5-12-2024 12:51am

May 12, 1920: Railroad Bridge Collapses Under Weight of Caskets

Lesley Misko Editor

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

May 12, 1920: The Franklin Street Bridge over the railroad tracks on Pottstown has collapsed under the weight of a huge Pierce Arrow tractor trailer from the Boyertown Burial Casket Company driven by employee Frank Moyer about 7:45 today.

The truck was almost across the bridge and its trailer loaded with 48 boxed up caskets was in the middle of the structure when a loud crash was heard. As the bridge collapse, the weight of the trailer pulled the mammoth truck backwards and down onto the tracks, which completely blocked train traffic for several hours until cleared away by a wreck crew summoned from Reading.

The 7:43 train was about to leave the Pottstown station at the time of the crash. It was a miracle that Moyer was not injured, although badly shaken up, in the fall. He stated that he made daily trips across the bridge to the Pennsylvania Railroad freight station at Pottstown with caskets.

The combined weight of the truck, trailer and caskets was 28,000 pounds. The 48 caskets, some of them made of a special bronze composition worth $3000 a piece, were on their way to Pittsburgh. The damage to the casket company was estimated at $13,000. The bridge was an old structure with “badly rotted timbers.”