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What Happened
The Railroad Museum of Long Island unveiled a historic marker on Aug. 13, 2026, at the intersection of Railroad Avenue and River Road in Calverton, marking the centennial of one of the deadliest wrecks in Long Island Rail Road history. The marker, supplied by a national historic-marker foundation, commemorates six people killed when the Shelter Island Express derailed at the Golden’s Pickle Factory siding on Aug. 13, 1926. Four of the 387 passengers aboard died, along with two crew members, according to the Shelter Island Reporter.
The morning of the crash was a stormy Friday. Thunder and lightning had struck the previous day and continued through Aug. 13. The Shelter Island Express was running double-engined, carrying tourists toward Greenport. At Calverton station, then little more than a shelter amid trees and farm fields, the Golden’s Pickle Factory maintained a private siding off the LIRR mainline, where trains dropped off cucumbers and pickling ingredients and collected finished product.
As the lead engine, a camelback locomotive with the boiler positioned in the middle of the cab, rolled over the siding switch, its speed and vibration shook the switch mechanism loose, a condition railroaders call “picking the switch.” The second engine, a conventional locomotive, then threw the switch completely and was routed into the siding. The divergence yanked the first engine backward down the track and into the factory building. Both engines landed in a heap inside the structure. The force drove the parlor car, the first passenger car behind the engines, up on end and through the roof.
The engineer and fireman, both of Greenport, were killed in the collision. The parlor car carried some of the wealthier passengers, including an investment broker from Manhattan traveling to his home in East Marion. When the car tore into the factory, it ruptured the second floor where salt was stored. Salt poured through the open roof onto the wrecked car and buried the broker, who was already badly injured. He died from being smothered in salt, as the president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island recounted at the dedication: “Workers who were there at the time were trying to keep the salt away from him. And he died because he was smothered and buried in salt.”
Also in the parlor car were a mother visiting from North Carolina with her two young children, ages 3 and 1, and their nanny. The two children were killed instantly. Rescuers spent six hours cutting the parlor car apart with acetylene torches to free the mother; she was fed a sandwich while workers worked through the evening to reach her. She walked onto a waiting ambulance and was transported to Southampton Hospital, where she died from internal burns caused by steam exposure. She was never told her children had died. The nanny survived but lost her leg.
The approximately 380 surviving passengers stranded at Calverton received no relief trains from the railroad, according to a New York Times account published at the time of the wreck. Those who could hire automobiles completed their trip that way. Hundreds walked the five miles to Riverhead and made their own way home from there.
“It’s those people that we will remember today — the people who lost their lives — and it’s to them that we dedicate the sign,” the museum president said at the Aug. 13 ceremony.
Location & Road Context
The wreck site is in Calverton, near what was then a whistle-stop station on the LIRR’s North Fork branch. The Golden’s Pickle Factory siding no longer exists. The factory itself was demolished after the crash and never rebuilt. A crumbling shelter south of the tracks is all that remains at the site, per the Shelter Island Reporter. The new marker stands at the intersection of Railroad Avenue and River Road in Calverton.
Investigation & Legal Proceedings
A District Attorney investigation after the 1926 crash determined that the cotter pin securing the factory siding switch was missing. Its absence allowed the nut and washer holding the hand lever to the operating rod to come loose. Investigators found debris and dirt packed into the holes that should have been clean, indicating the pin had been missing for some time before the Express passed through. No criminal charges were detailed in the Shelter Island Reporter’s account of the DA findings.