On Friday, July 5, 1912, a catastrophic collision on the Wilpen branch of the Ligonier Valley Railroad became the worst wreck known in Westmoreland County railroading. The railroad, opened in 1877 as a 10-mile line connecting Ligonier and Latrobe, had later added a 6-mile branch to Fort Palmer to serve coal mines and coke ovens, with freight trains running several times daily and the passenger coach operating only morning and afternoon. Branch employees knew the passenger schedule, trains normally backed up the track because there was no way to turn them around, and passenger departures were supposed to wait for an all-clear signal. That day the passenger train was unusually crowded with holiday travelers, workers returning to Wilpen or Fort Palmer, and children headed to Wilpen for a picnic. The coal train, normally back in Ligonier before noon, had been delayed for hours after one engine wheel jumped the track. Around 3:10 p.m., Conductor Harry H. Knox called from Wilpen to request permission for the freight train to proceed ahead of the passenger train and asked that the passenger train be held until the freight arrived; John Smith and James Mull overheard the request and the permission granted. Somehow, however, the passenger train was also cleared to leave on time at 3:20 p.m., and Conductor Charles Kuhn sent the train north with a combination baggage and passenger car and an engine pushing from behind. The two trains met on the line's only blind curve, where visibility could not prevent disaster. Traveling at about 25 mph, the freight train's two engines split the wooden passenger car in half and struck the pushing engine, leaving one engine half turned around on its side. A nearby magistrate on horseback rode to Ligonier to raise the alarm, and local people brought blankets and bandages, while farmers, workers from the Denny racetrack, physicians from Latrobe, and a special train all joined the rescue effort. The injuries were horrific, with victims crushed, cut apart, scalded by escaping steam, embedded in gravel, or dropped through the floor as the car split. Sixteen-year-old Bessie Hoon, traveling to visit her aunt in Wilpen, fell through the floorboards onto the tracks and was mistakenly left among the dead outside Latrobe Hospital until an attendant discovered she still had a pulse; she recovered, though coke and ash remained embedded in her skin for life. The crash touched nearly every home in the Ligonier Valley community, killing 24 people and injuring 38.
