The BRT had tried to keep service running with non-striking personnel, and decided to use Antonio Edward Luciano, a crew dispatcher with no experience operating the line.

The Malbone Street wreck occurred on Friday, November 1, 1918, at 6:42 p.m., during the end-of-week rush hour, and involved about 650 passengers.

Passengers were trapped in what The New York Times later described as "a darkened jungle of steel dust and wood splinters, glass shards and iron beams projecting like bayonets.

"[4] One surviving passenger, lawyer Charles Darling, had become so concerned about the train's speed that he dropped to the floor and braced himself moments before the crash.

The nearest hospital was at capacity with patients from the Spanish flu epidemic, and a makeshift infirmary was set up at Ebbets Field for crash injuries.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, representing some of the motormen operating elevated trains of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), had just gone on strike that morning, November 1, over issues involving union organizing and the discharge from employment of twenty-nine of its members.

[6]: 97  It consisted of a sharp curve designed to take Coney Island-bound trains of the Brighton Beach Line around a new underground mainline, which was under construction.

[7][8] Previously, trains entered Prospect Park southbound through the original tunnel, which provided a straighter, more direct route.

In the minutes leading up to the wreck, Luciano had difficulty timing the train's progress, overshooting multiple stations.

[4] Mayor John F. Hylan and his administration blamed the BRT and brought Luciano and company officials to trial for manslaughter.

[11] In a December 1918 meeting, members of the Brighton Elevated Wreck Victims and Passengers' Protective Association were allegedly heard saying, "Kill them!

[13] Upon the request of the former BRT president, Timothy S. Williams, the trial's location was changed from Brooklyn to the town of Mineola in Nassau County.

This opposed the BRT's own physical examination of the equipment, which showed that the brakes were in good operating order, were not placed in "emergency" application, and that other means of slowing or stopping the train, such as reversing the motors, had not been attempted.

The highest settlement was $40,000,[4] equivalent to $720,000 in 2023,[26] which went to the widow of Floyd G. Ten Broeck, a 47-year-old engineer who designed and built power plants and paper mills.

[32] The accident placed more pressure on the BRT to remove wooden equipment from routes that operated through tunnel sections or in subways, though this use was already limited.

[4] In the wake of the tragedy, the Board of Alderman approved the renaming of most of Malbone Street to Empire Boulevard at the beginning of December 1918, scarcely a month after the wreck,[34] a name it still bears.

The tunnel today is still a part of that line, which runs the Franklin Avenue Shuttle, but is not used in regular passenger service.

[4] A streetcar crash coincidentally occurred about a half block away on Flatbush Avenue in 1920, a collision that killed one person and injured seventy.

[35] In 1974, another accident at the same site, involving a split switch rather than an over-speeding condition, occurred when a slow-speed train of R32 subway cars derailed and hit the wall.

[36] On November 1, 2019, officials installed a permanent bronze memorial plaque at the northern exit of the Prospect Park station,[37][38] and co-named the corner of Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue as "Malbone Centennial Way".

Nearly 100 people were killed, and nearby Ebbets Field was turned into a makeshift hospital to care for the hundreds injured.