Midday on November 30 , 1944 , an eighty-one-car west-bound mixed freight train derailed after a hot box on the seventh car of the train led to its axle breaking . The train carried airplane engines , canned corned beef , mattresses , fuel oil , and 165 five-hundred pound bombs bound for the Pacific Theatre . Thirty-six cars derailed . The oil car caught fire . After burning for twenty to thirty minutes , the munitions exploded . The explosion dug a crater 75 feet wide and 10 feet deep . Most of the buildings in Tolar were destroyed , including the post office , the railroad station , and the grocery . The blast was felt 120 miles away in Hereford , Texas . Thirty miles to the southeast in Elida , dishes fell from their shelves and windows broke in Melrose , twelve miles to the east . One person was killed , Tolar resident Jess Brown , who was struck in the head by a piece of metal and died while being transported to the hospital in Melrose . His widow , Pauline Brown , received a $ 17,500 settlement from the railroad for his death . Because of the war , the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent Special Agent R.J. Untreiner to investigate . The Bureau found no signs of sabotage and that it was an accident . While '' The New York Times '' reported only a single paragraph about the accident , it was front page news in New Mexico newspapers . Because of that news coverage , officials of the Manhattan Project issued a cover story of an ammunition explosion on the Alamogordo Air Force Base on July 16 , 1945 after the test of the first atomic bomb
test of the first atomic bomb
Trinity (nuclear test)
Tolar, New Mexico