‘We couldn’t feel our legs’: Survivors relive deadly Illinois Central train crash 50 years later

CHICAGO (WLS) — The twenty seventh Avenue station is never used today and the Illinois Central Railroad is now not in operation. However, it was alongside these similar tracks nonetheless utilized by the Metra Electrical Line that fifty years in the past, a historic Chicago practice crash killed 45 individuals and injured 331 extra.

The accident occurred after a northbound Illinois Central commuter practice overshot its platform on the twenty seventh Avenue Station, the place the Metra Electrical line now runs, and proceeded to again up round a bend to permit its passengers to disembark. A second practice, following behind on the identical observe, didn’t see the practice till moments earlier than influence.

Survivors mentioned Sunday’s service is probably the primary one to honor the entire victims, survivors and first responders from that day.

Inside Hyde Park’s First Unitarian Church, Lisa Klare and Louise Lawarre learn out the names of those that died on October 30, 1972.

They didn’t know one another on the time. They weren’t even on the identical practice, however the then-17-year-old highschool senior and then-22-year-old younger mother have been about to be tied collectively without end by tragedy.

“You’d at all times really feel the practice cease and again up. It was simply a part of the routine. I keep in mind the practice stopping and backing up,” Lawarre mentioned. “I used to be up on the little higher balcony space studying my e book, and I do not keep in mind anything till I wakened within the hospital on my means into surgical procedure.”

Klare spent hours trapped inside one of many automobiles.

“I boarded the practice earlier than 7 a.m. that morning. Met up with my buddies Dean and Pat, hoped on the smoking automotive as a result of Dean wished to have a cigarette. After he had that cigarette, I took his pack away from him and mentioned, ‘that is your final one.’ And sadly it was his final one, as a result of sadly, he didn’t make it out of that accident alive,” Klare mentioned. “We have been inside mainly two trains by the point they discovered us. And so they needed to peel off all of the lifeless and injured and metallic to get to us to get us out,” Klare mentioned.

Whereas Sunday’s service was a small, intimate affair, it was a day these in attendance noticed they may not let go previous unnoticed.

“And, the rescue staff have been phenomenal,” Klare mentioned. “They despatched a fireman to stick with us all the time. And it was fairly scary. We could not really feel our legs so we have been fairly nervous about that. They’d injected us with photographs of morphine to assist with the ache.”

Klare mentioned her hope is to drum up sufficient assist to get a plaque put in close to the accident web site that can without end memorialize those that misplaced their lives that day.

“Remembering is important to us. We won’t neglect historical past and we will not neglect the individuals we cherished,” Lawarre added.