By Joshua Casper, Features writer
The wee hours of Dec. 19, 1925 portended an uneventful eastbound sojourn from Pittsburgh to New York. Airplanes and automobiles were on the horizon, but most North Americans, including pro athletes, travelled via railroad in the 1920s. Regular folks smoked, dozed or lounged in one of the New York Night Express’ spacious coaches, while well-heeled Pennsylvania Railroad travellers slept comfortably in lush Pullman Sleepers under a clear winter sky, shielded from the crisp, cold mountain air.
The NHL’s newly minted New York Americans were on board, returning home from a quick jaunt to Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens after their much-heralded Madison Square Garden debut, sleeping away the nightmare of their third consecutive loss in their private Pullman. They, like the rest of the 160 passengers, took little note of the intricate industrial symphony unfolding as PRR No. 32 raced through the Allegheny foothills. Conductor John W. Simpson, engineman William Pyle and firebox man Harry Paschall worked in unison to run Locomotive 3763 like a high-octane power-play unit, the ever-present trill of steel clacking over wood as comforting as the whisps and clicks of a puck sliding along the ice from stick to stick.
With steam and smoke in its wake, the vaunted iron horse emerged from the old Gallitzin Tunnel, eight cars in tow, moving about 60 miles per hour along one of the steep curves carefully etched into slopes approaching the Altoona Horseshoe, a hairpin turn for rail that remains a vital shipping artery and tourist attraction to this day. Accounts from newspapers and a report from the Interstate Commerce Commission tell the tale of what happened next.
William Clark of Denver was enjoying a relaxing journey en route to Washington, D.C., via New York. “I had just roused from a little nap and saw by my watch it was 3:20 a.m.,” Clark said. “I lit a cigarette and was just settling back in my seat when the train lurched, seeming to come to a sudden stop.”
The exhausted Americans felt it, too. Defenseman Earl ‘Spiff’ Campbell was sleeping soundly when he hit the ground after being thrown from his cabin. Coach and GM Tommy Gorman remembered being thrown across the car: “There was a crash and then a scraping sound as if we were plowing through a forest, followed by another crash. The lights went out. The train was off the tracks. We thudded along the ties. The car swayed and then heaved over onto its side.”
After jumping the rail, the 500-ton steam locomotive dragged eight railcars like matchboxes, coming to a violent halt on its side perilously close to the cavernous abyss below, the embers from its coal box ablaze in the heap of debris. “We might have been scared worse than we were if we had known it was just a few feet from the 100-foot embankment,” Gorman said.
With less counterbalance from the jackknifing coaches or a bit more momentum, the entire train might’ve tumbled down the ravine into a fiery chasm. It was that close. Crackling flames and shattering glass drowned out moans and screams. The once-majestic train clung perilously to the mountainside in a heap of burning rubble. “When the car toppled over, there was a blaze of fire,” Clark said. “I feared the blaze would spread.”
While bumps and bruises were “old hat” for pro hockey players, for the first time on record, a cross-check from a runaway train was not hyperbole. Like Campbell, winger Ken Randall was strewn from his cabin and thrown clear across the car onto his shoulder. Fellow winger Charlie Langlois was bloodied and bruised. Captain Billy Burch was cut and had a welt on his stomach. Future Hall of Famer Shorty Green banged his knee, first injured in the war and already smarting from the NHL grind. Goaltender Jake Forbes, expected in net later, was bleeding from his eye. Amid smoldering ruins, that evening’s matchup against the Montreal Maroons was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
With no light, those who could manage to escape stood in the cold dark of night, while others lay amid the ruins, disoriented and helpless. Deep in coal country, miles from Gallitzin Station, the temperature had dipped below zero.
The bone-chilling cold couldn’t faze a group of Canadians. These grizzled vets were homeboys. Half the team played alongside a childhood mate. After seeing far worse during the Great War, many knew how to react amid fire and brimstone.
As a sergeant, Alex McKinnon caught a piece of shrapnel as a machine gunner in the First World War. Green, also a sergeant, fought diphtheria before injuring that knee in combat. Lieutenant ‘Bullet’ Joe Simpson captained the 61st Battalion Winnipeg Rifles to the 1916 Allan Cup alongside Selkirk, Man., teammate John ‘Crutchy’ Morrison before heading to the front, where Simpson earned a medal of valor for taking bullets at the Somme and Amiens. Morrison was gassed at Boulogne.
They became point men, bounding into action. Joe Simpson, Forbes and Randall climbed through broken windows to rescue those trapped and wounded. Thankfully, a small group of coal miners with torches in their kits approached to lend a hand. “Although the New York team suffered minor injuries, they took an active part in the rescue work,” Gorman said.
Gorman remembered that winger Edmond Bouchard was the first to rush toward the engine, trailing the muffled screams that seemingly came from nowhere. Gorman and trainer Jimmy Smith followed behind into the shadowy wilderness and soon heard the cries. “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”
Just before they hit the embankment’s edge, they found the source. Blinded by ash and fire, Pyle, the engineer, and Paschall, the firebox man, desperately clung to one another, their hands tightly clasped together. Their faces charred and blackened with soot, they were pleading for dear life when providence struck. “A porter helped us carry Pyle and Paschall to the rear car, where we administered first aid,” Gorman said. “In the meantime, other members of our team were hopping like flies on the wreckage, pulling out the injured.”
As the miners shone their torches, Smith cut smoldering clothes off the unrecognizable crewmen. A few minutes was like an eternity. As the burning wreck was extinguished, new fires were lit in earnest to keep warm. Among the stranded was a mother cradling her crying baby in the freezing nighttime air. “It was very dark,” Clark said. “It seemed like an awfully long time until rescuers arrived, but I guess it wasn’t long.”
When interviewed weeks later, neither Pyle nor Paschall could remember a thing. Eventually, a train came to take the seriously injured to Altoona Hospital. Bennie Hess, a Stanford graduate doing his master’s degree at Pittsburgh’s Mellon, died in the hospital, the only fatality among 33 injured. It was the second crash for conductor Simpson, who was unscathed in the fifth car. The ICC report blamed the crash on speeding, but Simpson returned to work and crashed two more trains, one in the same spot. Fatal accident No. 4 made national news.
The players eventually boarded a train in Philadelphia. Forced to stand the whole way, they headed back to New York and finally reached Penn Station at 3:30 that afternoon. They were battered, bruised and exhausted – but alive. Many assumed that evening’s game against Montreal would be postponed. When the Canadian press asked about their injuries, Billy Burch wired a one-line reply: “We were not injured.”
After a one-hour delay – they took a brief nap at the Hotel Claridge – the Americans skated onto Madison Square Garden ice to a rousing ovation. While the 8,000 fans waited, famed MSG announcer Joseph Humphreys gave a lengthy speech on valor and heroism.
Just after the puck dropped, Randall doubled over in pain, his shoulder dislocated, and Langlois gave way to Joe Simpson. Like clockwork, Simpson, a future Hall of Famer, found ‘Red’ Green with a cross-ice pass, and he buried it. The bench exploded, matching the bedlam from the crowd. Like the first Garden goal his brother Shorty scored, Red’s storybook salvo was not to be, whistled offside like it never happened. Hampered and hurting, New York didn’t quit.
Somehow, Forbes was sharp. But late in the first, the Maroons’ Reg Noble broke a scoreless tie. When reigning Hart Trophy winner Billy Burch tied the game three minutes into the second period, it appeared the Americans had found some magic. It didn’t last. As the game wore on, adrenaline gave way to fatigue and pain. Babe Siebert, Nels Stewart and Dunc Munro countered with three unanswered goals for the Maroons to seal their 4-1 win. Burch, Randall and the Green brothers all left the game for good in the third period. They could easily be forgiven in light of the preceding ordeal. “Railroad officials were loud in their praise of the work done by the players,” Gorman said.
A New York win would have gone down as one of the great miracles in early hockey annals, but the NHL gives no moral victories, even for heroes.
This article appeared in our 2025 Meet the New Guys issue. The cover story for this issue features the newest Vegas Golden Knight, Mitch Marner, as he looks to shine in the desert. We also include features on new Jets forward Jonathan Toews, Canadiens D-man Noah Dobson and more. In addition, we take a look at the top 'new guys' from each NHL division.
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