The Malbone Street Wreck

Send us Fan Mail A packed train, a brand-new tunnel, and a curve that demanded six miles per hour. Now add a labor strike, a rushed staffing decision, and an operator who never should have been put in that seat. That mix created the 1918 Malbone Street Wreck, still the deadliest subway crash in New York City history, and we walk through exactly how it happened. We start with how Brooklyn’s transit system grew from a messy web of private lines into the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, then spr...