World War II had overwhelmed America's railroads with passengers. The Empire Builder, Great Northern's flagship route between St. Paul and the Pacific Northwest, was running in two sections designated First 1 and Second 1. Both were hauled by Baldwin-built GN S-2 4-8-4 steam locomotives. They departed St. Paul Union Depot twenty minutes apart, traveling to Fargo via Willmar. After a crew change in Fargo, First 1 left at 3:25 that afternoon headed by locomotive No. 2584, carrying 237 passengers in eleven cars, mostly Pullman sleepers. Second 1 followed with eleven coaches hauled by locomotive No. 2588, carrying between 600 and 700 people. Most passengers on both trains were military personnel and their families, traveling under the control of the Office of Defense Transportation.

Automatic Block Signal protection covered the route only as far as Fargo. Beyond Grand Forks, the two trains ran on a stretch without that safeguard, relying on time intervals and visual signals. When the trains departed Grand Forks, thirty minutes separated them. Then trouble began. Four miles west of Niagara, a brakeman on First 1 spotted smoke rising from the tender -- a hot box, an overheated journal bearing. The crew repacked it and rigged a water line to cool the journal. First 1 stopped again at Petersburg to check and adjust the hose. Each stop bled away the gap between the two sections. Second 1 was gaining.

First 1 made its final stop at Michigan, on a shallow curve, because the journal was smoking again. The investigation later found the water line had become clogged, rendering the cooling system useless. The engineer climbed down to inspect the bearing. Then the conductor heard it -- the sound of Second 1 approaching. He ordered the fireman to get the train moving. The flagman lit a fusee and sprinted back along the track to warn the oncoming locomotive. Just as First 1 began to inch forward, four minutes after stopping, Second 1 struck the rear car at 45 miles per hour. According to the Interstate Commerce Commission report, the entire front train was driven forward 165 feet by the impact. The rear car -- a bobtail, part observation car and part sleeping berths -- was telescoped practically its entire length by the engine of Second 1 and demolished. The locomotive of Second 1 derailed but remained upright, covered by the crushed top and side sheets of the car it had destroyed.

The wreck killed 34 people and injured scores more, making it the deadliest rail accident in North Dakota history and the worst in the Great Northern Railway's long operational record. Most of the dead and injured were military personnel and their families, men and women who had survived the anxieties of wartime only to meet catastrophe on the home front. The timing compounded the tragedy's obscurity: August 9, 1945 was one of the most consequential days of the twentieth century, dominated by news from the Pacific. The Michigan wreck barely registered in the national consciousness. Today, Michigan, North Dakota remains a small community in Nelson County. No monument marks the curve where the trains collided. The prairie has long since absorbed the evidence, leaving only the historical record -- and the lesson that four minutes can separate routine maintenance from disaster.