To shut up like a telescope. Used of cars in case of a collision.

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1877.  

        They fought so well not one was left to tell
  Which got the largest share of cuts and slashes;
When heroes meet, both sides are bound to beat;
  They telescoped like cars in railroad smashes.
O. W. Holmes, ‘Harvard Poem,’ Jan. 4 (Atlantic Monthly, Feb.).    

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1859.  Two through trains on the Erie Railway came in collision yesterday, near Paterson. One of the trains had stopped, and the locomotive of the other train, which was following, telescoped into the rear cars of the first.—New York Herald, Sept. 17: quoted in de Vere’s ‘Americanisms’ (1871), p. 361.

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