Bagley train wreck

The Bagley train wreck (also known as the Great Salt Lake wreck[2]) occurred in Utah, United States, on the morning of Sunday December 31, 1944. The crash killed 48 (some sources 50[3]) including over 35 military personnel[2] and injured 79 and involved Southern Pacific's Pacific Limited as it crossed The Great Salt Lake on the Lucin Cutoff.[4] It had left Chicago at 10 a.m. Friday, bound for San Francisco[5] and normally travelled in one long section, but on this occasion it was split into two, with the passenger train running ahead of the mail express.

Early that morning an unusually long and heavy freight train developed problems (unofficially a hot box[6]) whilst travelling west from Ogden. This required the first section of the Pacific Limited, which comprised 18 cars headed by SP GS-3 No.4425,[7] to stop and then proceed with caution. The second section, comprising 20 cars headed by SP Mt-4 No.4361,[7][8] apparently unaware of the problems ahead, continued at full speed.[9] At Bagley, a siding 17 miles west of Ogden, at 5.14 a.m. in thick fog, the mail express plowed into the Pullman car at the back of the passenger train. The Ogden Standard Examiner reported "The force of the impact sent another sleeping car smashing through the dining car and farther ahead slammed one coach into the wooden coach ahead of it. Cars of the mail express section piled up crossways of the track behind the engine, some of them sliding down the causeway embankment into water. Most of the dead were taken from the rear Pullman car and from the telescoped coach"[5]

At the site of the crash, the tracks run along a causeway across desolate mud and shallow water, so all rescue efforts had to come by rail. Two hospital cars were included in the passenger train manned by members of the Medical Corps and tended the injured until rescue trains arrived from Ogden.[6]

The official enquiry into the accident 'found that this accident was caused by failure to properly control the speed of the following train in accordance with signal indications.'[7]