The train carried many college students and others traveling for the coming Easter weekend and was due at Chicago's Union Station at midnight.

[2][3] At 10:41 PM, approaching the Downers Grove station at about 75 miles per hour (121 km/h), the eastbound Zephyr struck a heavy caterpillar-type tractor which had just fallen off a westbound freight train.

The first two cars jack-knifed into an empty office and waiting room of the brick masonry station building, which by chance had been closed early for the night.

A signalman from the nearby tower went east and used flares to stop a westbound freight while a brakeman from the Zephyr climbed out a window after the crash and went west to flag a following local passenger train.

On May 8, 1947, a DuPage County Coroner's jury found that International Harvester (the shipper) and the Burlington were negligent in loading and inspecting the tractor.