The Wreck of the Congressional Limited

"The Bravest Girl"
Miss Christiana Nix

Jackson Heights, NY
Sept. 6, 1943


* * *

Christiana Nix was a young woman; only 25 years old. She spent the Labor Day holiday in Washington, DC, and was anxious to be back home in Jackson Heights, NY.

She boarded the famed Congressional Limited around 4pm that Monday afternoon. The train would travel the 220 mile trip in only 3 and a half hours, and she expected to be back home by early evening.

Instead she would spend the rest of her short life in Philadelphia, Pa.

* * *

Harry Hasher was one of the first people in the Phila. neighborhood to reach the wreck of the Congressional Limited. He saw wreckage and destruction everywhere. There were people wandering, people trapped, people crying, people screaming and people praying.

Then he noticed a woman standing relatively quiet in a mass of twisted steel. At first he wondered why she didn't climb out of it, but then he saw her legs were pinned by the wreckage. She was trapped in a standing position. Her pain was obvious from the agony written on her face.

"I tried to comfort her", Harry said.

Then a smile formed across her pain-torn face. "Thank God, I'm Irish" she whispered.

* * *

Christiana Nix
Christiana Nix would stand there for the next 5 long hours with her legs crushed in a mass of steel. Twenty rescuers with acetylene torches, hacksaws, and axes worked to free her from the grotesquely twisted steel entrapping her.

When the heat and fumes from the acetylene torches made the rescue nearly unbearable for Miss Nix and her rescuers, one of the men grabbed a hose and began to spray her with water to keep her more comfortable.

Four times her pulse became so weak it could not be found. Each time she would be given a blood plasma injection to revive her pulse.

She courageously directed her rescuers as they cut away the twisted steel that pinned her from the waist down.

Throughout it all, she held back her tears and smiled. She boasted to her rescuers, "I'm Irish. I can take it."

She was finally freed from wreckage at 11pm, five long hours after being trapped.

She was taken to Phila.'s Episcopal Hospital where she was treated for internal hemorrhaging and shock.

* * *

Sadly, Miss Christiana Nix would succumb to her injuries at 8:20am, less than 10 hours after her rescue.

* * *

Dr. Arthur Keegan, Philadelphia's chief police surgeon stated, "She was the bravest girl I ever saw".

"She wouldn't give up."

* * *

Created - Mon, Oct 10, 2005
Revised -
crc1123@voicenet.com