1 May 2006
50-Year-Old Crash Still Vivid
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George Nutkins, 82, holds a photo of the train wreck that he
survived 50 years ago tomorrow. Then an engineer with the CPR, he was thrown free of a steam engine in the 2 May 1956,
collision, but he suffered 21 broken bones and spent two years in hospital recovering.
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The horrific sound of grinding metal and the earth-shattering crash that followed will
haunt George Nutkins forever.
The 82-year-old Londoner defied death that night half a century ago tomorrow, when the steam locomotive he was travelling
in plowed into another train in Galt, now part of Cambridge, killing two co-workers.
It was 2 May 1956, the last big wreck of the steam-train era for the Canadian Pacific Railway - and Nutkins
says it shouldn't have happened.
"That train wasn't supposed to be there," said Nutkins, then an engineer for the CPR.
"We had the green light."
As Nutkins and his crew - many of them from London - travelled west through Galt en route to London, they could see a train sitting
parallel to theirs on a different set of tracks.
With the green light to proceed, Train 903 - Nutkins' unit - plowed ahead as scheduled.
In a split second, everything changed.
"We could see that the train had pulled out of the siding," said Nutkins, who was riding in the second of two engine cabs
with a co-worker when the trains collided on a bridge.
"I didn't have time to do anything," he recalled. "I really didn't expect to get out of it alive."
Instinctively, and with only seconds to spare, Nutkins sounded the train whistle to warn any pedestrians or drivers of the impending
crash.
He hollered at his co-worker to jump, said a hasty prayer and braced for the impact.
"It was a terrible, grinding crash," said Nutkins, who, by stroke of luck, was thrown out a small window, landing more than
50 feet away on the street below the railway bridge.
If he hadn't been thrown clear, he would have faced certain death, either from the impact of the collision or by burning to death when
the engine's steam pipes burst.
"It was an awful, awful thing."
The scene, as a local newspaper described it, was total "devastation."
The legendary crash even inspired a book, Paul Langan's Tragedy in Galt.
Train 903's two steam engines, crumpled in the crash, straddled the sunken bridge as wrecked train cars tumbled down the embankment.
Coal was scattered all over the road and downed power wires were strewn across the bridge.
His battered body on the street below, Nutkins slipped in and out of consciousness.
But while he suffered 21 fractures and spent nearly two years recovering in hospital, Nutkins knows he was lucky.
Unlike engineer Bill Palmer and young brakeman Tom Watson, Nutkins survived to finish his career on the rails, eventually retiring as
superintendent of the London division.
"Two people were killed," he said, tears welling in his eyes.
"I think God was on my side that day."
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