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For a second the two operators in the room hesitated—Klopp, the hero of the day, is an aggressive man, known for pranks and jokes. But his expression made it plain that he was not joking. His fellow workers ran. White-haired Telegrapher Richard Outlaw grabbed a crippled secretary named Mary Leonardi and pulled her with him. They bawled a warning to people in the concourse as they fled. Meanwhile, at risk of life & limb, Klopp ducked out to the track side of the office and yelled a warning to a crew of car knockers (cleaning women, electricians, etc.). Then the Federal, whistle still blasting was upon them all.
The train thundered down the tracks between passenger-loading platforms, catapulted over the stopping block, plunged through a newsstand, and emerged into the concourse like a bull elephant bursting out of a screen of jungle. It headed incongruously across the floor toward the crowded waiting room. Then the concrete flooring gave way and it crashed through into a baggage room below amid clouds of steam and dust and a heart-stopping tumult of sound. The first coach hung at an angle over the gaping hole. The second coach also entered the concourse. Other front coaches were derailed, but passengers in the rear coaches did not realize there had been an accident. They thought that the engineer had made a rather jolting stop.
Fifty-nine passengers were hurt, only eight seriously (the worst injury was a fractured pelvis). No one in the station was injured. And Engineer Brower—who had stuck courageously to his cab and kept his "hand upon the throttle and his eye upon the rail" until the bitter end— stepped out of the awful wreckage of the locomotive without a scratch to show for his experience.