Question: On what date did  the Pennsylvania Railroad's "Federal", the overnight train from Boston, crash into the station?
About the article "Union Station (Washington, D.C.)", section "1953 overrun".

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On the morning of January 15, 1953, the Pennsylvania Railroad's "Federal", the overnight train from Boston, crashed into the station.
When the engineer tried to apply the trainline brakes two miles out of the platforms, he discovered that he only had engine brakes.
He radioed a warning ahead, and the concourse was cleared as the train coasted downhill into track 16.
The GG1 locomotive, No.
4876, hit the bumper block at about , jumped onto the platform, destroyed the stationmaster’s office at the end of the track, took out a newsstand, and was on its way to crashing through the wall into the Great Hall.
Just then, the floor of the terminal, having never been designed to carry the weight of a locomotive, gave way, dropping the engine into the basement.
The electric locomotive fell into about the center of what is now the food court.
Remarkably, no one was killed, and passengers in the rear cars thought that they had only had a rough stop.
An investigation revealed that an anglecock on the brakeline had been closed, probably by an icicle knocked from an overhead bridge.
The accident inspired the finale of the 1976 film "Silver Streak".
The durable design of the GG1 made its damage repairable, and it was soon back in service after being hauled away in pieces to the PRR's main shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Before the latter action was undertaken, however, the GG1 and the hole it made were temporarily planked over and hidden from view due to the imminent inauguration of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the thirty-fourth President of the United States.
  January 15, 1953 – 1953 Pennsylvania Railroad train wreck: Washington, D.C., United States: Approaching Union Station, the brakes partially fail on the Pennsylvania Railroad "Federal Express" overnight train from Boston.
Unable to stop, the 16 car train careened through the interlocking, barreled into sixteen track, a stub track, plowed through the bumper and smashed its way into the station, destroying the main newsstand and the stationmaster's office.
The massive GG1 electric locomotive pulling the train collapsed the concourse floor and fell into the basement.
Amazingly, nobody was killed by the accident.
President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower's inauguration was scheduled the next week, leaving insufficient time to extricate the locomotive, so the basement was planked over for the celebration week.
After the inaugural festivities had concluded, the locomotive was cut into three sections, hauled to the Pennsylvania Railroad's Altoona shops, where it was rebuilt and returned to revenue service for another three decades.
GG1 No.
4876 is in the collection of the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
March 27, 1953 – Conneaut, Ohio, United States: Three New York Central trains tangle near Conneaut on the four-track mainline on the night of March 27.
Twenty-one passengers die.
The cause is found to be an improperly secured gondola load—a section of pipe fell from a freight car onto the adjacent track and was struck by a passenger train.
April 8, 1953 – Stratford tube crash: 12 people were killed as a result of a rear-end collision in a tunnel.
June 24, 1953 – 1953 Col des Nuages derailment: "About 100 or more" people are killed when a passenger train plunges 50 feet through a sabotaged viaduct in French Indochina (now Vietnam).
Two locomotives and 18 cars crashed down in a ravine at a mountain pass on the route between the ancient Vietnamese capital of Huế and the port of Tourane (Da Nang).
The pass had frequently been the scene of attacks by the Communist-led Viet Minh rebels.
Officials said that a strong charge exploded just as the train arrived at the viaduct, tumbling a 25-foot span into the ravine.
15 August 1953 – Irk Valley Junction rail crash, ten die when the front carriages of an electric train plunge off a viaduct following a collision.
26 August 1953 Lower Truro Rail Disaster, Nova Scotia, Canada: 6 members of a 10 member family are killed when a train hits their vehicle on a level crossing on the outskirts of Truro, N.S.
William Murray Burgess, his wife Edna McCallum Burgess, and four of their children Geraldine 12 yrs, Esther 8 yrs, Rodney 5 yrs, and Heather 2 yrs are killed at the scene.
December 19, 1953 – Sydenham Rail Disaster, Australia: a passenger train of the New South Wales Railways runs into the rear of another train.
Five people are killed and 748 injured.
December 24, 1953 – Šakvice train disaster, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic): Express train whose crew fell asleep after several bottles of wine hits commuter train at a station, killing 106 people.
December 24, 1953 – Tangiwai disaster, New Zealand: an overnight Wellington to Auckland express train fell into the Whangaehu River, after the rail bridge was destroyed by a lahar from Mount Ruapehu's crater lake just minutes earlier.
151 people were killed.  
Through trains between Boston and Washington began operation on May 8, 1876, using the steamship "Maryland" to transport up to six passenger cars between NYNH&H's Harlem River station and Harsimus Cove (close to the Exchange Place terminal) on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The first services were an overnight train that ran on the combined New York and New England Railroad (Boston-Hartford) and NYNH&H route, and a day train on the shore route.
A sample timetable shows that in 1893 there was a Boston-Washington day train called the "Colonial Express" but the overnight train (now using the NYNH&H shore route) still had only generic names like Boston and Washington Express (its southbound name on the NYNH&H).
By 1903 the overnight train was called the "Federal Express".
The boat passage allowed passengers to avoid the complicated transfer in New York via city streets and a Hudson River ferry.
It was especially convenient for the overnight train where passengers could choose to remain in their Pullman sleepers.
The two trains made their last trip by steamer on October 17, 1912.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was by that date running all other through trains into its new Penn Station in New York rather than via Jersey City.
The "Colonial Express" was changed to involve an omnibus connection between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal.
Because of the overnight run, the "Federal Express" was run this way for only one transitional day.
On October 19, the "Federal Express" began operating over an all-rail route via the Poughkeepsie Bridge.
The routing involved a long detour between New Haven and Trenton, using the NYNH&H Maybrook Line (via Derby, Danbury, and Brewster, New York), the NYNH&H's Central New England Railway across the bridge to Maybrook, New York, the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway to Belvidere, New Jersey, and the PRR's Belvidere-Delaware Railroad branch.
Due to freight congestion on the Maybrook Line, the train was discontinued on January 9, 1916.
With the opening of the New York Connecting Railroad on April 1, 1917, the "Federal Express" and "Colonial Express" were restored as through trains via Penn Station and the Hell Gate Bridge.
On this final routing the "Federal Express" initially made the run in 12 hours 10 minutes, later reduced to 9 hours 45 minutes averaged both ways.
The "Federal" operated without interruption through World War II, also avoiding (barely) the yearlong 1945 Office of Defense Transportation ban on sleeping car routes less than 450 miles, though the train's intermediate sleepers such as Philadelphia-Boston and Washington-Providence were so affected.
This ban was in anticipation of Operation Magic Carpet.
After the war, the "Federal" was gradually re-equipped with railroad-owned lightweight sleepers and coaches from Pullman-Standard, including New Haven coaches of the 8600-8702 series, sleepers of the 14-roomette, 4-double bedroom "Point"-series of 1948 and the 6-section, 4-double bedroom, 6-roomette "Beach"-series of 1955.
Food service was provided by a buffet-lounge car which also contained 6 double bedrooms, from the prewar and postwar PRR "Falls"-series until 1960, and a 1955 New Haven "State"-series car of similar configuration thereafter.
Other PRR coaches and sleepers could sometimes be found as well on the postwar "Federal", though its consist was mostly New Haven by joint agreement.
Penn Central, formed in 1968 from merger of the PRR and the New York Central, became the operator of the entire train in 1969 when PC's court-ordered purchase of the New Haven took effect.
The cars with the open sections were soon withdrawn, when PC declined to continue offering the section as a travel option (neither PRR nor NYC ever ordered lightweight sleepers with sections).
Buffet-lounge service ended in 1970, replaced by a snack bar coach; only a single roomette-and-bedroom sleeper remained each way between Washington and Boston, as by that time the pick-up/setout intermediate sleepers from Philadelphia, Penn Station and Providence had also been discontinued.
Also with the PC takeover, GG1 electrics operated the train all the way between Washington and New Haven, changing to or from newly-assigned ex-PRR E units between New Haven and Boston.
The "Federal" made its last runs on May 1, 1971, as Amtrak, which began operations on that day, had declined to include an overnight train on the Northeast Corridor in its initial system.
However, after only a year, popular demand caused Amtrak to re-introduce just such a service, the Boston-Washington "Night Owl" (trains 66-67; 172-173 having been reassigned to a day train).
The "Night Owl", later extended to Newport News and renamed the "Twilight Shoreliner", continued operating until 2000.
The "Federal" name was revived briefly when trains 66 and 67 became coach/business only, but eventually the name was dropped if favor of Northeast Regional branding.
Typical of overnight trains, the "Federal" also carried U.S. mail as well as checked baggage.
Trains 172 and 173 carried the Washington & Boston Railway Post Office until May 1, 1971, being the next-to-last RPO service in the United States (Amtrak operated the very last, the New York & Washington RPO, until 1977).
The "Federal" had no need to carry a separate sleeping car between Penn Station and Boston, as the New Haven had its own overnight train between Grand Central Terminal and South Station, the "Owl" (trains #2 and #3). 
  January 15 - The brakes fail on Pennsylvania Railroad's westbound "Federal Express" passenger train; the train barrels through the end of track barriers and stationmaster's office at Union Station in Washington, D.C., but nobody is killed in the accident.  
The Federal Express (later officially known as just the Federal) was an overnight named passenger train run by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad between Washington, DC's Union Station and Boston, Massachusetts's South Station from 1912 to 1971.
Train numbers on both railroads were 172 northbound and 173 southbound.
At different times, its route has taken it across the Hudson River via a car float between Port Morris and Jersey City (the ferry "Maryland"), the Poughkeepsie Bridge, and finally the Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad.
The final routing was identical to today's high-speed Northeast Corridor.
The train carried sleeping cars and coaches, as well as mail and baggage.
As the train operated well outside of dinner hours after 1917 (10:00 - 11:00 PM departure), food service was limited to beverages and light snacks on departure, and continental breakfast in the morning, generally dispensed from a lounge car which also contained sleeping accommodations.