BNSF Chicago-Aurora Racetrack - Trains Magazine

On April 26, 1946, Naperville was the site of one of the worst train accidents in history. Two CB&Q passenger trains collided in the downtown area.

Naperville train crash remembered: 47 killed, over 100 injured

By Britt Carson, Chicago Sun-Times 

Calista Wehrli remembers the tragic day vividly.

On April 25, 1946, she was at her sister's house on Center Street. Her sister was getting her wedding dress hemmed, when they heard a thud. Wehrli was 20 and on leave from the Marine Corps Women's Reserve at Parris Island, S.C.

"I ran out of the house and from the porch I said, `Oh my God, there is a train sticking up in the air!' "

1946 COLLISION

It was Naperville's worst train crash. Forty-seven people died and about 125 were injured in the disaster, which made headlines across the country.

The Advanced Flyer and the Exposition Flyer had left Chicago's Union Station on different tracks at 12:35 p.m. that day.

The Advanced Flyer was en route to Nebraska and the Exposition Flyer [forerunner to the California Zephyr] was bound for San Francisco. The Burlington trains were traveling three minutes apart when they merged onto the same track a few miles outside Chicago.

Crew members of the lead train, the Advanced Flyer, reported seeing a large object shoot out from underneath one of the coaches. At 1 p.m., it made an unscheduled stop in Naperville for an inspection of the undercarriage.

Meanwhile, the Exposition Flyer was speeding along the track at an estimated 85 mph. The engineer, 68-year-old William Blaine of Galesburg, did not see the red signal lights or the red warning flag being waved frantically by the Advanced Flyer's rear brakeman.

The Exposition's fireman saw the impending disaster. He jumped from the speeding locomotive and was killed when he hit the ground.

'TAKING OUT DEAD PEOPLE'

The Exposition slammed into the Advanced Flyer.

"That last train car was peeled like a banana," Wehrli said.

Wearing part of her Marine Corps uniform, she ran toward the wreck and started helping people.

"I worked for eight hours," she said. "I was taking people out of the cars alive, taking people out injured, taking out dead people. I stopped when they handed me parts of people, then I quit. They handed me two men's legs, and I handed them back and walked out."

The train was loaded with servicemen returning home from World War II. Moments before the trains collided, a decorated Marine sergeant, whose leg had been broken in three places in the South Pacific, had gotten up from his seat to get a drink of water while the Flyer was stopped. That drink likely saved his life.

Wehrli remembers tying his cast back together and talking to him. He remembered playing with a baby in a nearby seat and asked Wehrli what happened to the baby and his mother.

"The mother was decapitated," she said. "The baby was crushed. He started to cry. It was awful."

The injured were taken to hospitals in Aurora as ambulances from neighboring towns arrived.

Wehrli returned to St. Charles Hospital in Aurora later that night to check on the Marine. He begged her to contact his parents, who were waiting to pick him up in Nebraska. Wehrli found the Naperville police chief, who phoned police in the Marine's hometown and notified his parents. "After surviving the South Pacific, his leg broken in three places, and to think he survived that and almost died in a train crash on his way home," Wehrli said.

Photos: Charles W. Cushman Collection, c/o Indiana University