The Great Circus Train Wreck of 1893
Written by Fred Long in the Features category and the Fall 1984 issue Topics in this article: Altoona, Altoona Hospital, Archie Royer, Arthur Gunsallus, automobiles, Barney Multaney, Big Fill Curve, circus, Conrad's Park, Dr. E. D. Colvin, Empire Hotel Tyrone, Frank Train, Franklin Montgomery Long (Military Band), Gardner, George Meadville, Grotesque Renos, Hamilton and Sargents New York Circus, Harry Miess, Harry Snyder, Hippodrome Race, hospitals, hotels, J. D. Harris, J. D. Harrison, James Heren, Jim Strayer, King Brothers Circus, Lewistown, M. S. "Red" Cresswell, Maderville, McCann's Crossing, McNutt's Negro Band, Mereb Main, Michael Poet, Mills Osceola, Motor Circus, music, Pacific Express West, Pennsylvania Railroad, Philip Heidenfelter, railroads, Robert Gates, Sheridan Troop Armory, St. Matthew's Catholic School Tyrone, Summit, Tony Lowanda, Tyrone, Tyrone Cemetery, Tyrone-Clearfield Railroad, Van Scoyoc, Van Scoyoc Horseshoe Curve, W. Fred Aymer, Walter L. Main (Circus), William Burke, William Ebberly, William Heverly, William Lee, William LeRae, William SnyderSix-year-old Harry Snyder had slept fitfully and awoke at dawn to the first silts of sunlight piercing his bedroom window. He heard the softly muffled rumble of a train descending the nearby mountain. The sound grew alarmingly louder with an urgency that sent a chill through the young boy’s body. He leaped out of bed and rushed to the window to see the train gliding around the curve in front of his farmhouse.
The engine rounded the curve and, much to Harry Snyder’s surprise, the trailing cars were not loaded with coal but, instead, carried the gaily painted cages and gaudily colored wagons of a circus. The engine just cleared the curve when, to the boy’s horror, the first car toppled over and plunged down the steep embankment, pulling each succeeding car crashing down upon the one in front. The thundering noise of rupturing steel and splintering wood reverberated throughout the valley as the lunging cars ground over each other. Finally, the devastation was total and complete; the last car plummeted down the mountainside and the momentary quiet was interrupted only by the screeching of slowly spinning wagon wheels until they, too, came to rest. Then, from the wreckage came an anguished and pitiful moan that signaled the death of the Walter L. Main Circus. And young Harry Snyder was witness to the accident and resulting carnage.
The circus was the pride of Walter L. Main, born in Chatham, Ohio, on July 13, 1862, son of a horse trader and farmer. Walter grew up loving and handling horses. His father William was in charge of a team of horses that hauled the big top for a traveling wagon show while Walter was a young boy. The following year he hauled the band wagon with his own teams of horses. By 1877 William Main progressed to boss hostler of the Hamilton and Sargents New York Circus and invited his son to join him in circus life. William Main by 1881 owned a circus complete with forty horses and an eighty-foot round top; Walter was manager, the youngest ever known. Midway through the season Walter became general agent and two years later father and son left winter quarters with the largest wagon show in America in tow: 114 horses, ten cages, two camels and one big elephant!
In 1884 William Main tired of the circus circuit, sold his operation and returned to farming. However, two months of farming was too much for Walter and he created his own show with seven horses and a fifty-foot big top. He put out his first street parade in 1889 and closed the season in Boston with ninety horses. The next year he debuted in Pittsburgh with 120 horses and closed in Geneva clearing $17,000, a staggering sum in circus work.
In 1891 Walter L. Main took to the rails with a ten-car circus and the next year increased the number to sixteen. By 1893, the year of the great circus train wreck, the Walter L. Main Circus boasted seventeen large carriers averaging between seventy and seventy-five feet in length. That year the Walter L. Main Circus broke winter quarters at Geneva with great enthusiasm. On the train carrying the circus were twenty-five show wagons, several chariots, buggies, a steam calliope and assorted vehicles. The marvelous menagerie, probably one of the finest in the country, featured 130 horses, two elephants, two tigers, three lions, two panthers, “sacred cows,” camels. anteaters, an Australian agouti, “Man Slayer the Ape,” many snakes, and rare and colorful birds and monkeys. Sixteen cages housed the wild animals, and Snowflake, billed as the brilliant white stallion valued at a boggling $35,000, led a six-horse team. The troupe’s principal rider was the famous Tony Lawanda, and the first band was led by noted cornetist and conductor Franklin Montgomery Long. More than three hundred persons made up the circus complement.
The circus opened May 1 at East Liberty then played a number of western Pennsylvania towns, including Washington, Braddock, Mt. Pleasant, Latrobe, Johnstown, Indiana, Apollo, Tarentum, Sharpsburg and Butler. On May 15 the entourage staged its Ohio appearance at Painesville, followed by Ashtabula and Conneaut. It returned to Pennsylvania playing in Franklin, Kittanning, DuBois, Punxsutawney, Johnson-burg, Emporium, Lock Haven, Bellefonte and, on May 29, Houtzdale. The tour as far as Houtzdale had been only moderately successful; torrential rains hampered most of the stands. A brief strike took place in East Liberty and at Johnstown a dressing tent caught fire, causing a panic. But the afternoon and evening performances at Houtzdale were well received and visitors departed to the stirring marches of the military circus band. Immediately the circus broke camp and loaded cars, equipment and gear onto railroad cars waiting on the siding adjacent to the circus grounds. The next performance of the Walter L. Main Circus was scheduled for Lewistown the following day.
With the circus loaded, the railroad cars were formed by the engineer into a long, snaking train and pulled a distance of a little more than five miles to Osceola Mills, the 1unction of the Tyrone-Clearfield branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Organized in 1856 to construct a line from Tyrone north to Clearfield, crossing a region rich in both timber and coal, the Tyrone and Clearfield Railroad was bankrupt by 1865. The Pennsylvania Railroad leased the line and eventually purchased it through a subsidiary company. Construction was difficult in ascending the mountain from Vail at the base to Summit at the top and two fills were required to make horseshoe curves. The line was constructed with unusual twists and turns in order to overcome the rugged mountain’s elevation of 1,040 feet in 10 miles. Finished grades were as steep as 2.86 percent and the actual running speed for freight descending the mountain was 16 miles per hour from Summit to Van Scoyoc and 12 miles per hour from Van Scoyoc to Vail.
At Osceola Mills, a seven-man crew prepared to move the circus train to Summit; because of the considerable grade, the train was transported in three sections and reassembled at Summit. Engineer M.S. (“Red”) Cresswell surveyed the long train with misgivings and transmitted his apprehension to conductor William Snyder, suggesting that he request an additional engine for more braking power. With some reluctance Snyder wired the superintendent at Tyrone for another engine. After some deliberation, the superintendent replied that one engine could safely bring down seventeen circus cars: “Let’s save the expense of an additional engine and crew.” Unfortunately he was not told that these were new seventy to seventy-five foot circus cars – about twice the length of standard railroad cars.
By early morning the train was ready to descend the steeply pitched mountain. Following the engine were, in order, ten flat cars, three stock cars, a combination car, three sleepers and a caboose. Air brakes had been connected to seven cars. Hand brakes were applied by brakeman William Heverly, positioned between the third and fourth flat cars, and three other crewmen applied handbrakes between the combination car and the first sleeper, between the second and third sleepers and between the third sleeper and the caboose. The great, sinewy train started to drop down the eastern slope of the Alleghenies at exactly 5:09 A.M. Wilderness paralleled the track and the engine’s headlight cast an eerie glow as it bounded from tree to tree. As the train rounded the curves, the morning sun penetrated the dense spring foliage. The train began picking up speed as the brakes started to lose their hold. Propelled by the moving force and sheer weight of seventeen heavily loaded railroad cars, the train sped around Big Fill Curve, through Gardner and, with screaming wheels sparking, around Van Scoyoc Horseshoe Curve. Just ahead was a gradually curving two-mile section with an awesome 2.86 percent drop terminating in McCann’s Crossing reverse curve. A few performers, rousing from their sleep, could sense that something was wrong, that the train was out of control.
With the whistle shrieking, the train thundered across McCann’s Crossing and barreled into the second half of the reverse curve. The engineer felt a thump and, looking back, saw the tender, followed by car after car, bounce off the track and plunge down the forty-foot embankment, each car climbing over the next, whipping flesh with splinters and twisted steel. All cars left the tracks until the combination car slid broadside down the damaged railway with the sleepers almost miraculously coming to rest against it and spared the drop down the embankment.
There was a momentary, stunning and deep silence. The circus people, led by Walter Main, who had been in the rear sleeper, raced to the car exits and down the track to the wreck-strewn mountainside. At first Walter thought it was a hold-up, but when he passed the combination car he gasped in disbelief. Shocked and sickened, he surveyed the crushed remains of his beautiful circus and exclaimed, “We are ruined and our brave men are dead.”
From the injured and dying animals came low and pathetic moans. Bewildered wild animals staggered drunkenly, not realizing they were free. One tiger jumped at a zebra but the zebra escaped with only a few gashes. The tiger then killed a “sacred cow” and escaped. Both elephants stood quietly, pulling up dumps of bloodied grass and tossing them in the air. Monkeys and birds chattered continuously from their temporary roosts high in the trees. “Man Killer,” the ferocious ape, perched on a tree stump and hissed if the brave dared to venture near.
Inside the smashed cars was another story: inside were the injured and the dead. The circus people gathered around Main for instructions to bring order out of the tragic chaos. Mereb Main, Walter’s mother and circus bookkeeper, heard Frank Train calling from the crushed ticket car. She grabbed a broom and, swinging it about her, forged a path through the dazed wild animals to the car imprisoning him. A beam lay across Train’s sunken chest. Sensing his fate he whispered to Mrs. Main, “I am dying. Would you send my body and effects to my widowed mother in Indianapolis, Indiana?” When the beam was hoisted two hours later, he was dead.
Moments after the wreck, Engineer Cresswell hurried to the telegraph office nearby and reported the catastrophe. A wreck-train appeared at the site within two hours and railroad crews worked with the circus personnel to extract four bodies mangled in the wreckage. Although brakeman William Heverly, stationed on the platform of the third flatcar, Jumped when he saw the impending disaster, he was too late to save his own life. William Lee of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Barney Multaney, from New York, were laborers who slept in the wagons, now pulverized. A Jim Strayer from Houtzdale had joined the circus the day before and his was the last body retrieved from the destruction.
Meanwhile, the uninjured circus people were also busy rounding up the wild animals. “Man Killer” objected vehemently to each attempt to rope him, but by approaching him simultaneously from the front and rear. a lasso was eventually looped around his neck and he was tethered to a tree. Two lions were secured but a third had to be destroyed. Performers scoured the brush picking up snakes and the circus women comforted, as much as they were able, the injured and dying horses, many of which were performing animals. Among the casualties were the horses ridden by the legendary Tony Lowanda. Snowflake, the beautiful white stallion, was mortally injured, but Walter Main did not have the heart to destroy him; he died that evening. The marauding tiger that had dispatched the sacred cow did not end his menacing foraging. Escaping the area, he stole stealthily to a farm where he killed a cow being milked by a Miss Friday. Responding to her screams. a neighboring farmer and good marksman shot and killed the tiger while it devoured the still quivering flesh.
Harry Snyder, the young eyewitness to the devastation, heard a rap on his door and urged his mother to answer the snake charmer’s request for coffee. Coffee was generously given and in return the charmer took the young boy to the site of the wreck. A lion was tied to a tree nearby but she said, “Don’t be afraid – the lion is as scared of you as you are of the lion.”
Ear1y in the afternoon a special train arrived to transport the injured to the Altoona Hospital. News of the wreck reached Tyrone and thousands visited the site. Many residents and businesses offered help; private homes were made available to the performers and business places invited the circus people to take what they needed, all without charge. Railroad officials met with Walter Main and assured him the company would cover all costs for the restoration of the circus train. Rebuilding and refurbishing the train exceeded $200,000.
By late afternoon large tents had been erected to temporarily shelter the circus workers and feed the animals. Arrangements were made to accommodate sixty-five show people at the Empire House in Tyrone. The wrecking crew continued searching for bodies and by late evening determined that all had been recovered.
Early on Wednesday the grisly task of burying the dead animals in a large trench began while cages were repaired for the captured animals. Wrecking crews began returning cars to the track in preparation for their move to Altoona where seventy workers had been assigned to make repairs. Repairable wagons and cages were also to go to Altoona. Late that evening the three circus train sleepers were moved to the Tyrone station but circus performers and workers stood silent watch at the wreck site to feed and take care of the animals.
The body of Frank Train was placed aboard the Pacific Express West while the circus’s first band played “Nearer Mv God to Thee.” At four o’clock the body of brakeman William Heverly was conveyed to the Tyrone Cemetery accompanied by the sorrowful strains of funeral dirges rendered once more by the first band. Tyrone residents again lined the street to the cemetery an hour later when McNutt’s Negro Band, the circus’s second band, lead the cortege bearing the bodies of William Lee and Barney Multaney. While the band offered solemn dirges, Lee and Multaney were laid to rest as honored members of the circus family.
Yet one more death took place at the wreck site. Robert Gates, a member of the wreck crew, was killed when a rope snapped and struck him.
That same afternoon, Dr. E.D. Colvin, assistant manager, W. Fred Aymar, press representative, and J.D. Harrison, correspondent for the circus, established temporary circus headquarters in Tyrone. Coroner Michael Poet immediately impaneled an inquest jury which he convened at 7:00 P.M. Testimony was presented by Engineer Cresswell who reported that the circus train departed Summit at 5:09 A.M. with seventeen cars and a cabin and wrecked forty-six minutes later while running at 25-30 miles per hour. Just before the accident Cresswell noticed a slight jump of the train; then something on the first car broke, causing the tender to tear loose. He moved the engine a short distance, stopped and then hurried to the telegraph office to report the wreck. He further testified that he had felt no alarm for the safety of the train which was running at a speed not unusual. All crew members agreed with him. Conductor Snyder stated that the train was properly and thoroughly inspected and only after such an exhaustive inspection did he agree to take it down the sharply sloping mountain. Everyone in the railroad crew believed the accident was unavoidable.
Tyrone became the hub of activity for the circus people who were openly received by the concerned townsfolk. The Tyrone Herald editorialized:
The Company one and all are perfect ladies and gentlemen and by their conduct have greatly endeared themselves in the hearts and sympathies of our people in their great misfortune, and if they should see fit to remain here and organize and give one or two or three exhibitions, their canvas would not hold the crowds which would come to see them.
By Thursday, June 1, order was coming out of the gruesome chaos. Arrangements were made to erect the big circus tents in Conrad’s Park on East Twelfth Street with the horses and other large animals to be housed in the 150-horse Sheridan Troop Armory located adjacent to the park. Just one block away was the Empire House where many of the performers were guests.
Thursday night at seven o’clock the inquest reconvened and 600 people thronged the Sheridan Armory to hear the continuing testimony. William LaRae, acrobat and clown, musical director Franklin M. Long, J.D. Harris, a newspaper correspondent, William Burke, a night watchman (and former railroader who said the train traveled at 45 miles per hour), teamster George Meadville, and Philip Heidenfelter all believed the train was running too fast for safety. They testified to a rocking motion of the sleeping cars.
The big top was in place by Friday afternoon and performers once again practiced their acts. During the weekend the military circus band played a concert at St. Matthew’s Catholic School and offered spirited music between innings at the athletic grounds where the Tyrone team was taking the measure of the State College boys. Horses began arriving from the Indian Buckskin Bill’s Wild West Show which was stranded in Indiana (Pa.) without funds to continue its slated tour. Word was received that the Altoona shop repairmen, working around the clock, had completed repairs to eight flat cars. And frightening reports circulated that escaped wild animals were being killed, the most outrageous of which was a rumor of a panther bagged in Shamokin in northcentral Pennsylvania. It was believed that the panther had crawled into an open box car on a siding and was transported to Shamokin where it was felled crossing the railroad tracks. A more credible story, however, was of Arthur Gunsallus killing a black panther chasing cows on his farm in Bald Eagle.
The accident clid not inspire only good will. Frank Train’s prized gold watch turned up in the local pawn shop and was immediately sent to his mother. Just as mysteriously, a gold watch belonging to Heverly, the deceased brakeman, surfaced at the pawn shop and was redeemed and returned to his widow.
A third hearing was conducted by the coroner Friday evening. William Snyder was recalled and stated that air was supplied to seven of the fourteen cars. The engineer returned to the stand and denied that he had reversed the engine before the wreck or that he had said to young Manderville that he had looked for the train to go on the previous curve. Harry Miess, the fireman, also denied that the engine had been reversed prior to the accident. The jury met for the fourth and final time on Monday, June 5, and, after great deliberation, rendered the verdict that the accident was caused by the train’s rapid descension of the mountain.
The circus was making great progress in its speedy reorganization. It appeared that by Thursday, only nine days after the nightmare, performances would be given in Tyrone, followed by performances in Altoona. Red, white and blue posters appeared throughout the town triumphantly announcing the performances at the reduced admission of twenty-five cents per person. The placards boasted “Newly Equipped and Reorganized, Continent Menagerie, three complete circuses in one, twenty Fun Frolicsome Gowns and twenty Soul Stirring Races.” And Thursday found the great Walter L. Main Circus big top packed to capacity!
All of Tyrone waited in awe for the circus’s grand entry; they were not disappointed. The proud townspeople eagerly awaited their “reward” for having generously taken the circus into their arms. The show commenced to the strains of the circus’s military band and the fabled Lawanda once again rode horses bareback. Trapeze artists and trained animals entertained the delighted throngs. Following the antics of the popular Grotesque Renos. the much-anticipated Hippodrome Race concluded the giant performance. When the show ended, the performers bowed to thunderous and appreciative applause, tears flooding their eyes – tears of gratitude for the town that had embraced each and every one in his moment of misery.
Standing near the band and feeling the same tumultuous emotions was Walter L. Main. Years later he recalled, “After fifty years it is a solemn moment to tell you that I am still alive and well, and that after this half-century I have not forgotten the unselfish kindness and helpfulness on the part of your parents and grandparents during my dark hour of trial at the McCann’s Crossing, May 30, 1893, and to those who are still living and at the time rendered help and encouragement, I send a special message of thanks and gratefulness, hoping we can meet again.”
Early the following morning the circus was loaded onto its rebuilt cars and hauled to Altoona, where it was set up at the Millville Circus grounds. The parade was exciting, even though it would be another full month until all the wagons had been reconstructed and refurbished. Two performances on both Saturday and Sunday played to capacity audiences. On Monday, June 12, at approximately 2:45 A.M., the Walter L. Main Circus train passed through Tyrone on its way to Lewistown to resume the tour that had been so tragically interrupted thirteen days before. A few Tyrone residents kept an all-night vigil to wave to the circus people as the darkened train quietly glided by.
The Walter L. Main Circus returned to Tyrone two years later on Sunday, May 26, 1895, and the route book details the occasion:
This is a beautiful little city at the fool of the mountains, on Tyrone and Clearfield R.R. where two years ago on morning of May 30, the Walter L. Main Snow train was wrecked, six men killed outright, besides a dozen others badly injured. Sixty valuable horses lay dead in a space less than 100 feet in width, others wounded. Animals of all kinds roaming at large, with all wagons, cages and cars (except sleeping cars) broken in thousands of pieces. In circus annals this is known as the greatest and most complete wreck of a circus train in the world. The press throughout the country was given full details, which was covered in the Walter L. Main Route Book of 1894, and we think that a lengthy account at this date would be out of place.
The arrival of our train in Tyrone, this beautiful Sunday morning brought back to many the horrible scenes enacted here two years ago. Those who were with us in 1893, and are still with the circus, explained to our new comrades with greatest eloquence, of the kind of treatment they all received during the eight days they remained in Tyrone, from the citizens. Their doors were thrown open and all made welcome. In memory of those buried in Tyrone cemetery, a procession formed at 2 P.M. consisting of all attaches of the show. headed by Prof. F. Mont Long’s Military Band, and marched to Tyrone cemetery, to decorate graves of the two unfortunate canvas men and William Ebberly [Heverly], of the railroad, who lie buried there. At Tyrone cemetery this procession was met by over 3,000 citizens, who climbed the hill in advance. Appropriate remarks were made by an accompanying clergyman. Singing by lady members of the company, music by the band, graves were strewn with flowers, and men bowed with heads uncovered. The scene was a sad one, and each seemed deeply affected. In the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Main and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, drove out to the spot four miles distance, where the wreck took place. Nothing remains to mark the spot, except a few pieces of broken wagons and cars.
The route book entry for May 27, 1895, records:
There is no town or city in America where the Main show stands higher than in Tyrone, and this was proven by the fact that today we did the banner day of the season so far in 1895. Everyone from the country seemed to be in. “Little Daisy,” the pony, was the center of attraction in the menagerie. She was born the day preceding the wreck, and her mother was killed during the wreck and was adopted by another pony who lost her colt. Walter L. Main left at 5 P.M. for Geneva, Cleveland and Chicago.
Walter L. Main continued his circus until 1905 when he leased or sold his animals and equipment, but he periodically reentered the circus business. The King Brothers Circus leased the show title between 1918 and 1925. In 1930 Main owned and operated a “Motor Circus” which he leased in 1931-1932 to James Heren. The last visit of the circus occurred in 1937 and, at the end of that year, Main retired forever from the show business circuit. He died November 29, 1950, at the age of 88.
The Tyrone-Clearfield branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad was closed in 1970 and a few years later the railroad tracks were uprooted. With a four-wheel drive vehicle it is still possible to travel the old roadbed and experience the frighteningly steep grades and perilous curves that caused the annihilation of Main’s great circus train. A monument stands at the site of the wreckage and a housing development has been built near the land where the crashing cars eventually rested.
Why did the train derail?
A theory proposed years later claimed that the huge elephants shifted and their weight caused the first car to topple off the track. Even Walter L. Main somewhat concurred. But this answer remains rather questionable because in most rail circuses, elephants were transported in a stock car at the far rear of the train. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt, even today, that the train was going much too fast for such a mountain passage. Speed was the real killer.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the wreck, Archie Royer, principal clown of the 1893 circus, offered his version of the “Wreck of the Great Main Show”:
Wait a Minute – let me see
Yes, Decoration Day 1893
Just 50 years ago that would be
It’s the date of the wreck of the Great Main Show
I was there so I guess I ought to know
5:30 in the morning it struck this blow
There were 7 good men all killed outright
I’ll never forget that awful sight
A hundred horses and animals died
30 cars went over the mountain side
The entire show was a tangled mess
I never saw the like I must confess
Frank Train our Treasurer died in the smash
He sold the tickets and handled the cash
Those men all died right where they lay
Never even had a chance to pray
It was the saddest event of my life I know
That terrible Wreck of the Great Main Show.
For Further Reading
Aungst, Dean M. When the Circus Came to Town. Lebanon, Pa.: Applied Arts Publishers, 1969.
Bogue Virgil T., and Alice Bliss, comps. “Early Circuses of Ashtabula County.” Ashtabula County Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 13. no. 4 (December 1966).
Fox, Philip Charles, and Tom Parkinson. The Circus in America. Waukesha, Wis.: Country Beautiful, 1969.
____. The Circus Moves by Rail. Boulder, Col.: Pruett Publishing Company, 1978.
Fred E. Long is a retired engineer of the Bell Telephone company of Pennsylvania with a long-time interest in local history. A past president of the Blair County Historical Society, he is currently vice-president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies and a member of the board of directors of the Railroaders Memorial Museum and Fort Roberdeau. He developed an interest in circuses as a playing member of the “Windjammers,” an organization dedicated to the preservation of circus music.