Every day, Robert and Kathleen Ferbrache would ride the "L" home together after work. He was a collector for a finance company on Adams Street, she was a receptionist for an accounting firm in the Prudential Plaza building. They lived in Oak Park, a few blocks from an "L" station.

On Feb. 4, 1977, a Friday, they were on their usual train, the Lake-Dan Ryan line (now parts of the Green and Red lines), on their way to a birthday party for a friend's son. It was just a little after 5:20 p.m.

They must have been surprised — or, perhaps, frustrated — when the train seemed to hit something after coming around the curve at the corner of Lake Street and Wabash Avenue.

After a "quiet thump," the first two train cars started to wobble. Slowly, the back of the first car lifted into the air and then crashed into the street 20 feet below, dragging three other cars with it.

More than 160 people were injured, and 11 were killed, including the Ferbraches — Robert, 29, and Kathleen, 25.

A bystander called it "a slow-motion horror." The Tribune called it the worst CTA crash in history.

It wasn't clear at first what had caused the crash. The Lake-Dan Ryan train had turned the corner to pull into the station at State and Lake streets and hit the rear car of a Ravenswood (now the Brown Line) train, which was waiting for an Evanston Express (now the Purple Line) train to leave the station. The Evanston train wasn't supposed to be there, but an earlier switching problem meant that a few of the express trains were still running on the wrong tracks.

Victim taken inside hospital Ovie Carter / Chicago Tribune

A paramedic grabs one end of the stretcher carrying one of the "L" crash victims after firemen pulled up to the entrance of Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Feb. 4, 1977.

A paramedic grabs one end of the stretcher carrying one of the "L" crash victims after firemen pulled up to the entrance of Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Feb. 4, 1977.

(Ovie Carter / Chicago Tribune)

According to the CTA chairman, a cab signaling device should have stopped the Lake-Dan Ryan train from getting too close to the Ravenswood train.

"Why that didn't work, I don't know," a CTA spokesperson told the Tribune.

Chicagoans converged on the crash site, helping to pull passengers from the cars before police and firefighters arrived. Businesses along Lake and Wabash were turned into temporary "blood-spattered" hospitals. Lakeview Restaurant, 179 N. Wabash Ave., handed out water, coffee and towels for first aid. At one point, more than 50 victims were crowded into the restaurant, covering tables, booths, chairs and the floor.

Agnes McCormick, a 59-year-old secretary with the Chicago Public Library, was eating an early dinner at the Lakeview when the train crashed. "The victims were lying in rows in the streets, and some were pinned in the cars," she told the Tribune. "Some of them were obviously dead. I saw one blond girl, about 20, lying in a pool of blood and there was nothing we could do for her."

Priest administers last rites to victims Don Casper / Chicago Tribune

In the stillness of a sequestered room at Henrotin Hospital, Father Sebastian Lewis pulls aside the corner of a sheet as he prepares to administer the last rites of the church to three victims who were pronounced dead on arrival following the crash.

In the stillness of a sequestered room at Henrotin Hospital, Father Sebastian Lewis pulls aside the corner of a sheet as he prepares to administer the last rites of the church to three victims who were pronounced dead on arrival following the crash.

(Don Casper / Chicago Tribune)

Cardinal John Cody appeared at the street corner to administer last rites, joined by Michael Bilandic, who was the acting mayor after Richard J. Daley died in 1976; then-Rep. Abner Mikva; and heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.

When rescue workers arrived on the scene, they moved quickly to get the injured to one of nine hospitals in the city. They worked with an orderly flow for two hours straight, shuffling, sorting and shipping off those they could help. The hospitals had learned a valuable lesson in disaster planning a year earlier when 310 passengers were injured after another Chicago rapid-transit crash.

Train service resumed at 6:02 the following morning. And four days after the crash, the Ferbraches were buried in Brookfield.

It took months for the CTA and the National Transportation Safety Board to nail down the ultimate cause of the crash.

The train's driver, Stephen A. Martin, was badly injured and spent weeks recovering in Northwestern Memorial Hospital. An investigation by the NTSB found that during his eight years as a CTA employee, Martin had a long record of rule violations, including another derailment three years earlier.

Investigators originally thought Martin might have been high while he was operating the train — two police officers had found four hand-rolled "cigarets" supposedly containing marijuana in his bag at the crash site — but toxicology reports showed that Martin wasn't under the influence of alcohol, narcotics or marijuana at the time.

What happened was much more mundane: human error. During NTSB hearings about the crash, Martin admitted he saw a red flashing light in his cab right before he came around the curve and hit the end of another train. That red light should have persuaded Martin to stop and wait for the light to change to yellow or green before accelerating again. Instead, Martin testified that he thought the red light meant to slow down to 15 mph, so he continued along the tracks at 10 mph and wasn't able to apply the brakes in time to prevent the crash.

Martin was fired six months later. Three months after that, the NTSB officially blamed him for the accident.

In the wake of the crash, there were calls for reforms to the aging "L" system. President Jimmy Carter offered "help and assistance and all the resources of the office of the president," and Bilandic hoped to marshal potential federal funds into two pet transportation projects: a subway under Franklin Street and the Crosstown Expressway, which would have connected parts of the Kennedy, Edens and Stevenson expressways.

Bilandic flew to Washington to meet with Carter, but nothing came of it. The White House had offered Bilandic $400 million in January to build the Franklin Street subway, but Bilandic turned down the money. He wanted help funding the new subway and the Crosstown Expressway — not one or the other. Gov. Jim Thompson vehemently opposed the expressway, and in the end, the Carter administration didn't have enough money to support both billion-dollar projects.

Something tangible did come out of the disaster: The CTA implemented a few lasting changes to its safety procedures. Barriers were built along the "L" tracks' sharpest curves to prevent trains from falling off the tracks in a derailment. Train operators with moving violations were required to be retested and retrained. The CTA updated its rule book and conducted a large safety study on distracted driving and train accidents.

And finally, the CTA clarified its rules on red lights on the tracks: Red always means wait.

Elizabeth Greiwe edits the Tribune's Voice of the People.

Thanks to reader Jack McLean of Wauconda for suggesting this Flashback.

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