What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

as a publicity stunt it seemed such a good idea, 

the train wreck was the brainchild of William George Crush, passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, commonly known as the Katy, who convinced his superiors that a staged train wreck would generate much-needed publicity for the rail-road during a time of national economic downturn, here is the thing that helped the event make the news, the event was free, Crush was right, newspapers from all over wrote about the impending event, and the Katy arranged for 33 excursion trains to pick up onlookers from around the state and deliver them for the price of a $2 round-trip ticket, or you could walk or ride by horseback or buggy, but when you arrived at Crush near Wako Texas as the new town was called, the rail-road made money by selling soft drinks and food, with more than 40,000 people arriving for the event it was a guaranteed success, on to safety, Crush had gone to the Katy's engineers and was assured that the boilers on the engines were designed to resist ruptures even in the event of a high-speed crash and it would be virtually impossible for them to explode, reassured, Crush went ahead with the event, though except for reporters and honoured guests, spectators were to be kept back a minimum of 100 yards from the track,

it all went remarkably well, the two trains hit each other and all was quiet until both boilers blew up at roughly the same time, three people were killed, including teenager Ernest Darnall, who watched the spectacle from his perch in a mesquite tree and died instantly when a heavy hook on the end of a wrecking chain hit him between the eyes and split his skull, several dozen people were injured, including those scalded by steam and burned by jagged, hot shrapnel, a flying bolt ripped out the right eye of official event photographer Jervis Deane, who was on a stand less than 100 feet from the track, injured spectators sprawled on the ground in pain and bewilderment, before nightfall agent Crush was summarily fired, but it only took a few days for rail-road officials to discover that the crash at Crush had accomplished its purpose, overnight, the story made headlines around the world, everyone was talking about the Katy, business boomed, and Crush was quietly rehired, Scott Joplin, the great ragtime composer who was rumoured to be at the event, wrote a musical tribute called “The Great Crush Collision March” later that year,

  the town of Crush was abandoned, what was the second largest town in Texas was dismantled in days, all that is left is a solitary memorial marker, two trains hurtling towards each other at speeds thought to be in excess of 45 M.P.H. each, with the boilers at their highest pressure, what could possibly go wrong?