hard for them to move stuff across, you know. There's, like, always train stuff. Also, when I was in high school, one of my teachers, his job in, like, the 70s had been to, like, track where trains were in America on a giant map in case they needed to move, like, nuclear bombs around. Seriously? Weird stuff. Yeah. He, like, worked in, like, a bunker.

Because there are probably bombs on trains right now Just like getting ready to go or like moving around You know, like there's also like weird train infrastructure That has to do specifically with war Again, if you are a wartime train person Please call me I want to hear a lot about your job So because it's World War I schedules are insane

Number four was very, very crowded One of the engineers number one Have been working for 10 hours straight Like the people, they're understaffed There's a lot going on And also the wooden cars are just like the worst possible thing you can be in. Yeah, of course. The Interstate Commerce Commission in the ICC, which has did train reports, I think, up until 1993.

Their conclusion was that had the tower operator kept a signal at stop, had the conductor diligently monitor for the closing train, or had the crew check the register as required, the accident would not have happened. So just like a whole bunch of things. it's like if this yeah yeah yeah exactly um afterwards the the dutchman's pass was open by sunset so it was open by nighttime because they have to keep moving you know like there's still a lot of people to move around um wooden cars are going to start to be banned and then eventually phased out of like the u.s real system after this um and then like the other kind of sad thing is that it was only in the paper for like a day and a half and then um it was out because there was war news and it was a spanish flu and a lot of the victims are black and the a lot of reasons that, like, it just, it was a terrible tragedy, but only stayed in the news cycle, like, one day. Yeah, I never heard of this. Yeah. And then people kind of forgot about it. And that's it.

So I got a little side story that's kind of similar that I just learned that I thought you might get a, not a kick out of, but it shows how many simple things can go wrong. Again, I'm still on my kickup. watching like plane crash videos on YouTube. And there's one that just blew my mind. I'll tell real quick story. It was this one airport, I think it was like in South America or Central America or something. But like it was, they had this one problem with this specific species of wasps that would go into the peto tubes of airplanes. And the peto tubes of those like things that you look on the outside underneath like the cockpit from the outside of the plane.

it's like a little like a straight line that like ejects out from the side of the plane and what it is is it a hollow hole and that is the thing that determines air speed of a plane and so these wastes would go into these hollow holes and make nests and then you get in the air and then you don't know your air speed so you don't know if you're going too fast if you're going too slow you don't know how to slow down for a landing it's a it's a horrible disaster anyways this one airline it stopped operating out of that location for about a year or something and it was during that exact time that a bulletin went out to all airlines saying that if you're operating here you have to put on covers your pito tubes even if you're on the round for 30 minutes and they didn't get this bulletin because it went out of circulation exactly when they started servicing that area and so they didn't know this was even a thing they asked for maintenance from the airport to come help them out the maintenance puts the pitot tube covers on and then they just like do their stuff they leave the pilots inspect the outside of the plane like they're looking at these covers that are hanging down and are very

obvious and they just aren't registering that that's not supposed to be there when I'm flying and so they take off with the damn pito tube covers on and yeah it crashes and kills everyone because they didn't know what their airspeed was it's just stuff like that where it's like it's like this bulletin went out the wrong time they stopped service to the airline airport at the wrong time like the guy all of it just it was incredible it was incredible that would have been like the night like early 2000s wow yeah that's crazy but something so simple it's something so simple but you wouldn't think like bees could take down a plane but they can yeah he's in the right way yeah i was talking to um my boss about how at least one positive thing about all this is like you know

how you ever if you ever feel this I mean everything climate change specifically we're talking about but I was like if you ever feel like you're insignificant just remember that humans took down an entire planet yeah good for us you know who would have thought we could have done it if wasps can take down an airplane

humans can take down planet earth it's funny I was going to say one oh mankind against nature but I'm pretty sure it's actually like 50 billion to one it was we they nature won a lot of battles That's what we won the war.

Meaning we are all going to die. Kudos, everyone. Congratulations. Sweet. Well, that was not a fun story, but that was an interesting one. Like I said, I've never heard of this one. And I'm someone that likes to think I'm up to speed on all kinds of disasters and crises. I also like, it scares me when things happen, like, you're probably asleep.

Like, at 7 o'clock in the morning, oh, I don't want to die at 7 in the morning. yeah you know like that's just such a temper that day that i don't like i mean if you're asleep it's probably the best way to go yeah you probably wouldn't even notice you might even notice yeah very final destinationy i like it it is it's good sweet well thank you for sharing um do you have any listener mail about my exquisite episode no but i do have something from our friend nadine her family they read together a Agatha Christie story the murder of Roger Ackroyd

which is one that I meant to say this to Nadine but like it's a really good one I've read it twice and both times I've been like surprised by who the murderer was because I like forgot you know and then I read it again and I was like oh so it's fun but then they

her family listen to her Agatha Christie episode which is super nice. Very cool I'm glad to put those things together and read some I got the Christy if you have. And you've been diligent about putting together our episodes that kind of cross pollinate?

Yes. I put a lot of, I was like, well, I'm like, obviously like, what do we do? How do we get? What do we do? And then, so we have the advice that I get a lot from the internet is like, have one thing. And I'm like, well, I don't want to do one thing. And then so we have a bunch of things. So I'm just trying to be like, maybe a gateway into

listening to more things would be like, so I did medieval history and did engineering disasters. And then I have a bunch of ones. I think for next week, if you look at an episode I got like tagged everything I was going to do oh I was going to maybe do natural disasters

or you redo yeah I mean we have a whole series on volcanoes no I know I mean there I have here here are the categories that I put them into but I think that there are

more since I even since I did this so ancient history animals art business engineering disasters literature medicine murder, medieval disasters, natural disasters, other history, other wars, planes, politics, pop culture, pride, religion, sports, women, and just World War II in general. Biographical. A bunch of those could cross into biographical.

Mm-hmm. I edit it. Anyway. Thank you. No, thank you. And I'm going to put together more of those and the episodes are fun because it's just like nine minutes of me telling you what I remember from every of that. I do no editing. I just talk about what I remember from the episodes that I think are medieval history. And then we go from there. I'm glad you're doing it because you know how my memory is. You know how my memory is. I do. I do. So I recorded it for you, the whole thing. Sweet. Well, find us on all the socials, Dumbentafel pod. Write to us at Dumbentafelpot at gmail.com. And we'll join you again in a week from now.

Thanks, Taylor. Thanks.