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Show WRECK INQUIRY 1 a i i i Si 8 fill fFiilhl Federal, State and Railroad Authorities to Determine Responsibility Re-sponsibility for New York Central Disaster. INQUEST OVER BODIES Officials Divided in Opinion as to Placing Blame on Tower-man Tower-man or the Engineer. Cleveland, Ohio, March SO. With 27 bodies recovered from yesterday's wreck of three New York Central trains at Amherst, Ohio, attention icy day was focused upon tho several ln vestigations that were put under way by federal, state and railroad authorities author-ities to determine responsibility for the wreck. Representatives of tlie interstate in-terstate commerce commission, the utilities commission ot Ohio and various vari-ous department headB of the Now York Central were conducting Inves tlgatlons in Cleveland and at other points In the vicinity of tho wreck. Charles Garvor of Lorain county planned to begin an inquest at Elyrla Into the death of tho wreck victims and the causeB leading thereto. Was "Death Coach" Steel or Wood7 The question of whether the so-called so-called "death coach" on train No. SG was of modern steel construction as claimed by Nfew York Central officials, offi-cials, or was mainly of wood construe-tion construe-tion promised to be an Important feature fea-ture of the investigation. Railroad officials today were still divided In opinion as whether the blame should be placed upon tho tow-ernian tow-ernian who, it is alleged by some officials, offi-cials, was asleep and failed to give the proper signal, or upon the engineer, engi-neer, whom they say It may be shown either failed to seo the signal or ex. ceeded his orders. Injured In Precarious Condition. Of the more than forty persons injured in-jured in the wreck, several were said to be in a precarious condition early today and more fatalities were feared. Railroad officials say that only twen. ty-seven bodies have been recovered and that they regard it as Impossible that more bodies are in the ruins. Unofficial, but what was regarded as reliable reports, placed the number num-ber of dead at thirty. Two Men Questioned. Tho two men at whom most of the questions were to directed at today's investigation were Engineer Herman Hess of the second section of No. 56 and Towerman A. R. Ernst of Amherst. Am-herst. Engineer D. W. Leonnrd of the first section of train No. 8G which pulled tho "death car" asserts he stopped his train on a signal originating in Ernst's tower. Englneor Hess declares he saw no signal when he brought his section booming along at a fifty miles an hour speed about three minutes later. Towerman Declares Line Was Open. Ernst asserts he set no stop signal, declaring the lino was open for Engl, neer Leonard to go ahead. If Ernst is held culpable in the In vestigation the blame will trace back to a baby's tiny crib in the Ernst home at Elyria. The baby was born bunuay nigni. since mai ume lunsi has had little sleep, railroad officials say. Towerman Denies Charge. Ernst, tho towerman, stoutly denied that ho was asleep, or had been incapacitated in-capacitated by loss of sleep. The signal sig-nal simply failed to work, he said. "If the signals had been -working properly tho block signal light two miles away would havo flashed a caution cau-tion and the block a mile away would have signalled IIcss to to come to a dead stop," said Ernst. "Hess was too good an engineer to run past two signals set against him. "I was on lookout for train No 80. When it was two miles away i threw the signal lever into tho clear giving No. SG a clear path. I realized there had been a signal failure when the train stopped. When the train had stopped I again jammed tho signal lever into the clear and this time It might have worked, for the train started ahead Then the crash came I didn't have Ume to stop the Twentieth Twen-tieth Century beforo it, too, crashed into the wreck." Federal Investigation Opens. PI W. Belnap. representing the interstate in-terstate commerce commission, opened open-ed the federal Investigation. A S. Ingalls, general superintendent of the New York Central lines west of Buffalo, spent an hour In laying before Belnap all that tho railroad officials had learned so far In their investigations of the cause of the accident. The lntorstato commerco representations represent-ations after conferring with railroads and others, announced they would go to Amherst at noon today to make a first hand investigation Into the wreck. The name of John Hearne of Gal-llpolls, Gal-llpolls, O., was today stricken from the list of doad. Hearne's father telegraphed tele-graphed today saying his son was not on any of the wrecked trains. |