The Doodlebug Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- "On the 31st of July, 1940, a gasoline powered passenger rail car, commonly known as a doodlebug, set off on a routine journey between Hudson and Akron, Ohio, with 46 people on board..."
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:36 - Background
02:42 - The Doodlebug Disaster
07:47 - The Aftermath
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
SOURCES:
► "'Human Element' Blamed for Railroad Wreck; Forty-Three Killed in Crash Wednesday Night. Riders in Coach All Met Death" published by the Piqua Daily Call, August 1940. Available via: greenerpasture.com/Places/Sho...
► "Cleveland's Greatest Disasters: 16 Tragic True Tales of Death and Destruction - an Anthology" by John Stark Bellamy, published by Gray and Company, November 2009. Link: www.google.co.uk/books/editio...
► "Coming off the rails: Ohio history filled with train crashes and derailments" by Gary Brown, published by The Canton Repository. Link: eu.cantonrep.com/story/news/l...
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
Having watched so many of these, I've come to the conclusion that "cost-cutting measures" may be the most lethal phrase in history.
Absolutely
And to this day the railroad industry has learned nothing.
@ORLY: Oh, they have. They've learned to hire better lawyers!
Yeah and it ends up costing far more than doing it right would have.
You're not wrong.😓
The bodies being fused to the seats from the heat is an absolutely nightmarish detail. Horrifying.
Search for TAM 3054 Aircraft crash.
Reminiscent of the Carrollton bus disaster, forty years later.
@@MightyMezzothat's what I thought of too, with the highly volatile gasoline instead of diesel, and ensuing immediate overwhelming fire
Heard stories from my grandfather and my dad from their time in the fire service. Commonly the bodies are called "crispy critters". The silly name is a bit of a trauma cope...
I’ve seen something similar in a car accident back in the early 00’s there was a suv that took the exit I’m guessing to fast rolled it a few times it caught fire and burned a whole family of 5 I believe and I remember me and my mom driving by and they didn’t have the carnage blanket up yet so we could look in and see the 2 adults burned to a a crisp still smoking and I remember clearly that the seatbelt had fused into the body because of the heat I’ll never forget that one I was 13-14 when it happened
Had a CO leak in an old car once - shit’s SCARY. If he’d been experiencing that the entire time he’d been driving the doodlebug, there’s no way in hell I’d blame him - unless you begin to recognize the symptoms there’s no other obvious way of knowing - and it’s Horrifying
There’s an old story posted to Reddit of a man who kept finding weird post-it notes all around his apartment that were obviously in his handwriting but that he could not remember writing. Things in his apartment had also been moved, again with him not remembering and similarly some things had been placed in strange places. He’d also had vague flu type problems but had put it down to bad luck.
Turned out to be a CO leak and things like the notes and the feeling of flu were all likely symptoms. The source of the CO was an old boiler.
@@eliz_scubavn It's incredible how weird things get with CO poisoning, from a phenomenonlogical stand point a significant percentage - even perhaps most - hauntings and other paranormal experiences can probably be blamed on CO leaking from faulty boilers and furnaces.
Can you elaborate what it was like? Did it effect you only while driving? Did you know after just one drive or did it take more times?
All those math questions about trains departing such time and speed, when do they cross, suddenly have a more serious context
I immediately thought of those when he first mentioned departure time
I was thinking this too!
I sucked at those. i’d be the one who ran into the other trai.n 😮😮😮
@@peterf.229 Same... there's a good reason why I avoided jobs that involve maths of the life and death variety 😬
I'm sure maths students would pay more attention if it stated at the beginning "this is NOT a hypothetical question"
The part about the middle school project that lead to the monument is sorta sad. All that time and it finally took some pre-teens to get people to honor the tragedy.
Only 65 years after is too long of a wait? *sarcasm*
remember, the people alive at the time want to forget, it's too new for their children, and their grandchildren discover the interesting history their grandparents lived through and ask why they hadn't;t heard about it in school.
Yes, but it’s great that middle schoolers were interested and compassionate enough to want a memorial. The monument to another American transportation disaster was also studied by local middle schoolers and designed by them, the flight 191 disaster of 1979 in Chicago. It took forty years for a memorial to be made. Many of the relatives, like 911, had nothing to actually bury since it predated DNA and some remains were never identified or even found.
Knowing middle schoolers, this isn’t unusual. They are generally interested in local history, events to which they can relate by familiarity with actual survivors, artifacts, and places. Plus, they’ve just come of the age where they recognize loss for what it is and realize they have some power or influence to impact the world outside of their families or individual classrooms.
I’d be willing to bet that those kids were doing a National History Day project and pushing for a memorial after learning about the tragedy for their project was a natural progression. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the theme for that year had been Triumph and Tragedy in History.
It's disturbing that they concluded that the engineer was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning while operating the train but the railway wasn't held responsible for that
I thought the same thing.
Different times, it wouldn't be fair to blame a company when such small details were present and overlooked everywhere. Technology was not that advanced and safety regulations were loose or inexistent.
But they definitely should've been held liable for removing the signal boxes.
If that avenue had been pursued then it would have been more of a manufacture fault than the operating company.
Is/was there any possible source of CO in London Underground trains? Maybe that could explain the 1975 Moorgate tube crash.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorgate_tube_crash
Hi, they didn’t conclude it was a case of carbon monoxide poisoning. Investigators ‘suggested’ it ‘may’ have been that. I can think of many other equally plausible explanations involving simple human error. We will never know why he didn’t stop where he was supposed to. Terrible tragedy.
This is surreal. I'm sitting right next to the Doodlebug crash site and memorial in Cuyahoga Falls as this video notification popped up. Just happened to be catching up on paperwork at the end of my shift.
What a remarkable coincidence
Serendipity! 😎
Hudsonite here, it's so weird seeing this video pop up and detailing a tragedy that happened literally minutes from where I live.
But it is a sobering reminder that any tragedy can happen anywhere.
Yeah it crazy when things like that happen
Hey I work in Cuyahoga Falls too!😂
Things that surprised me about this video:
1. The incident occurred in 1940 yet the 'doodlebug' mentioned was not a V-1 flying bomb.
2. The 'smoking section' aboard the gasoline-laden carriage was not responsible for the fire.
3. They didn't pin it on Murtaugh but actually accepted that he was impaired by CO fumes.
Seeing the title of the video I first thought it was somehow related to the V1s until I saw the date (V1s were only fired in June 1944 not long after D-day)
There’s something strangely ironic in your comment. You listed the elements for a perfect storm yet the worst case scenario didn’t happened because of the most obvious and preventable problems. Doodlebug was a project born to end in a disaster, in this case the train wreck just happened before what you listed could happen with the same outcome of the train wreck.
I'm surprised that the entire thing wasn't the "smoking section".
@@SalisburySnake 1940 tabacco comapnies havent lobbied to make everything a smoking section yet, that happened in the 50s.
Having survived CO poisoning when my house caught fire, I was so out of it that I went right back inside to try and save my gargantuan goldfish. No one in their right mind just casually strolls into a burning house like that. So, the moment you said the driver had been having headaches and memory issues, I was pretty certain you were going to say he'd been exposed to too much exhaust. The fact that he had any recollection of the incident is remarkable. Doodlebugs sound like they were a mass fatality incident waiting to happen.
Did you save your pet fish? Out of it or not, id go back for my dogs, it would be a "fuck this shit" moment for sure but id go back for them. If i had a fish that was like, well like a dog to me, as nuts as it would be trying to get the tank out, or just grab the bugger and run, i get that, i think id go back too👍
Never experienced that myself, but while I was at first critical of the driver for forgetting such a crucial detail (though naturally, that there is why redundancies are important), the likely possibility he had been suffering from CO poisoning explains a lot.
@@JoJubjub-kx8lp You can't know if you do it or not until it happens.
I hope the fish was okay
@@_kaleido of course it was fine. fish are fireproof.
You remove the signalman as a cost-cutting measure and a train goes through a signal and an horrific accident occurs. Who could have seen that coming?
Certainly nobody with dollar signs for eyes.
Certainly not the engineer, as there was no signalman to warn him of the impending disaster just down the tracks if he didn’t stop at the switcher.
There are no signalmen now. It was the way that things were going, elimination of an obsolete job.
@@GigsVTbecause we now have the tech, automation. People talk about tech and AI stealing their jobs but big companies don't care, and were already sacking folks and replacing it with nothing. So in this dystopia, automation is a better cost-cutting than neglect
It’s block singling for a reason
Given all the design flaws it's no wonder the "doodlebugs" were retired. It was a cute name though.
@classicmicrosopy: Not so cute here in the UK. During WW2 Doodlebugs were the V1 flying bombs used by the Germans. They also plastered parts of Holland too. Mainly Rotterdam.
The only real design flaw i see is improper exhaust for the engine
@@PercyPruneMHDOIFandBars Yes, was going to say, Doodlebugs were flying death bombs feared by millions over here! When that rocket ran out of fuel and cut out you just prayed that your name and your street wasn't on its payload. Remember my grandad describing the horror of those things very vividly and how one of them ended up killing his best school friend.
@@Ra-zoryeah, we hear stories about how you could hear the high pitched whine of them coming, but it was when they went quiet that you needed to worry. Scary thought.
@@paulrasmussen8953not crashworthy.
Today, Rail vehicles are designed not to impale one another in a head-on collision, for example with interlocking bumpers.
This would have avoided a punctured tank, too.
I grew up not far from Hudson in the 1960s, I had never heard of the "Doodlebug Disaster" until watching this video. I guess people just try to forget tragedy.
New tragedy is always waiting to take over.
If listening to videos on this channel has taught me anything. There have been a lot more disasters and tragedies than anybody could possibly remember. So unless you're directly affected by it, it's eventually going to pass into memory and then eventually be forgotten.
But as long as we don't forget the lessons we learned from these tragedies it's okay
Same! I’m from Mansfield and never heard of it!!
It happened right before WWII, with its own massive tragedies.
@@sister_bertrille911 That was my conclusion
For those who are wondering, the glorious Frankenstein at 0:50 is a Galloping Goose, 7 of which were built by the Rio Grande Southern Railroad in the early 1930s for work on narrow-gauge lines in very rural and mountainous Colorado. They were retired in 1952; six of the seven built still survive, and one is in active "service" as an amusement park ride.
$600,000 for the settlement or 13,953 per person in 1940. Inflated for 2023, PRR paid out a settlement of around $13,000,000 or $300,000 per dead passenger.
Thanks for doing the math on that. I was wondering what the equivalent would be in today's economy.
That's a surprising amount of money considering companies even today tend to pay very minimal amounts wherever possible.
@@Dat-Mudkip wrongful death settlement is about 1.5 million average these days. It is not cheaper now.
@@GigsVT The big keyword there is "average".
Yeah, and today that payout would never happen.
The lawyers would take most of the settlement,
but before that, a Higher Court would dismiss any Corporate guilt.
Granted, now a days, the families lawyers would sue the manufacturer of the coach, the engine, the gasoline, the seat company, the steel rail manufacturer, and even the stone company that the rails set on.
Under the any pockets, could be the deepest pockets to pay.
CO poisoning can be very unusual and frightening. There was a person on Reddit who was convinced people were breaking into their apartment and moving things around, but they couldn't catch them. An alert reader pointed out the various symptoms and circumstances sounded like CO poisoning and not burglary and it turned out there was in fact a leaky appliance slowly poisoning them. They were moving the items around themself and then forgetting about it due to the effects of the gas.
That is terrifying. I have a really bad memory, probably from OCD and anxiety/panic disorder and I've seriously wondered if I was being poisoned at some point. My memory used to be fantastic and I feel like I've lost brain cells over the years.
@@danakscully64 Have you had neurologists evaluate you, along with brain scans? There are medical conditions that can cause parts of your brain to atrophy.
@@EXROBOWIDOW I just started a new medication for my anxiety and OCD, so I'm hoping that fixes the problem. If it doesn't, I will definitely be pushing for further testing. My memory is not too bad when I go through waves of having less anxiety. I've been heightened for a few years and think that's the true culprit. Thank you
I remember that thread!
This was horrific, but I have to admit I’m surprised they didn’t charge the engineer to cover up for the Pullman company. You’d think with all that money on the line, they’d have blamed him instead of admitting it was carbon monoxide.
My bet is they wanted to but there was too much evidence against them
I'd have charged the engineer for failing do drive correctly
@@nzkshatriya6298the whole thing sounds like he was an otherwise competent and attentive driver who was not aware that he was impaired due to his hazardous work environment, gas is scary because most people won't notice they're impaired or that it's happening, especially if it's slow. He also had several supportive crew (the signalmen) removed from his structure, making it that much harder to prevent operator error.
Poor dude sounded like he really cared about his job and did not understand the situation for a long time, his mind was mush for awhile. It's not reasonable to blame one man when the whole system around him failed with him. Operator errors do happen, it is the responsibility of the system and the executives to make sure the system is protected against operator error. One person shouldn't be able to shit everyone's bed.
@@nzkshatriya6298 you should probably go google "symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning" to understand what happened here
The railroad spoke up immediately to acknowledge their crew's error caused the crash, so there doesn't appear to have been a general attempt to evade responsibility.
There's a lot of talk about lack of signalling on this section, but if the cause of the disaster was the driver being impaired by carbon monoxide poisoning that might not have helped, he might have driven right past a red signal. Though a red signal would be more likely to notice, at some levels of impairment he would have forgotten the stop order but seeing a red light glaring at him he would have had enough alertness to stop. But still, the carbon monoxide poisoning I think was a much bigger culprit than the lack of signals.
It’s not so much the red light. It’s the points and a barrier that stops the track. A precursor to our automatic breaking.
Then there’s the real time communication. Again which we have now.
X train went through the red signal so informs the other train and the doodlebug of it.
Head first near miss collisions aren’t rare on all transport types.
So all transport types from trains to buses to cars to planes have signals and signallers. And people to pull you over, clear the sky and get you to move or your plane to climb/descend when a crash is too close/the driver impaired.
@@philippal8666 barrier??? Sorry but on that line there were no automatic signals at all, so if the car ran a red light, nothing can be done about it.
Every tragic event that occured back then was overshadowed by WW2 I would expect so likely never recoeved the attention that they deserved
Same as the rhythm nightclub fire that killed 209 black Americans.
But the US didn’t join the war for another year. How much did it overshadow their news?
I mean, this disaster was something like eighteen months before the U.S. entry into the war.
Yeah, the 1938 New England hurricane (they didn't name hurricanes back then) was overshadowed by Hitler annexing the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia, and then the 1940 El Centro earthquake just two months earlier (M6.9) was overshadowed by the Nazis invading the Benelux countries.
In Oct 1945 there was a disaster in Blissfield Michigan where a truck carrying German POWs serving as farm workers failed to stop at a crossing and was hit by a train. 16 POWs and two US army guards were killed. That has also pretty much been forgotten, although I believe it was the single worst disaster involving Axis prisoners on US soil. The case is especially sad since the war was already over by this point and plans were being made to ship the Germans home.
For anyone curious, a number of Doodlebugs are actually still around both at museums and tourist railroads as well as those owned by a company called Sperry Rail. These Doodlebugs have been extensively modified for use in track inspection.
I saw sperry 144 at Brunswick
The Wilmington and Western railroad in Delaware has a Doodlebug in service it has two Cummins diesels in it.
So nice of the kids and that class to finally make a memorial…..hopefully some of the surviving family members enjoyed it.
I doubt they enjoyed it, but probably appreciated it.
Well, this is absolutely horrific.
And yet, quite appropriately, fascinating.
@@LiamMonticelliI don't know what else we expected. 🤷♂️ It's the least click-bait channel on RUclips (other than "magnets clicking together")
Also, I do not want to see a Fascinating Horror crossover episode involving millions of tiny magnets.
As soon as you said the doodlebugs ran on Gasoline, my heart sank. I just knew what was coming, all those people incinerated, a horrific way to go.
I just hope their passing was quick or the smoke got them first.
My Dad and Grandfather were in a nearby hardware store when the collision happened. They witnessed the fire and aftermath. Both talked about it on the anniversaries of the event for the rest of their lives. Dad said it was worse than anything he experienced in the Marine Corps or his time with the Ohio Highway Patrol. He was pretty had bitten, but that crash bothered him for 77 years.
i live in maui and we just had the lahaina fire and im sure one day itll be a video by you becasue the whole thing reeks of officials imcompotence just like alot of the disasters you cover
Oh god reading the accounts of those fires was absolutely awful. Aroha to you from New Zealand.
@@LittleKiwibear yeah the whole island is hurting we lost a lot of people and alot of historic buildings
Having watched so many rail disaster videos I wonder how my grandfather survived. He was born in 1908 and had a successful printing business with plants in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and several east coast states. He didn't trust planes, he died in 2006 and never set foot on an airplane, so he would take trains to the east coast plants. He used trains for the better part of 35 years, finally stopping in the early 70s when the printing business started to slow down.
Remember that no one remembers the routine rail journeys.
A bit of historical irony I know is that according to family lore, my great grandmother was riding on a train in the Midwest when she first heard the news of the sinking of the Titanic.
Trains are safer than road vehicles and more survivable than planes, so... nothing special about that.
My great grandfather was in charge of this district of the PRR. The area covered Akron, Cleveland and Youngstown area. My moms birthday is why he wasn't on board the train that day to go to his office.
Are you claiming that a man took the day off work in 1940 because his grandchild was being born or having a birthday? People don't even do that now.
@SorenCicchini well, Great Grampa Roach was like that.
@@SorenCicchiniPeople had better jobs back then that were more supportive.
@@ferretyluv Hahaha!
I'm 75+ and I can still remember the Doodlebugs on the Santa Fe and Burlington tracks passing thru Grundy County Ill.; even traveling on the Santa Fe units with dairy, poultry, mail and of course many fellow humans. It was a blast! Thanks for your video!
The first time I heard of this was when the monument was put up. Horrifying crash. Reading the stories told by witnesses who saw people they knew burning up was heartbreaking.
One minor point. Other than urban mass transit systems, very few rail lines in the US are electrified. Now, they are primarily powered by diesel-electric locomotives. In 1940, they were still using steam locomotives. I don't know for sure about the line where this accident occurred, but my guess would be that the freight train was powered by a steam locomotive, not electric.
That makes sense to me -- there are a lot of railroads where I live (like a LOT) and I was just thinking that many of them aren't electric, except maybe some commuter trains. The slow freights are diesel here, and there aren't even wires above them like on the multi-use rails.
What's wild is that around that time there were extensive electrified lines throughout the Midwest. My state of Indiana was covered in them, and you could ride electric interurban trains all over the state! Sad to think about how we've lost all that in the intervening years and how it led to the decline of so many small towns 😞
But there were more electrified lines on main RRs than now. The urban rail line crossing Cleveland was electrified. And two sections of Milwaukee Road too. In fact, that lines wre dieselized because of stupid actoions of management.
Wikipedia confirms that the other engine was steam. Pennsy class I1, for anyone who cares.
This train departed from my hometown. Disasters like these are one of the big reasons I went into the safety field. If we don't learn from the ghosts we already have we're gonna make more ghosts... another excellent compilation and narration made even more powerful because of its proximity to home.
That is to your great credit.
'Doodlebug' is a broad slang term that historally has been used to refer to many autonomous inventions. It's actually a happy coincidence that almost all those autonomous items vaguely resembled beetles and moved relatively slowly - characteristics that you'd commonly expect from early 20th-century mechanical contraptions that were built to move on their own accord.
The most well-known example obviously being the infamous WW2 V1 rockets.
How many of these "Doodlebug" designs were - intentionally or not - deadly?
I always thought it meant someone who likes to doodle (draw informally).
You clearly don't know your trains. It is a very specific term in that regards.
@@rocknewtonfilsterwilly7364 I think they were saying that the term was applied in numerous contexts, not just trains. Perhaps very specific in the train context, but "doodlebug" was used to mean other things in other contexts.
@@quillmaurer6563 The subject is a train was my point.
I can’t fathom the amount of exhaust fumes from that engine back in 1940, even today gasoline powered rail cars are nauseating with cleaner fuels.
Where do they even have them now? I didn't know they ever existed until this video
Leaded petrol too (Which smelled good by the way).
@@nthgthmainly track maintenance vehicles, they have designated generators for propulsion. So do catenary maintenance vehicles, very nauseating.
Sounds like a major design flaw, if he could gotten exposed to the exhausts to this extent.
Also bless those kids for making the memorial happen.
Exhaust getting into the cabin isn't a design flaw, it's a malfunction. Exhaust leak. It happens. Presumably the rest of the exhaust gases also leaked into there so it should've been obvious that repairs were needed from the smell
@@nthgth Then at least there should have been a protocol in place that employees that experiencing health issues that could be linked to CO poisoning have to report them immeadeatly.
@@nthgth it was a design flaw, the gasoline engine was in the same compartment as the driver. The intention was so that the engine would be readily accessible for maintenance. Unfortunately it exposed the motorman to CO fumes.
@@formdusktilldeath true
@@jefferyindorf699 if an exhaust leak was part of the design, then it was a design flaw.
Most likely though, the design called for an airtight seal from the exhaust ports all the way to the end of the exhaust pipe, which would not expose the motorman to any CO unless something failed (exhaust manifold gasket probably)
A system that relied on the actions of one man was a single point of failure. The signal operators who reminded him to enter the siding provided redundancy, but this had been removed due to cost cutting. It seems obvious now!
Who could have predicted that slashing staff to cut costs would lead to accidents? What a shocker. :P
Not staff cuts per se but p-poor systems of control . . .
at the exact moment you uploaded this, I think my neighbor's dog was killing a raccoon. So I'm still recovering from hearing that at 2am, but also now I know what sacrifice it takes to summon a Fascinating Horror vid
Jesus
The vids are so good throw a few more over the fence.
I have to go out with the dogs at night to keep them from killing critters in the back yard.😣 One thing I am so looking forward to is the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, when all these rascally critters will get along and no one has to referee them.👀🙂
Good dog
Omg I was awake because of a raccoon gang fight!!!! It must be raccoon rumble season!! Are you in Cali??
It’s great people in the community were able to get a memorial for those who lost their lives, especially after the disaster had been forgotten.
yea.. only took KIDS over 65 years after the fact, kinda sad no one took initiative before that..
It’s crazy to see a map of the US with so many train lines
Crazy, and also upsetting.
Why is that crazy? It’s a huge country
@@rapman5791because most of them don't exist any more
@rapman5791 because we have gone backwards. A dense network of passenger rail doesn't really exist anymore in the US.
Oh, absolutely. Train lines went through every small town, in essence. Grain elevators were all over the place. I grew up just outside a town of about 800 and there was a RR grade that hadn't been used since--I'm guessing--the 1940s, but it's still plain as day if you look at a map.
I live only 30 minutes from here. It's kind of surreal how everybody in the Akron Metro area seems to not know of this incident.
Amazing job as always, and keep being awesome!
Thank you for this video. I had no idea there was such as thing as a doodlebug, and no idea there was such a crash. It brings to mind all of the recent rail crashes and misbehavior rail companies.
I know this is a serious video but hearing the narrator say "doodlebug" is definitely a highlight of my day
It was cute, wasn't it?
"Diesel trains are still used in many parts of the world" is a funny way of saying that diesel trains do all the heavy shipping throughout the us and Canada. Not sure about the rest of the world. Uk is probably too small, i think Australia uses those weird diesel cabs with like 23 trailers Daisy chained.
He talked about electric freight trains, but there are very few of those in the US. I know of one electric line in Arizona that hauls coal from a mine to a power plant, but nearly all of the inter-city freight trains in the US are diesel powered. In 1940 they were still using coal-fired steam locomotives.
@@russlehman2070how typical of america to be slow to adapt a much superior technology 😂
Diesel locomotives. A train is pulled by a locomotive.
Yeah, I live in the States and there are a LOT of freight trains in my area -- and I was thinking about how none of them are electric. I think the commuter trains here are electric, but certainly not the slow freights. They're still diesel.
@@yeoldeseawitch Superior in places where everything's close together. Not superior when you're outside the densely populated areas.
Unbelievable that they had a single line stretch of track without interlocking on the signals.
I think this is still done to this day on ligher-traveled sections and branch lines. Though now there's radio to communicate. Though come to think of it even if there were signals it probably wouldn't have helped if the driver was impaired by carbon monoxide poisoning.
There was a head on freight train collision in the 1980's in Colorado, which burned an overpass on a major highway, on a stretch of track that had no signals. They relied on a handwritten log stored in a locked box on the siding where one of the trains was supposed to wait for the other to pass. The crew of one train was supposed to stop and make an entry in the log book. The crew of the other train was supposed to stop on the siding, check the log book, and proceed if the first train had passed, otherwise weight until that train had passed. On the day of the accident, they misread the previous day's entry as being for that day, and went ahead, resulting in the crash.
Unbelievable indeed. UK covered this early in railway history . . .
I'd never heard of this disaster - you always bring to light the fullness of human arrogance, ignorance, and hubris. Thank you.
Never in my life, have I heard of a Doodle Bug! Learn something new everyday. ❤ Thank you FH! ❤ You always bring us such interesting and tragic stories.
Neither had I. In fact, when I saw the title of the episode I thought it was about an amusement park ride.
It's so crazy you are talking about this! I pass by the Doodlebug memorial everyday for work. Its so close to where I live. I didnt know of the accident til I moved a few years ago.
Props to the class of 13 year old Sill Middle School Students who spurred the building of this memorial. I hope there were some relatives of the victims alive to see it installed.
Ugh! How horrendous! It's unimaginable to burn to death.
Think of how hot a bonfire is. You get too hot, you have the option of stepping away. Imagine NOT having the option. Just terrible.
Another tragic story that I had never heard of. Kudos to the students who sought to construct the memorial.
I literally just started the video and I can't get over the fact that a Doodlebug is a real thing. That's my dog's nickname.
Iirc doodlebug a were the name given by the British to the V2 rockets in WW2. They were pilotless German rocket bombs which made very little sound.
How'd he get that nickname?
@@Coygon it's a little lady dog who got the nickname because she looks like a classic Poodle mix. Poodle mixes are often called Doodles. The bug half is a common nickname suffix where I am and is often used to describe something as cute.
@@3Lap My grandpa (I'm British) used to tell a wartime story about when he was driving a truck back to base and heard a motorcycle coming up behind him. I guess his mirrors didn't give a great view so he pulled over to one side and waved the motorcycle past, and as it passed him he discovered it was actually a Doodlebug cruising along. I never did figure out if it was cruising at street level or if it was higher up and he'd just mistaken the noise somehow. But I guess that's about the speed they travelled at!
A few details about the Doodlebug, or *Buzz Bomb* :
• It was the V1, not V2.
• It was a Luftwaffe project, and one of the first standoff weapons (yes, they sometimes launched them from HE-111 bombers)
• They were loud; emitting a constant droning sound, until the motor cut out and you knew to take cover.
• The first one to reach Britain missed its intended target completely, and ended up blowing up a few mildly annoyed Spuds in a farmers field.
• They were fairly fast, as it took late model Spitfires, Mosquitoes and the few Gloster Meteor's available at the time to catch upto them.
• If hit by AAA or a fighter's guns, the V1 would violently explode, so RAF pilots preferred to either tip them, or shoot at angles were they weren't in the V1's wake at the time.
It's amazing how many times "cost cutting" has directly or indirectly resulted in disasters and death.
I only knew of doodlebugs from the v1 flying bomb, known as the doodlebug. I believe it is an ironic moniker.
I know EXACTLY where this crash site is because I go over and by that stretch where it becomes single track at least once a week. EDIT…nevermind…I know where the tracks are , but there are new(er) tracks used. I still go by the decommissioned tracks at least a couple times a month.
I've lived in Cleveland all my life and only heard of this through a local series of books on Ohio disasters . I think he's on Volume 72 or so by now
Who's the author? I'm also in Cleveland and I'm interested in the local history.
@@rokronroff John Bellamy
Volume 72?? God damn. How much shitty things happened in Cleveland
@@jbroadbelt6 Every day is another disaster!
Saying this has been lost to history is an understatement. I've lived 45 minutes away from the crash site, in the Mahoning Valley, for almost 50 years. I have never heard anything about this. Thank you 👍! As always, great video!
Binge watching it all and can’t get enough! Please consider making a video on the Johnstown Flood and the failure of the South Fork Dam.
My nan was almost killed by a doodlebug. She lived in the East-end during WWII. As she was getting evacuated to Wales, A doodlebug hit the street she just left. 2 mins earlier and I'd never be seeing this video...
Was confused for a bit until I realized you were talking about a V1 and not a train.
@@kutter_ttl6786 I was confused that he wasn't talking about the V1 at first tbh
Was gonna say, I had no idea the LIRR operated these things -- then the mention of Wales, and ohh - they gave a terrifically adorable nickname to a consistent harbinger of death as well, across the pond.
Reminds me of the jitterbug disaster. Arms going one way, legs going the other. It was horrible.
Lol 👌
But something's doodlebugging me
Something ain't right
My best friend told me
What you did last night
You left me sleeping in my bed
I was dreaming
But I should've been with you instead
Doodlebugs became the precursor to the diesel-electric locomotive. They became very common during the 1920s and early 1930s. The red and silver Santa Fe unit you pictured was a high horsepower unit which eventually received a EMD 6-cylinder 567 diesel engine. It is still around in a museum. Doodlebugs and early diesel switchers helped the railroads move away from steam engines. Santa Fe’s M-190 helped develop Union Pacific’s M-10000 streamliner, while EMD and Budd developed the Burlington’s 9900 Zephyr.
Another excellent episode of a very tragic event, thank you Sir!!!🙏😢🚅❣️
🙏🙏❤️
Honestly a thoroughly interesting topic, still completely horrifying but still informational
It was nice the kids did memorial.. these things should never be forgotten. RIP 2 the victims of this tragedy 😢
Jeez, I was just through that very same area not long ago and had absolutely no idea that something as bad as this had gone on in the immediate vicinity!
They were also called to Doodlebugs because their lines on maps looked like the lines that Doodlebugs make in the sand..
Maybe proper safety measures cost so much for a good reason
I call my cat, Xavier, Doodle J. Bug as his nickname. But the story is tragic.
I grew up in Akron and I've never heard this story before. Absolutely terrifying.
I have never heard of "Doodlebug" trains..
This is a good story...thanks for the upload!
It's been enclosed off and it's not used anymore and a lot of trees have grown up around them but the tracks are still there.
Could the crew not have told others to jump out? Seems like that might've saved a few
There's only so many doors
I doubt there was enough time for anyone seated to make it to a door to jump.
All these companies that employ “cost-cutting measures” and then lead to loss of life like this should face criminal charges.
I couldn't even imagine a death like that. Just horrifying and so incredibly sad.
Good job to those students...
It bugs me immensely when people say things about "these kids today ... " We hear it for EVERY generation, and yet, there are examples like this that prove all "young'uns" aren't horrible, selfish brats. This is in recent memory (think after 9/11), so they were "Millennials" who are all supposed to be horrible selfish bratty jerks, if you listen to the older generations. Yet it was these kids who were able to start the ball rolling on a real memorial.
And this is why we should have good unions pressing back on corporate bullys
Unions these days are corrupt. They support themselves and not the members. Look no further than the teachers union, who pushes toxic gender ideology and pornographic books on 5 year olds.
They did, it was even mentioned in the video.
That there was a union and the layoffs happened anyway means the union was complicit.
@@nthgth sometimes their is nothing a union can do but highlight the potential problems.
Also it's almost certain that the driver would have been blamed and jailed if not for the union fighting for him and highlighting the petrol fumes issue.
I thank you for explaining in these videos the changes that came due to these tregedies. Keep up the good work!
My grandfathers nickname was doodlebug. My grandma called him Doodle. When he learned to crawl his mother said he looked just like a doodlebug. Never knew there were train cars that were named it as well
Doodlebugs were the name the British had for the pilotless rocket German bombs, officially called V2s. They descended almost silently
Might want to edit the comment, it's the V1 and its characteristic noise from the pulsejet engine that is called the doodlebug, or the buzz bomb.
launched by the nazis ironic that America let the nazis escape justice to get the plans for the v1 and v2 and used it to land them on the moon
@@siftervinnie2inNFSConfirmed. My parents both lived through WW2 and told me about these weapons.
The V1 (aka Doodlebug) had a very distinctive sound due to the pulse jet engine, but the noise also gave them precious warning to run to shelter. As long as the noise continued you were safe. When it stopped you knew its fuel had run out and it was only seconds away from falling out of the sky and exploding.
With the V2 there was no warning as their fuel was all expended during the launch and boost phase. After that they would silently follow a ballistic trajectory.
As it happened, when I first saw this video title, I thought it must be about the V1 bombs until I watched it, as I’d never heard of these US railcars until now.
@@Andrew-Kerr Me, looking at the title of this video: "Well I bet this happened in 1939-45..." I wasn't wrong, but I was wrong.
The American Doodlebug Beetle is famous for its loud buzz and erratic flight pattern, and so was the Nazi V1 cruise missile.
Some homeless person just tried to scale my patio and was screaming incoherent slurs.
Glad I got a Disturban vid to fall back asleep to :)
Wrong channel
Back when I was into model trains, I had an HO scale Doodlebug, never had a clue about this incident. Always interesting stuff on this channel, thanks!
I can't believe I've never seen or heard of a "doodlebug" or even the concept of such a thing in general.
The bugs are actually pillbugs, closely related to wood lice.
Earliest I've ever been
Same lol
Same, woke up at 1am an hour ago and couldn’t fall back asleep.
A fascinating analysis indeed. Somehow you’ve managed to sum everything up perfectly.
Fun fact- there was a group in the 90s called "Digable Planets" and they had a member called Doodlebug...
They had a single called 'rebirth of slick'
This is so well done! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you! 😊
Such a horrific event. I cannot even imagine..
Couple mistakes.
1:16 Most did NOT have a cab at either end. This prompted railroads to run them either in two unit runs with two railcars back to back, or have the engineer lean out the window when operating in reverse. The plan you even linked, doesn't have a cab at both ends. It does have windows, yes, but no controls.
0:45 They're not called "Gas Engines". They are either Diesel Railcars, or Gasoline Railcars.
2:23 Railroads used both written orders and signals. They weren't mutually exclusive. The railroad where the accident took place, used both, and there is some argument that it was a conflict in the written orders which caused the wreck.
5:27 You state it hit the front of the railcar. However images, and after accident reports note that it hit the REAR of the railcar. This actually came up in the investigation, as it was noted that the engineer was running in reverse, driving from the rear of the railcar, and is thought to have become disoriented from the gas fumes, as well as not being able to see down the length of the railcar. Your photo at 8:57 bears this out, as the compartment where the engine itself was housed, is untouched, and furthermore they recovered unburned papers from there.
Improper ventilation of the exhaust, removal of signalmen, this was a problem waiting to happen. Still the doodlebug was a cute locomotive
The best cost-cutting measure a corporation can make is to reduce the salaries of its top executives. It should never cut back on operational safety.
This channel is underrated. you should be at 5 million+ subscribers. love your approach. Thank you for the content.
👍👍❤️
Doodlebug is also a term in the US for farm tractors that were built from old cars, primarily during WWII as new tractors were not available.
Hey I actually live here in Cuyahoga falls and we used to swim in the river at the memorial park for the accident before they took the dams out and lowered the river
That's cool that a middle school assignment led to the construction of a memorial.
As a Brit that was born in a world of British Rail, that still had train wrecks(but they usually weren't from Profit grabbing Management)@ 69yrs old I now live in a Privatised Rail Network Country that is doing it's best to take us back to US 1940's railway management thinking(cut costs anyway possible)Charles Dickens the Famous Victorian writer was involved in a train wreck(pre BR)6th June 1865 in Kent UK, I have seen a BBC TV film supposedly written by Dickens About a ghost of a signalman, Trying to stop a wreck happening,
Got to make that sweet sweet profit. The thing people don't mention is that BR made a profit but it was always taken by the Treasury and there was never enough given back for BR to maintain and improve.
worth it for are brexit .
Bryan. You are referring to “The Signalman” written by Charles Dickens which is a really creepy ghost story It was published in 1886. No need to say “supposedly “
Ouch... I live in cleveland and have never heard of this. Absolutely chilling and horrible. I just shared this with a friend of mine who lives in Hudson & he's now watching/reading everything he can about it (it's new to him, too). Thank you! One thing - Cuyahoga is pronounced k-eye-uh-haw-guh LOL
I've never heard Cuyahoga pronounced that way and have many relatives in Cuyahoga Falls and the surrounding areas. Did a sanity check with Google and the most accepted pronunciation is K-eye-a-hoag-a, although there is some debate from local news outlets on hoag vs hawg. It appears the original Native American pronunciation lends itself to hoag, while it seems "west-siders" will be more likely to say hawg.
In school I heard about the Cuyahoga River and how it caught on fire in 1979, but I live in the East so we always pronounced it "wrong," I suppose.
I think most towns and areas may have a separate pronunciation if you're local vs. an out-of-towner -- the area where I live definitely does. :)
It's incredible that by 1940 it was still legal to operate a railway in the USA with no precautions against a head-on collision beyond a written crossing order. The risks of such systems were well known by the 1840s and absolute block working became compulsory on British railways in 1889, although by then most railways had adopted it years earlier.
This was a secondary line, not a main one.
My grandparents used to ride a Doodlebug to a restaurant several miles away. It was a fun and popular thing to do.
It’s always weird when I watch your channel and the topic is so physically close to home
What a shame. So much loss of life. This is such a history lesson watching these videos. If not for these videos so much history would have never been known.
Thank you ❤
Jumping through a wall of flame is badass
Thank you for doing a video on this!