| OCR Text |
Show I By Paul Danby. Half a dozen railroad men were talk-ins talk-ins about odd accidents, hair-breadth escapes and other queer happenings on the rail. All agred that many of the incidents that had come Into their experience ex-perience as ' railroad veterans were strange past belief on the part of anyone any-one not In the business. ' "First queer railroad accident I ever heard of," said the oldest member of the party, "happened when I was a boy. It was on what was then the New London Lon-don & Northern railroad. A family living liv-ing In a little house almost opposite the beginning of the college boat race course was eating breakfast as quietly as you please one morning. The head of the house had just remarked that the S o'clock train was late that morning. morn-ing. " 'There she Is, now, though,' ho added, add-ed, as the train came around a curve Into his view. The next minute there was a frightful crashing and smashing; he and all other members of his family, fam-ily, though unhurt, were terribly frightened, fright-ened, and all had. Jumped from their seats. It took them several minutes to realize that they had been victims of a most remarkable railroad accident. "The engine hatlllng the up train had jumped the track Just In front of the house, had crashed through the fence and into the house, knocking down a part of the front wall: the cowcatcher had been smashed, but the bogeyvtruck had made its way clear Into the house and the old-fashioned, flaring smoke-slack, smoke-slack, .then in use, almost filled the hole that had been made in the front wall. The newspapers of those days gave a lot of prominence to that accident, and I remember that one of the Illustrated weeklies had a picture of it entitled, 'A Locomotive at Breakfast.' " The demolition of buildings by derailed de-railed trains Is not a fretiuent occurrence occur-rence but there Have been several other accidents of the sort besides the one mentioned by the veteran railroad man. In 1S93 a westbound Big Four train at Lafayette, Ind.. left a sharp curve and came In collision with the train shed and station. The two structures were instantly transformed Into brick piles, with here and there a splintered timber sticking out. Fortunately, the accident, happening In the small hours of the morning, there were few people about the station at tho time, and none of them was seriously hurt. Seven people were killed on the train. Including the engine driver, so that It was not possible possi-ble to learn the cause of the accident with any degree of certainty ' Some years prior to that a slmllnr accident occurred at Rochester on the New York Central, but with much less damage and no loss of life. If I remember remem-ber correctly, this accident took place at about 10 o'clock In the morning, when the train shed was crowded with passengers leaving the Incoming and about to climb on board the outgoing trains. The frightened people fled like sheep before the big black monster machine, ma-chine, and had the train been m6vlng at full spePd the loss of life must have been frightful. It was moving slowly, however, and it was due to the same reason that the only damage done to the station building was the knocking of a hole In the side of the waiting-room waiting-room wall. Luck of Two Men Who Jumped. "The only man hurt In one of the most curious accidents of the present year," said one of the half-dozen story1-tellers, story1-tellers, "was the engineer, who Jumped. He Is not the only man who Jumped and was killed when- he would have been unhurt had he remained at his lost. On the Shore L.ine, near New Haven a few years ago a train was pulling slowly Into the city over a long trestle, when something happened to the rear car and It toppled over and fell off the trestle. The coupling held, pulling the next car off, It in turn derailed de-railed the next, and so on. till all the cars !n tho train except the baggage car were In the marsh. Then the coupling coup-ling broke, the baggage car and the engine en-gine remaining on the rails. "The cars that fell Into the marsh were only half overturned, and no one cn hoard was hurt. But the conductor, who was In the baggage car, and saw the rear cars go over in time to Jump, promptly did so. and. landing on his head, broke his neck. He was quite dead w hen picked up. "That was a piece of bad luck, the match of which befell a fellow at Cro-ton Cro-ton Falls, N. Y., a few years ago. although al-though his luck was good, not bad. Either he or his horse blundered, for , when he reached the Crolon river, instead in-stead of sticking to the highway and crossing the stream over the wagon bridge, he look to the railroad. "The- horse had taken only a few steps on the bridge when his legs went through the ties. The driver had hardly hard-ly -sensed where he was when ho heard the rumble and whistle of an approaching approach-ing train. Tho only thing he could do under the circumstances was to Jump Into the river, and though he knew that the water was at least Eeventv feet below be-low the bridge, he took the risk, landing land-ing In the water, mightv well scared but unhurt. He was rescued by some men who heard his cries for help. The engineer of the train saw the horse and wagon in time to slow up, and the trnin was not thrown off. but the horse was killed and the passengers were badly shaken up." Driving Wheels Running Amuck. It was a "Western man who spoke next. "Oddest accident I ever knew anything any-thing about," he said, "was on the Rock Island nearly twenty years ago. It Isn't credited by many men to whom I tell It, but you aro seasoned railroad men, and I'll venture to repeat 11. It happened hap-pened some sixty or seventy miles west of Chicago. An eastbound train was bowling along at a fifty-mile clip, over a perfectly level, perfectly straight stretch of road, when all four drivers let loose at the same time and went rolling along the prairie. "The engineer and fireman were nearly near-ly going daffy over it. To lose one driver dri-ver is bad onouch and extremely unusual, un-usual, and to lose four at once is absolutely abso-lutely Incredible, but I assure vou, gentlemen, gen-tlemen, that the thing- actually hap- pened just as I am telling It. No great damage was done: the bogey trucks, Just back of the pilot, held, and the firebox fire-box settled and dragged along the track a little distance. But the settling was just enough to break the air connection; con-nection; that sot the brakes and the train soon came to a standstill." The New York State engineer present looked admiringly at the Western man as he finished. "Good story, partner," he said, "and for one. I believe It. I believe your statement that the men on the engine were surprised, too. I never knew about all four of them breaking loose from the same engine simultaneously, but on the New York, New Haven & Hartford in September, 1903, the right front driver dri-ver and the left rear driver of a Port Chester local parted, company with their axles at the same time. Nobody was hurt, but the engineer put on the emergency brake so suddenly that the stop Jarred the passengers a lot. One of the loose drivers -grazed the side of a fast through train for Boston, ripping off some of the woodwork of some of the cars, and making a noise that frightened the passengers half out of their wits. "The only other time I know anything about a driving wheel getting away was in Pennsylvania, nine miles west -SHEEP of Trenton, N. J., on the Philadelphia & Reading. There was only one lost wheel, but It rolled into the midst of a gang of track lnborers, hit two or three of them and knocked them down, and scared the rest almost to death. A Few Narrow Escapes. "Once when I was running on the Memphis & Little Rock," said the Westerner, "we had a mighty close shave that might have killed half the passengers on the train. "We were making pretty high speed for those days, going along about as fast as we dared, behind time, when the engine struck a rail with a flaw in It, broke It off and threw a three-foot piece of It clear out and over to tho very edge of the right of way. I saw it go and was horror stricken. I expected ex-pected the whole train would be ditched before I could get the brakes on. As a matter of fact, I didn't put them on at all, I was so dazed, till after the entire train had crossed the damaged place In the track. Baggage car, smoker, day coaches and sleepers, all left the rail, Jolted along three feet on the ties and rose again on the end of the broken rail without doing the least damage. "Yes, the passengers were shaken up some. I brought the train to a standstill stand-still and a man was sent back to look the ground over. The great wonder was that the rails didn't spread; If they had there'd have been trouble, sure." "I'm not in the business," said the only man present not a railroad man. "but I believe that Btory all right. Once I was a passenger on the old Ohio and Big Sandy' road. That waB about tho roughest road I ever rode on, but my experience wasn't half so bad as the experience of the only sleeping passenger passen-ger on the train that night. With a friend I was riding In the smoker and we were talking to the conductor. Suddenly Sud-denly the door opened and a wild looking look-ing chap In pajamas came staggering I In. He was the sleeping car passenger and he looked us If he had been through half a dozen wars. "J Mr. Conductor,' he spluttered, 'your Infernal old road Is-so rough that T can't sleep a little bit. Twice I've ben pitched out of my berth to the floor In the last fifteen minutes. I never had such a time In my life. Maybe there's something the mntter.' "The conductor took his lantern and started back. My friend and myself stayed where we were for a while. Then we noticed that the bejl cord was being Jerked violently and that the engineer en-gineer was whistling for brakes. Then the train came to a stop, and after nbout five minutes waiting we, too, went back to see what was the matter. It was as dark as tar and raining pitchforks, and the whole train crew was outside with lanterns. "The sleeper was off the rails and had been for how far we never knew. It had been bumping over (he ties all the time that poor passenger had been pitched about, and had the train gone 200 feet more before stopping there would have been a very serious accident, acci-dent, for the wheels were within six Inches of the ends ofthe ties. If the wheels had left the tics the sleeper would have gone down a high and steep embankment,, and as the coupling had been strong enough to haul the sleeper over the ties, It would undoubtedly un-doubtedly have pulled the whole train off the rails." Thunderbolt and Oil Car. "Railroad accidents are always terrifying, terri-fying, even to railroad veterans," put In the Western man, "but the scaredest railroad crew I ever heard of was running run-ning a freight on the Flint and Pere Marquette a year or two before the consolidation that made it the Pere Marquette system. "It had been a warm, muggy, damp day, and all hands were in a highly disagreeable frame of mind by sundown. sun-down. It seemed to them all that about the worst lot that could fall to any human being was to bump along, mile after mile, running a slow freight. It looked very much like a thunderstorm, and by S o'clock, when it began to drizzle slowly, as it sometimes does at the close of a muggy summer day, the deepest gloom had enveloped the whole crew. "The train was climbing a long, heavy grade when the lightning began to play. A bridge had Just been crossed and theern " ugly way aft the rails were E2t I steam w-asruen before the flreiw both engineer and fljj "Half a second hu other explosion, rnu$ more hair-raising S2 ly had the white Ilea? nlng flash fadci'S red glow began tos the middle of the t? same time, the en hod broken away i "'Bill!' he calfeei there was an oil Cir; the train and the M t. Every man on & train has been killed ' 'Guess you're r' the fireman. Til wa station and wire la' s as soon as he had e gether; and so he did. conductor, who wan boose, the tralniEst'1 along the train on ttf had come to the cij alone of the entire c the lightning strofe," in hand, started bade that might be follb'i wire In to division h the accident. "The engineer got;' first, of course. It m " "Train struck bjr i! cars destroyed. Coa of crew killed.' ,j "This caused a cm per's office, ot.cours train was ordered ra could be got rea"dr;i slon was caused, byt the conductor, wblca'i " 'Lightning has dfi of train and bridge., -J "As a matter of-fi crew was killed, the, been near enough' t escape the force.otUH were so scared thaWl to reach the engine d neer had snt hli wit got the worse of it'fs nlng or the exploslos on his back and he -n some time before hi back with his lauterE the bridge, overTvifc at the moment, mil stroyed. J Copyright. uaTH |
