![]() Then the trains backed slowly up the low hills to their starting points. ![]() The two engines, one green and one red and each pulling six cars covered with "gaudy advertising", slowly met at the point of collision to be photographed. Some 300 special policemen were brought in to keep order.Īlmost all train wreck fans were put on a hill at least 200 yards away for what the Dallas Morning News termed "a perfect view of the destruction." Only journalists were allowed to be within 100 yards of the track, for their own safety. A carnival midway sprang up, with medicine shows, game booths and cigar stands to entertain the spectators as they waited for the main event. An eatery was set up in a tent borrowed from Ringling Brothers circus. Workmen also constructed a grandstand for officials, speakers' stands, a platform for reporters and a bandstand. A special four-mile track was laid for the collision run, and telegraph offices erected and water wells drilled. Katy Passenger Agent William George Crush, for whom the event's site was named, had proposed the spectacle as a way to sell $2 per round-trip ticket from anywhere in the state. Advertised for months in advance, the event drew more than 40,000 spectators to a natural amphitheater formed in a shallow valley with hills rising on three sides. One of the most infamous publicity stunts of all time, "The Crash at Crush," took place about 3 miles south of West, Texas, featuring two locomotives of t he Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company (known as M-K-T or "Katy") intentionally set on a head-on collision course on Sept.
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