Cyndea Wendell Presents An Excerpt Of "Dutchman's Curve, A Tennessee Story"
Photo by Ralcon Wagner, used with permisssion

Betsy Thorpe Speaks At The Dedication
Photo by Ralcon Wagner, used with permission

David Ewing and Brownie Spicer Address The Crowd
Photo by Ralcon Wagner, used with permission

I have not yet absorbed the perfection of yesterday's events and today's Dedication.
I need time to process my thoughts.

I am posting a report from Terry Coats

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It is 9:00 PM, July 9, 2008 in Nashville Tennessee. At about this time of night 90 years ago a wreck crew of the Nashville Chattanooga &St. Louis Railway finished clearing the tracks after an accident that occurred earlier in the day.

Fourteen hours before, at about 7:20 AM, the worst passenger train accident in American history occurred at a set of tracks called Dutchman's Curve, 4 1/2 miles west of Nashville. The wreck crew with the help of a 160 ton crane, (normally stationed 2 miles east of the wreck site at the company's "Shops"), cleared the tracks so the regularly scheduled night train to Memphis could make its way past the carnage.

Railroad Wrecking Crane

The site must have been horrendous. About one hundred and thirty people, forty of whom were NC&St.L employees were killed when two NC&St.L 4-6-0 Pacific's hit head on at a combined speed of one hundred miles per hour.

The sound of the collision was heard more than two miles away. It was reported that between ten
thousand and thirty thousand people came to either participate in the rescue and clean up, or to just look at the aftermath of the day.

A subsequent Interstate Commerce Commission investigation would conclude that the engineer and conductor of the Memphis bound train were at fault for not yielding to the superior Nashville bound train.

In June of 2008 a historic marker commemorating the wreck was placed on
White Bridge Road, in Nashville near Dutchman's Curve. The marker was dedicated today on the nintieh annversary of the Great Nashville Rail Disaster.More than seventy people attended the dedication. Among those present today were descendants of victims, and rescue workers,as well as local historians and State and City elected officials.

May those who lost their lives at Dutchman's Curve on July 9, 1918 rest in peace.

Terry L. Coats-VP
NC&StL Preservation Society

More information on the Dutchman's Curve train wreck is available at http://www.dutchmanscurve.com

Terry Coats is a railroad historian specializing in the history of Nashville's railroad, the NC&StL Railway.
For more information on the NC&StL visit http://www.nc&stl.com

Mr. Coats lives near Nashville and is currently writing a book titled " Depots and Other Structures of the NC&St.L Railway."