cornfield meet

Two locomotives involved in a “cornfield meet” in the early 20th century, apparently on the Boston and Maine Railroad according to the cab-side lettering

Either from the fact that early train collisions often occurred out in the country alongside a cornfield rather than in a station or siding; or from staged events where two old steam locomotives were purposely run head on at each other, often in a open field, for public entertainment. In the latter idea, the term may jocularly echo field meet as a spectacle in the field involving opposing contestants.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɔːnfiːld ˌmiːt/

• Audio (RP)

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɔɹnˌfild ˌmit/

• Audio (GA)

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• Audio (AU)

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• Hyphenation: corn‧field meet

cornfield meet (plural cornfield meets)

1. (US, rail transport) An accidental head-on collision or near head-on collision of two trains. [from 19th c.]
   • 1943, Railroad Magazine, volume 34, New York, N.Y.: Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Co., ISSN 0033-8761, OCLC 5465534, page 100, column 1:

     Do you think it's possible for two trains to have a cornfield meet right in the middle of an automatically protected block? Of course it is, if one of the hoggers is drunk or asleep at the throttle […]

   • 1968, Robert C[arroll] Reed, “Head-on Collisions”, in Train Wrecks: A Pictorial History of Accidents on the Main Line, New York, N.Y.: Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing Group, OCLC 560766988, page 55:

     One such instance when a conductor failed to follow a prescribed timetable resulted in a head-on smashup on the Long Island Railroad at the end of the Civil War. On August 28, 1865, General Grant and General Sherman collided in a pasture at Jamaica, New York. Five passengers were killed in this cornfield meet.

   • 1997, Jim Shaughnessy, “The Hunted Traps the Hunter”, in The Rutland Road, 2nd edition, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 26:

     [A] couple of passenger trains staged a cornfield meet in the deep cut on Mount Holly, which the road settled with "gratuities" amounting to $50,000. By this time the Rutland had built up enough fiancial stability to weather these incidents with a minimum of distress.

   • 1998, Ian Savage, “Preface”, in The Economics of Railroad Safety (Transportation Research, Economics and Policy; 7), New York, N.Y.: Springer Science+Business Media, →ISBN, page xi:

     One hundred years ago, staged railroad accidents were popular events. […] "Head-on Joe" Connolly made a business out of "cornfield meets" holding seventy-three events in thirty-six years.

   • 2007, Eddie Campbell, The Black Diamond Detective Agency: Containing Mayhem, Mystery, Romance, Mine shafts, Bullets, New York, N.Y.; London: First Second Books, →ISBN, page 137:

     [A 1899 man discovering ragtime:] Now they're writing music that sounds like a cornfield meet.

• (collision): prairie meet (hobo slang)
• (near-collision): Mexican standoff

• train wreck
• wabash (“a collision of trains going into adjacent tracks”)

• Robert L[undquist] Chapman, editor (1986) New Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 83.
• Terry L. McIntyre (winter 1969), “The Language of Railroading”, in American Speech, volume 44, issue 4, JSTOR 454681, pages 243–262.
• Eric Partridge (1931), G[odfrey] Irwin, editor, American Tramp and Underworld Slang [...] With a Number of Tramp Songs. Edited with Essays [...] by G. Irwin. With a Terminal Essay on American Slang in its Relation to English Thieves’ Slang by Eric Partridge, London: Eric Partridge, OCLC 753255579.

• head-on collision on Wikipedia.Wikipedia