On October 22nd, 1937, in Renwick, Iowa, United States, 28 students from Renwick High School were on a field trip with two teachers in Mason City. The students had spent the day touring various industries in town, and their second to last stop before heading home was Mason City Brick and Tile. Unfortunately, the bus would never make it to the next facility. As it headed down the road from the factory, it was struck by a train, which split the wooden bus in half.

But let’s back up a bit.

A brief history of railroads

Railway history in and of itself is fascinating, and, as we all know, safety isn’t always at the forefront of innovation. Starting off with a little bit of railway history, the first steam engine in the Americas ran in 1826 on the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad between Schenectady and Albany, New York. It only took a few years before the railroads exploded in length and sprawled across the continent. In 1862, during the American Civil War, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act. This act began the monumental project of connecting the East and West coasts of America.

The skyrocketing popularity of motorized vehicles in the 1920s began a sharp decline in railway passengers, and the railroad industry needed to step up its game. In 1934, The Burlington Zephyr debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair. This new diesel engine took only 13 hours to travel from Denver, Colorado to Chicago, Illinois. This meant the streamlined diesel engine averaged nearly 80 mph/129 kph on this trip. While steam trains of the time were capable of fast travel, it wasn’t commonplace to go much above 40 mph/64 kph. This revolutionized railway travel in a time when personal vehicles usually topped out around 55 mph/88.5 kph.

The train involved in our story today was a Rock Island Rocket. These fancy new trains were built to fill the new demand for high-speed passenger travel, and the Kansas City Rocket Line had two engines that ran daily between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Kansas City, Missouri; the Mason City line had been added about a month prior to the accident. The cruising speed of the Rocket was 80 mph/129 kph, however, speed wasn’t an issue in this accident. A variety of other factors, including one major and completely preventable factor, all contributed to the perfect storm.

The collision

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and the students were gathered outside the tile factory, chatting. The group was told by C. F. Garland, the guide for their tour, to keep an eye out, because the northbound Rocket would be going through in a few minutes. The students then piled onto the old wooden bus to head to one more factory for the last tour of their field trip.

Rex Simpson, the bus driver, had worked for the school district for two years and had a clean driving record. Survivors of the crash commented afterward how he had indeed stopped for other railroad crossings earlier in the trip, but no one could be sure in the aftermath if he had stopped at the tracks before pulling out in front of the oncoming train. Regardless of whether he stopped or not, Simpson could not have seen a train coming. Standing over 7 feet (2 meters) tall and 49 feet (15 meters) long was a pile of bricks made at the factory, stacked right next to the train tracks and completely obstructing the view both of the bus driver and the train conductor so that neither could see the other. Survivors and witnesses alike stated that it seemed Simpson had applied the brakes, but not until he saw the train seconds before impact.

Vern Mott, a coal dealer from Mason City, witnessed the accident from his car, a mere 100 feet (30 meters) behind the bus.

“I heard the Rocket whistle and then I saw the streamliner coming from the south. It didn’t seem to be going so very fast. Vision was perfectly clear and I was utterly amazed when I saw the bus continue toward the crossing without slowing up.”

Vern Mott, witness

Mott continued, saying the wooden bus “popped open as if it were a watermelon being dropped on the ground,” and that he heard children screaming as they flew from the wreckage.

Lorraine Klassey was one of the survivors of the crash and sustained only minor physical injuries.

“I was sitting [in] the second seat from the back on the opposite side of the bus from where the train struck. I was reading and the first thing I knew, I felt myself falling and timbers were falling all around me. Then I heard screams and realized what had happened.

Some of us went around behind a pile of tiles rather than watch the men pick up the children. I saw Patsy Turner lying there. She was my best friend and president of the sophomore class. I couldn’t watch anymore.”

Lorraine Klassey, 15, survivor

The wooden bus was split in two and the front half was pushed 757 feet (230 meters) down the tracks. The people who were sitting in the front half of the bus did not survive.

The deceased victims

Rex Simpson, 32

Lauren Morton, 28

Dorothy Ross, 24

Norman Eggerts, 15

Lowell Kelling, 15

Jimmie Bell, 15

Albert Siemans, 16

Patsy Turner, 15

Donald Amosson, 16

Lillian Cedar, 16

The survivors

19 students survived the crash with a wide range of injuries.

• Connie Block, 14
• Darlene Rhoades, 14
• Laura Janes, 14.
• Ruth Pehl, 15
• Shelby Nelson, 15
• Kenneth Knutson, 17
• Clarence Hefty, 15
• Izola Ballard, 15
• Mildred Whistler, 16
• Duane Amosson, 16
• LaVonne Helmke, 16
• Corwin Peer, 15
• Robert Oppendahl, 15
• Donald Engh, 16
• Charles Heggen, 16
• Richard Huntley, 15
• Lorraine Klassie, 15
• Helen Latch, 15
• Anna Mills, 16

Corwin Peer was dating LaVonne Helmke at the time, and they married in 1942. They were together until Corwin’s death in 2006.

The aftermath

While the community mourned the loss of so many lives, the Chicago Great Western Railroad company launched an investigation to determine the cause of the crash.

The conductor of the train, George Simpson (of no related to Rex Simpson), testified at the coroner’s inquest that, as he had been slowing the train due to the proximity of his next stop, the speed at which the train hit the bus couldn’t have been more than 24 mph/40 kph. With the bus being completely obstructed by the bricks, the first indication Simpson had that an accident had occurred was the bits of wood that flew past his windshield. He further testified that he had sounded the train’s whistle four times between the previous crossing and the collision, which was corroborated by the witness Vern Mott.

No one could be certain whether or not Rex Simpson stopped before attempting to cross the tracks, as was Iowa state law, even back then. Unable to defend himself, Rex Simpson was posthumously declared at fault for the wreck. The families of the deceased victims won various settlements in court after suing the companies involved.

The buses for the district were replaced with new steel-shelled buses instead of the old-style wooden ones like the one involved in the accident.

A forgotten tragedy

Unfortunately, there is no memorial, no plaque, nothing to mark the place or commemorate the victims of this accident aside from their own individual headstones. As my grandma would say, “you just didn’t talk about things like that back then.”

Hopefully, in the future, someone will rectify this oversight, but. for now, this tragic disaster and the victims remain mostly forgotten.