Strange as it might seem, the crash that came to be called "The Great Train Accident" or "The Camp Hill Disaster" occurred right here in Montgomery County, at Camp Hill, along Sandy Run Creek, on July 17, 1856.

Monday, July 17, 2006, is the 150th anniversary of the event that not only claimed nearly 160 casualties but also, ironically, provided the basis for the naming of Ambler.

On that fateful day, the northbound "Shackamaxon," operated by engineer Henry Harris, chugged peacefully out of Philadelphia's Master Street Depot at Germantown Avenue and Thompson Street at 5:10 a.m., several minutes late, carrying between 700 and 1,500 passengers (the accounts vary). Led by the Rev. Daniel Sheridan, they were mostly women and children from St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church Sunday School in Kensington on a picnic excursion into the countryside beyond the sweltering city.

Pulling between 10 and 12 overcrowded cars, the locomotive, handicapped by low steam pressure, was en route to Schaeff's Woods, a sprawling meadow in Fort Washington. The train had to stop periodically to regain enough pressure to continue along the single rail track that had been completed by the North Penn Railroad just a year and two weeks earlier.

At the same time, the southbound "Aramingo," the local line engineered by William Vanstavoren, was driving southward with 20 passengers along the curved track from Gwynedd Station toward Camp Hill Station (the now defunct Sandy Run, then Fellwick flag stop).

Aware that his excursion train was already behind schedule and that a regularly scheduled passenger train was coming toward him from the opposite direction, engineer Harris still felt he could make up for lost time, calculating that he could use the siding at Edge Hill for the Aramingo to pass safely. But neither train telegraphed the other to establish each other's whereabouts.

As fate would have it, each train was simultaneously rounding a different blind curve just past Camp Hill Station. Although the Shackamaxon was blowing its whistle almost continuously (not that it mattered, as it was not known at the time that sound does not carry forward down the track), neither train knew the other was approaching.

When they caught sight of each other at 6:18 a.m., it was too late. The Shackamaxon and the Aramingo, with their boilers making direct contact, collided head-on. The collision smashed the three forward cars of the excursion train to pieces and derailed the rest of the wooden cars, which immediately caught fire, trapping many victims in a raging inferno. The ensuing explosion could be heard five miles away and the smoke from the blaze could be seen from several miles away.

To the tangled remains of mangled metal, wooden coaches and human bodies (eventually there were 59 fatalities and nearly 100 injured) rushed people from miles around, including volunteer firefighters from the Congress Engine and Hose Company of Chestnut Hill four miles away, pulling their primitive hand-drawn hand-pumper for the rescue effort, and physicians from as far off as Germantown and Philadelphia.

Eyewitness John Spencer of Camp Hill, who lived within view of the collision, gave this account at the coroner's investigation: "I was looking out of my shop window and saw the train approaching. I saw the down train [the Shackamaxon] first, just coming through the cut above Camp Hill Station. It was slacking off as much as it could when it came through there. I had just enough time to turn around and saw the up train coming under the bridge at Camp Hill Station. ... I heard the whistle on the train coming up before it reached the bridge. ... I could not see that the speed of the up train diminished between the time I first saw it and the time of the collision. ... eleven of the bodies of the dead were taken to my shop."

The Daily Evening Bulletin reported: "the most horrible sight of all, was that of the burning cars - for in a few minutes after the collision, the fire spread rapidly through the remnants, burning and roasting to death many men, women and children. The groans and shouts of wounded and those held by the rescuers were of a character to appall the bravest heart."

To the devastation came a frail Quaker woman named Mary Ambler. Some accounts report that she drove to the site in her wagon, stuffed with bedsheets and medical supplies, but the more enduring legend has it that she walked the two miles from her home in nearby Wissahickon to tend to the maimed victims of the crash. She was said to have the healing touch.

Whether she laid on hands to minister to the wounded or simply helped direct the rescue work with her calming influence, Mary Ambler's efforts in "The Great Train Accident" made history.

She volunteered her home, built in the early 18th century and still one of the oldest houses in the community, as a temporary hospital. Located in the triangle where Main Street, Tennis Avenue and Reiff's Mill Road meet, it is now privately owned.

Engineer Harris and Rev. Sheridan were killed in the accident. Many passengers were burned so badly that their bodies could not be identified. The conductor of the Aramingo, William Vanstavoren, escaped unharmed. Apparently blaming himself for the accident (he was later absolved of any blame - a jury later found the deceased engineer of the Shackamaxon guilty of "gross carelessness"), he returned to his residence in Philadelphia at 169 Buttonwood St. (near 10th) and took his own life by swallowing arsenic.

As might be expected, the Great Train Wreck played its part in vastly improving safety measures in the railroad industry. These included clarifying instructions to the engineers of all trains on the same line, using the telegraph to inform other stations of late trains, restricting the number of passengers, establishing protocols governing the movement of trains traveling from opposite directions along a single track and more.

In 1869 - unfortunately, the year after Mary Ambler died - town officials, to commemorate her valiant efforts, changed the name of Wissahickon Station to Ambler. An even higher honor was paid this so-called "angel of mercy" in 1888, when the borough was officially incorporated and adopted the name Ambler, one of the few towns in America to bear the name of a woman.