Whitestone Landing station photographed c.1925 looking northeast towards the yard and end of the Whitestone branch at the water’s edge. Visible at the far left along the platform is “staff” Cabin W which housed the staff as well as a railroad telephone to prevent any further collisions along that branch. (J. V. Osborne photo-Art Huneke archive)

This photo was shot sometime after the 9/22/1913 collision after the car had been towed to Morris Park Shops for further disposition. The trains had their "cornfield meet" at 15 mph. Both motormen were killed. Info: Dave Keller

I’ve scanned the first portion of the ICC report for anyone interested in reading it. It gets extremely technical (i.e. boring) for us non-engineers so at that point I skipped to the very end and scanned the engineer’s summary and closing statement. The report follows George Ayling’s photos of the wreck. Info: Dave Keller

I recently acquired the official ICC report on this wreck and, despite George’s facts, which were obviously typical railroad-man rumor and hearsay of the day, the derailment was a result of defective rails. The reason George never photographed the locomotive, was that it and the first three cars were still on the tracks. Chances are, it was uncoupled from the fourth car whose rear truck had derailed, and left the scene to make way for the wreck train.

Had this happened today, the media would have been pouring all over the site with helicopter coverage and high-powered zoom lenses and we’d all be watching it on television.

Operator Ayling told me he found out soon afterwards that the wreck was a result of sabotage. He mentioned to me that the train was full of soldiers heading towards New York City and there were many, many injuries. It was later determined that there were 3 soldiers dead and 36 soldiers injured. He said at the time I spoke with him, that he never heard another thing about the wreck. For some reason, the railroad men never got the true story and it was kept quiet at the time. For many years afterward he was afraid to let anyone know that he even had photos of the wreck, for fear that he was breaking some sort of security. I managed to obtain the negatives from him before he passed away.

On April 15, 1918 one of many L.I.R.R. troop trains left Camp Upton and was heading westbound along the Main Line under the control of engineer Tom Kelly when it derailed at speed just east of Foot’s Crossing (the present day crossing of the Veterans’ Memorial Highway over the L.I.R.R. east of Central Islip).