Site of the Malbone Street Wreck in Brooklyn, New York

The Malbone Street wreck was the worst catastrophe in the history of the New York City subway system and the worst train crash in New York State. Almost 100 people died—an exact number was never determined—and around 250 riders injured, roughly half of the passengers. Many factors contributed to the Malbone Street wreck; mechanical deficiencies, circumstantial events, human error. Despite the number of dead and the horrific way in which they died, the disaster was not formally memorialized until a century later. (In fact, the city’s Board of Alderman changed the name of Malbone Street to Empire Boulevard scarcely one month after the accident, eliminating even a verbal, nominal, geographic reminder.) In addition to the centennial memorials, it is possible to spot the location of the 1918 crash from the Franklin Avenue Shuttle and the street. Intracity rail service at the turn of the last century was so different from now that it is difficult to imagine it. Today, the quasi-public Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates steel-body trains on track engineered with numerous safety systems. On Friday, November 1, 1918, the privately-owned Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) ran 30-year-old wooden cars, in this instance between Park Row, near City Hall, and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. The train that left Lower Manhattan at 6:14 p.m. did not have headlights or a speedometer. The track was without timed signals or “trippers,” an automatic braking system. Brighton Beach-bound passengers today ride beneath Prospect Park on track that connects the DeKalb Av and Prospect Park stations but in the early-19th-century, trains ran over the Brooklyn Bridge to elevated track above Fulton Street, before heading south on the right-of-way now used by the Franklin Avenue shuttle. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a union representing some of the motormen operating elevated trains for the BRT, went on strike on the morning of the accident. The rail company decided to keep service running by reassigning non-striking personnel. In the case of the train that derailed, Antonio Edward Luciano, a crew dispatcher with less than three hours of classroom training and only limited experience moving non-passenger trains in a rail yard, was made a substitute motorman. Luciano was more than inexperienced. He had already worked a 10-hour shift and three days earlier, had buried the second of his three daughters, one of the many people who died in the deadliest month of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Luciano himself was reportedly recovering from the flu. Although he was the train operator, human error cannot be attributed solely to Luciano. BRT switchmen were also on strike and whoever coupled the five cars that later crashed may have been inexperienced. The proper arrangement was for the three cars with motors to be at the ends and in the middle, with the two lighter, top-heavy trailer carriages between the heavier ones. The train operated by Luciano had the two trailer cars paired together When the sick, tired, and inexperienced motorman got to the junction at Fulton and Franklin streets, the tower operator did not recognize the train as one bound for Brighton Beach—an indicator light on the front car was dark because of a blown fuse. Luciano continued straight on Fulton Street, then had to reverse direction until he was again west of the junction. This may have been the critical event that precipitated the Malbone Street wreck. The accidental eight-minute detour may explain why Luciano failed to stop at the Consumers Park station (now the Botanic Garden station on the shuttle). The speed at which he was operating the train may have also been an attempt to make up for the lost time. In any case, when Luciano got to the serpentine curve in the tunnel just before the Prospect Park station, which had a speed limit of six miles-per-hour, he was by his own later estimate traveling five times as fast. The rear wheels of the first car derailed upon entering the tunnel, whipping the second and third cars into a concrete wall. The left-hand sides and most of the roofs were ripped off by the impact. The two rear cars collided with the wreckage, plowing the damaged carriages into the tunnel. Twisted iron, splintered wood, flying glass; some passengers died immediately, others were badly injured, somehow hundreds were spared the worst outcomes. Compounding the nightmare, it took 45 minutes for an organized rescue to commence and once begun, it proceeded slowly. The sound of the crash was heard for blocks around but the devastated train was largely hidden from sight, delaying definitive notification to the police and firefighters. (Police officers at 35 Snyder Avenue, the former Flatbush Town Hall repurposed as a court and police station, heard the crash a mile away but didn't know what had occurred, or where.) Power to the third-rail needed to be shut off, ladders lowered into the rail cut, lights strung in the unlit tunnel. Navigating through the compressed wreckage was arduous for the rescuers. No one was held criminally responsible for the crash but civil judgements and liens forced the BRT into bankruptcy. (The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company, or BMT, was the operational successor.) Timed signals and automated braking systems were installed soon after on most curves and inclines but many equipment and infrastructure improvements were slow to be implemented. Some trains lacked speedometers and headlights even decades later. Wooden cars returned to use in the S-curve tunnel for another nine years and on elevated track as late as 1969. (The tunnel remains in use but only in rare circumstances for passenger service.) On November 1, 2019, a bronze plaque was installed at the northern entrance to the Prospect Park station. Concurrently, the nearby intersection of Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue was co-named Malbone Centennial Way, odd nomenclature that commemorates that 100 years had passed, not the original event. In addition to these official markers, it is possible to see the tunnel entrance where the fateful train derailed. Traveling south on the Franklin Avenue shuttle, the tunnel entrance becomes visible from the right side of the train just before it follows other tracks into the Prospect Park station. Alternatively, the tunnel can be seen by looking down the shuttle right-of-way from a bridge opposite 1035 Washington Avenue. The southern end of the tunnel is visible from the southbound platform at the subway station, which the 6:14 p.m. train never reached on the first day of November, 1918.

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