Spike People: Train Disaster Memorial

Naperville, Illinois

On April 25, 1946, the worst disaster in the history of the Burlington Railroad took place on this spot when a speeding commuter train plowed into a stationary one. 45 people were killed; 125 were injured. The disaster effectively ended high-speed passenger rail travel in the U.S.

In 2014 Naperville artist Paul Kuhn fashioned a memorial to the train wreck, "Tragedy to Triumph." It weighs over a ton, and is made of over ten miles of welding wire -- and 5,000 steel railroad spikes. The sculpture depicts a sailor and a worker from the city's Kroehler Furniture Factory -- which was next to the crash site -- helping an injured woman out of the wreckage, between two real sets of skewed, half-buried train wheels.