100th Anniversary of New York Central Railroad Wreck Near Amherst

Willis Leiter postcard of the 1916 NYC railroad wreck
(Courtesy Ohiomemory.org)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the disastrous collision of three New York Central Railroad trains near Amherst, Ohio that took place early on the morning of March 29, 1916. Twenty-seven people died and almost 50 were injured in the horrible tragedy.

You can read excellent local coverage of the anniversary observance in the Amherst News-Times here, and in the Chronicle-Telegram here.

I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the local newspapers covered the disaster at the time it occurred, so I retrieved them from library microfilm. Below you will find the front pages of the Amherst Weekly News, the Evening Telegram and the Lorain Daily News. (Click on each for a larger version.)

If you look closely at the bottom photo on the front page of the Lorain Daily News of March 30, 1916, you can see that it is the same photo shown on the Leiter postcard at the top of this post.