The 1891 Churchville Smash-Up
Dan Rollings March 29, 2024
It was 7:45 PM on Tuesday, May 19th, 1891 at the Brampton Canadian Pacific Railway on Queen Street. The weather that day had been just shy of 14° Celsius with clear skies. Train No. 68 was preparing for departure. The freight train ran daily, but this was a particularly large one with 33 cars and a caboose. It had completed most of its journey already, hauling Credit Valley stone down from Orangeville but had been held up for six hours at the Brampton station. The crew was eager to get moving again, down to their destination at Toronto West Junction.
The crew on a train this size consisted of five men: Robert E. “Bob” Johnson (28 years old) was the driver. Hailing from Orangeville, he was regarded as being one of the best engineers on the line. He came by it honestly: Johnson began working for the line when he was fourteen. His father had also been a CPR engineer, but had been killed eight years before in a collision at the foot of Yonge Street. Working up front in the cab with Bob was James Galt “Jim” Ferguson, the fireman. Like Bob, Jim was from Orangeville. He was a year younger than Bob, at 27 years of age.
Two brakemen were in position on the train. William P. Little, 21 years old, and William P. White, 25 years old, were aware of some of the unique features of the track that lay between Brampton and Churchville, and had set their brakes carefully. The train would be traveling between homes along Elliott Street, a blind curve above Eldorado Mills and a steep grade approaching the Churchville flagstop. Little had only just started to work for the CPR two weeks prior and was positioned near the front of the train. White was rear brakeman. Being a brakeman on a freight train in 1891 was a terribly dangerous job. Their job involved traveling from car to car, turning a wheel on each to slow the momentum of the train. Injuries and death were common in this line of work, as bad weather and unexpected jolts could cause a brakeman to lose his balance and fall between the cars. As this particular train was carrying so much stone on flatbeds, in addition to a handful of boxcars, the brakemen needed to be prepared to handle difficult situations.
The train’s conductor on the train, William Brooks, was positioned in the caboose at the rear of the train. During their six hour delay at the Brampton station, Brooks noticed a strange man lurking around the train. As CPR freight trains were strictly banned from taking on passengers, Brooks kept a lookout for the man, prepared to remove him from the train if he caught him attempting to hitch a ride on one of the cars. By the time that they departed, the conductor felt sure that the man had gone his own way.
CPR No. 193, formerly CVR No. 5. It is unclear what locomotive was actually involved in the crash; No. 68 is the number mentioned in the inquest, but there is no other publicly available record of a CPR No. 68 on the Orangeville line at that time.
Engineer Bob Johnson knew that the train was now operating on a tight schedule, given the lengthy delay. A nightly passenger train traveled the line at 9:00 PM and he needed to make sure that the track was clear. With everything in order, he pulled the train out of the station, crept south across Queen Street and began the journey through the residential area, then turned west across McMurchy Avenue. At that point, the track travels straight for a good distance, and Johnson accelerated to the train’s normal traveling speed of between 15 and 20 MPH.
Site of the old Brampton CPR / CVR Station, looking southwest toward Churchville.
12 year-old Maggie Carey was walking her sister Betsy’s two cows up Churchville Road. She had been with the cows all day down in the village as they grazed along the side of the road by the Kearney’s hotel. At that time this was a normal practice until the pastures and flats had dried out enough to be safe for grazing cattle. Maggie had passed the cemetery and was crossing Baseline (Steeles) as she headed home to their property southeast of Eldorado Mills. At that time, the road actually crossed the tracks at several points. It was later realigned slightly to the east to remove the two crossings. Maggie knew that a passenger train was due in about an hour and wasn’t concerned about the cows being on the crossings. The CPR schedule was well-known, and she was under the impression that the daily freight train had passed through six hours before. Her older sister, Betsy was busy nearby at the Eldorado Mills.
1877 map showing the CPR line crossing Churchville Rd (north) twice.
Churchville Rd (north) in it's current situation, now running completely west of the CPR right-of-way. The route of the original rd is in yellow. The site of the derailment is in red (left) and the site of the Churchville flagstop is circled in red on the right.
Train #68 rounded the blind curve to the north and Bob Johnson immediately saw Maggie’s cows in the distance, near the track at the crossing. A cow on the track could spell disaster for a train and he acted fast, sounding first the cow-warning whistle (a long series of short blasts) and then the brake whistle (one blast). The brakemen flew into action, but the loud staccato whistles echoing across the valley caused one of the cows to panic and start to run home, leading it straight into the path of the locomotive. 12-year old Maggie watched in horror as the cow was knocked down and pushed along briefly by the cattle guard at the front. It then became lodged under the front truck and the two front wheels derailed. With the engine derailed and the full weight of the stone pushing, the train traveled down the steep grade another 400 yards before the track broke and split apart. The locomotive then drove straight into a ditch and was buried up to the boiler. The tender and stone-laden cars smashed over the locomotive and almost completely buried it in the wreckage.
Over at Eldorado Mills, Betsy heard the whistles from the unexpected train and flew into a panic. She had no idea where her sister was and feared for her safety. She ran out onto the road. She didn’t make it far before she was overwhelmed and fell unconscious.
Conductor William Brooks was the first on the scene and attempted to save Johnson and Ferguson, but the billowing steam from the locomotive prevented him from getting near them. He reported that Johnson had been killed immediately, though he could still hear Ferguson moaning from inside the wrecked cab. Ferguson didn’t last much longer and both driver and fireman were killed. Almost all 33 cars were destroyed. The two brakemen managed to escape with their lives, though they were seriously injured. Little had his right foot amputated soon afterward.
1891 CPR CRash Route.movAnimation showing the journey from Brampton to Churchville.
An unidentified body was found in the wreckage, causing confusion. It was assumed at first that the man was a tramp, but he was later identified as Mr. Nicholas Dickie, a tailor from Waterloo. This was the strange man that Conductor William Brooks had noticed lurking around the train at the Brampton Station earlier in the day. Dickie was traveling to Streetsville to start a new career with C. J. Owens. He was killed instantly during the collision.
In response to the derailment an inquest was quickly organized and a hastily-assembled jury was formed and taken to tour the crash site. Interviews were conducted with the survivors, with Maggie and Betsy, William Brooks and also with the one person who saw it all happen: an 11 year-old Churchville boy named Elmer Smith. It was agreed that, while Maggie and Betsy had broken the law by allowing their cattle to stand on the tracks, they were not technically liable because the train had been delayed and its whistle had actually caused the cow to bolt. This result was not popular with the press, who seemed to believe that justice was not served. One paper carried the headline that “A Neglected By-Law Cost Three Men’s Lives”.
Bob Johnson and Jim Ferguson were both buried on May 28th, at Forest Lawn Cemetery near their homes in Orangeville. Bob’s funeral took place at his father-in-law, James Key’s, home. His obituary noted that it was well attended, as Bob was well known and popular. He was laid to rest next to his wife and child, who had both died two years earlier. He left behind a four year-old son named Harry, who would be raised by his grandparents. He was noted as being uninsured. Jim Ferguson, unmarried, was buried nearby and left behind his parents and siblings. He was insured for $20,000. It was a sad day for the small community of Orangeville.
