For its November program meeting the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back David Aitken to discuss one of Pittsburgh’s greatest disasters – the naphtha explosion in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Corliss Yard on May 13, 1902. A retired railroader, Mr. Aitken is one of my favorite persons. He made a memorable presentation to the Society five years ago on his book, “The Little Saw Mill Railroad: Its Life and Legacy”. He also is a major volunteer/re-enactor at Old Economy Village. We saw him at the Erntedankfest last month, depicting storekeeper and Society Trustee Romelius Baker. He reported that he was scheduled to perform as Belsnickle during Old Economy’s “Christmas in the Village”, but that we should be wary of an imitation Belsnickle there if we visited on Saturday afternoon. Sure enough, the one we saw was indeed a fraud; we caught him drinking bottled water!
Mr. Aitken began by describing the location of the disaster. In 1902 the Corliss Yard was a major facility on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Panhandle Division. In those days the Panhandle crossed the Monongahela River on the bridge currently used by the PRT light rail trains, followed the south bank of the Ohio to the east end of Brunot Island then up the Cork’s Run valley through the Sheraden neighborhood before entering a tunnel leading to Ingram and parts west. The Corliss Yard was located in the Cork’s Run valley and served as a classification yard.
He then explained the function of the classification yard, serving as a terminal for freight trains, a place where incoming trains were broken down into individual strings of cars and then recombined to form outgoing trains. The Chartiers Branch, through Bridgeville, was a major supplier for and customer of the Yard. A local freight coming down the Branch might pick up a string of coal cars at the Bridgeville mine and deliver them to the Yard where they would be added to a new outgoing train headed for their final destination. The Corliss Yard consisted of twenty-one parallel tracks, including four mainline through lines.
On Monday, May 12, 1902, a yard crew was moving a small string of tank cars containing naphtha when some minor incident caused one of the cars to begin leaking. Naphtha is a hydrocarbon, a light oil produced by the fractional distillation of petroleum, used as a fuel and as a dilutant for heavy oils. Its most common application is as lighter fluid, for Zippo lighters, for example. Its most relevant characteristic is the fact that it vaporizes at eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Consequently a sealed tank car would contain a combination of liquid and gas, and be highly flammable.
Realizing the potential hazard of the leaking car, the yard crew immediately began to move it away from the other tank cars. Unfortunately this forced them to pass a switch lantern. The lantern was illuminated by a flame to show the sense (green if normal, red if switching) of the switch. The lantern flame ignited vapors from the leaking naphtha, initiating a fire which quickly ran along the path of the spilled liquid. Following an explosion there were pockets of fire everywhere, including on nearby cars containing lumber, coke, and furniture.
When the Yard was constructed, a storm sewer was provided to replace Cork’s Run. Half a mile long, it exited in Esplen, a neighborhood on the south bank of the Ohio River. Large quantities of naphtha found their way into the sewer and vaporized when discharged from it, initiating another massive explosion. This one destroyed a hotel and a number of houses, causing numerous injuries and fatalities. Meanwhile, back at the Yard, the excitement had attracted spectators lining the tops of the hills on both sides of the valley. The final explosion, involving several tank cars, filled the valley with a massive flame that ran up both its sides wreaking havoc with the onlookers.
One of these onlookers was a prominent Bridgeville resident, Justice of the Peace Joseph E. Hanna. On that fateful day Mr. Hanna was in the city, serving on a jury in Criminal Court. On his way home on the train, he elected to get off at the Sheraden station and observe the burning tank cars. He was badly burned by the final explosion and moved to Mercy Hospital, where he died several days later. We speculate that he was a member of the Hanna family in Carnegie that helped so many Bridgeville Syrians, including Murray Toney, get their start in the dry goods retail business. Mr. Aitken reported that Mr. Hanna was buried in Melrose Cemetery.
It appears that the death total from this catastrophe was about thirty and that well over two hundred other persons were seriously injured. In today’s dollars the cost of the damage was four or five million dollars. One of the consequences of this event was the decision by the Pennsylvania Railroad to construct a modern classification yard (Scully) in the next valley (Chartiers) to the north, on the line of its subsidiary, the Pittsburgh, Chartiers and Youghiogheny Railway, in anticipation of the booming industrial development along the Chartiers Branch, especially near Bridgeville.
Our thanks to Mr. Aitken for an excellent presentation. January’s program will be presented by yours truly and will be a discussion of Bridgeville’s three railroads – the Chartiers Valley Railroad; the Pittsburgh, Chartiers and Youghiogheny Railway; and the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway. The meeting is scheduled for Sunday, January 29, 2023 at 1:30 pm in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department.