The Montparnasse Train Derailment

On This Day in History: October 22, 1895

Since the invention of the camera, we’ve enjoyed taking pictures of some catastrophic oopsie so the entire world can point at the image and say, “Ha-ha you fucked up.” A prime example from the nineteenth century was this fucking train.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 22, 1895--

It happened on October 22, 1895, in Paris at the Montparnasse train station. A train from Granville, which is on the coast in the region of Normandy, was in just a wee bit too much of a hurry. You know when you’re running late so you decide to drive faster to make up for lost time? That kind of shit kills people.

The train was several minutes behind schedule, so the driver was hitting the gas, or steam—howeverthefuck you make an old-timey locomotive go faster—and he also seems to have forgotten that the train possessed air brakes, because he failed to apply them and old locomotive #721 with its 131 passengers plowed through the bumper barricade, traveled across a hundred feet of station concourse, and crashed through a two-foot stone wall to nosedive into the street below.

No one died. On the train, that is. A woman in the street below took a train to the face. Actually, it was falling masonry that killed her, but dead is dead. Should have been her husband. It was her husband’s newsstand where she was holding down the fort while he went to get the evening papers to sell. He returned with what I’m sure was a what-the-fucking-fuck expression on his face, followed by “Ah! My precious newsstand!” Okay that’s mean, I’m sure he was very upset about his wife but it’s been over a century so I’m declaring it’s not “too soon” to joke about.

The train driver got two months in prison and was fined the modern equivalent of about a thousand bucks. The train company paid a settlement to the family of the dead woman and agreed to pay for the education of her two children and even said hey when they grow up we’ll give them jobs with our train company that killed their mom. Fuckin’ sweet!

It was an ordeal to lower the train to the street, but once accomplished they discovered it had suffered remarkably little damage. In the meantime, plenty of photos were snapped, including the one shown here, which became one of the most famous images of transportation fuckups in history.

Speaking of laughing at fuckups, nowadays you can watch all the fail videos you can handle, even with Australian-accented sweary commentary for added comedic effect. Were there video of this particular incident, I expect “Ozzy Man’s” review would sound something like Oi the train’s comin’ in too fast and what the fuck are air brakes and ah shit through the barrier and through the fuckin’ wall and ah Christ it’s destination fucked!

Oi! Get ya wee wankers a gift and buy ‘em both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.