A Scene Out Of Hollywood Railroad disaster in East Newport

by Brian Swartz

Early twentieth-century cinematic productions often incorporated a celluloid stunt equivalent to modern Hollywood’s perennial favorite, the highspeed chase — a car stalled on the railroad tracks as a loaded freight roars around the curve.

On film, the situation inevitably ended with the car’s occupants (including Laurel and Hardy on occasion) hilariously bolting for safety moments before the train’s engine sliced the automobile in twain. Maine audiences guffawed at such antics in the local movie theaters. Such a scenario was not funny for a Newport family, how- ever, after nightfall on Friday, August 10, 1934.

That evening, Samuel Buzzell had borrowed a car owned by Newport resident Clifford Wheeler. He was heading home with his wife and their four-yearold daughter, Lena, driving through East Newport in an automobile that, as events quickly revealed, was not quite running right.

After the next few minutes, the car would not be running at all. Buzzell slowed for the Maine Central Railroad crossing on the Bangor Road (now Route 2), but as he shifted gears the automobile stalled. Emulating an already legendary Hollywood situation, both car and occupants lay athwart a railroad track with the train acomin. The Buzzells could probably hear the rumbling train in the too-quiet August darkness. As Samuel worked choke and ignition, signal lights suddenly activated. Its engineers unaware of the problem, Maine Central Railroad train No.2, outbound from Bangor, approached the crossing. The Buzzells kept their cool that night. Samuel “told his wife to jump, and then grasping his child, he, too, abandoned” the car, a newspaper reported. After apparently handing Lena to her mother, an excited Buzzell bolt(cont. on page 44)

(cont. from page 43) ed eastward along the track, trying to flag the train and save the automobile.

He “tried to catch the eye of L. Clark, the engineer of the train, but was unsuccessful,” the press account recalled. His arms hanging limply by his side, a dejected Buzzell could only stand and watch helplessly as No. 2 lumbered past him and reached the crossing.

The locomotive smashed the car, tossing it high in the air and strewing bits of wreckage along the tracks for more than a thousand feet. The automobile, which “was completely demolished,” exacted its vengeance, damaging the locomotive tender so badly that the train could not pull into Newport for another hour.

The Buzzells escaped injury (“narrowly escaped death,” the newspaper stated), as did the train crew. East Newport residents got a rude wake-up call. Several people rushed outdoors to investigate the ear-splitting screech of shattered metal. More people gathered to examine the accident site. Three police officers (a state trooper, a Penobscot County deputy sheriff, and a Newport police officer) soon arrived to check for injuries and damage. Finding the Buzzells unhurt, the police officers cast a calming influence over the talkative onlookers.

No blood, only wreckage. The audience soon drifted apart in the bug-ridden darkness. Most people went home, but some volunteered to help clean up the railroad crossing. Some scrap metal undoubtedly vanished into local pockets as souvenirs. Wheeler had no car to recover, so whatever disappeared did not matter.

This was nothing unusual for Depression-era Hollywood, where trains and cars enjoyed a cinematic symbiosis. However, this was an exciting accident in Newport, where a train did not run over a car every day. A generation earlier, the train might have claimed a farm wagon at the crossing. In “modern” Newport, the train chalked up a car, but not its occupants.

Hollywood missed a truly memorable auto-train collision. Do