‘It deserves to be remembered’

Crash of Loop-bound trains 50 years ago left 45 dead, more than 300 injured

On a chilly autumn morning 50 years ago, Oct. 30, 1972, an Illinois Central electric train — the old model with concrete floors and wicker passenger seats — started its journey north to downtown Chicago at the 91st Street station.

It was behind a newer Illinois Central commuter train ridden by then 23-year-old Louise Lawarre, who even now remembers the start of the trip with precision. She got on the train at the 53rd Street platform, sat in the upper deck of her preferred last car and opened J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Two Towers.”

Shortly after Lawarre settled in, her train missed its stop at the 27th Street station. It was put into reverse and sped backward around a curve. The trailing Illinois Central train barreled around the same curve. With a split-second warning, the conductor in the trailing train yelled that it was about to crash.

The older six-car train and the more modern four-car one collided at 7:27 a.m., killing 45 people and injuring 332 others. News accounts described a scene of screaming passengers and mangled bodies.

The train platform was transformed into an outdoor hospital, the Tribune reported, as emergency crews and personnel from the nearby medical center came to help. Together, the two trains carried nearly 1,000 people, with most of the dead and most seriously injured in the rear car of the first train, media reports said.

Decades later, survivors interviewed by the Tribune described a life lived in the shadow of the crash. They mourn friends who died and wonder why they survived. They think about the outsized impact of small decisions, such as choosing where to sit or last-minute schedule changes that landed them on that train. Some still carry injuries and have endured multiple surgeries.

They don’t want Chicago to forget. “It just feels like it deserves to be remembered. … Maybe I feel like I owe it to those people, someone owes it to those people, the city owes it to those people,” Lawarre said.

WILLIAM YATES/CHICAGO TRIBUNE Firefighters work at the scene of the wreckage after an Illinois Central electric train backed up after missing the stop the 27th Street Station and collided with the train behind it on Oct. 30, 1972, in Chicago. The crash killed 45 and injured more than 300.

HARDY WIETING/CHICAGO TRIBUNE First responders and police search the wreckage of the two Illinois Central trains after they crashed near the 27th Street Station on Oct. 30, 1972.

WILLIAM KELLY/CHICAGO TRIBUNE An unidentified woman reacts as she watches the final three victims being removed from the wreckage.

OVIE CARTER/CHICAGO TRIBUNE Alone in their grief, two people huddle together for comfort as they leave the Cook County Morgue after identifying the body of a relative on Oct. 30, 1972.

WILLIAM KELLY/CHICAGO TRIBUNE Firefighters and rescue workers use torches and other cutting equipment as they battle to get inside the twisted rubble of the trains.