Show 0 w. w Adventurers Adventurers' r Club Two Trains on a Track By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter ff IF IF TF ID I'D been embarking on an expedition into some unexplored J- J jungle says George Force of New York city I 1 might have been ready for anything But as it happened adventure came to me meon meon meon on a trip home from the office A trip I took six days a week fifty weeks in the year Well George Ive I've been arguing for a long time that that's the way most adventures happen It was on oil January 27 1903 and George was on a train headed for home which was then in a small New Jersey suburban town It was a funny old train train train-as as we know trains now The cars were wooden ones They were heated healed by coal stoves one of which was set in the middle of each car It was a cold snowy night The train was rolling along about twenty miles out of New York and just beyond the town of Westfield At the other side of Westfield the train stopped The express was coming through and the little local was switched to another track The railroad dispatchers intended it to stay there until the express had gone by Tragic Train Wreck on Winter Night But something went wrong with the signals The big train train the the Royal Blue Line Lane Philadelphia Express Express doing doing sixty miles an hour was hour was wason i ion on the wrong track It was coming straight for the rear-end rear of of the local train on which George was riding but not no a man on either train knew it I I until it was too late The first George knew of 01 it was when the me crash came It came with a terrible jarring impact that shook shook the train from one end to another Then as far as George was concerned the whole world seemed to be coming to an end Says George I was In La the forward part of the third car The crash when it came was so terrific that it pushed our train half hall a mile along the tracks The shock of that collision alone killed many people But that shock was only the beginning Jolted half hall out of his senSes Lenses George was dimly conscious of the whole terrible affair Like a aman aman aman man in U a dream he saw the car he was in turn over on its side As it J j I I h O hl hJ l r I J tf r i iI I I i I I 1 7 They Led Him Away from the Frightful Scene turned George went head first through a window cutting his face bruising his back With the whole upper part of his body out of that window he was dragged along the tracks as the car lying on its side still continued to scrape along them Express Locomotive Bores Into Wooden Car When a thousand things all happen at once it takes a long time timeto to tell them Actually Georges George's whole adventure didn't last more than ten minutes all told He felt the car turning over almost at the same time as the initial impact He saw himself going through the window felt felt himself being dragged along the rough surface of the roadbed scarcely a split second after the car Clr had toppled That scared him plenty but the most awesome sight was the theone theone theone one that came just another split second after he fell feU through the window of that still moving still moving car George was up in the front part of his car If he hadn't been he might not have been alive today For to the rear of the car came a horrible grinding sound The whole end back-end crumpled like match match- wood And into the car right car right down its crazily tilted aisle came aisle came the locomotive of the express George Describes Scenes of Frightful Horror George watched it in a daze of fear as it pushed its steaming head forward It had gone through two cars already killing and mash mash- mashing mashing ing and maiming their passengers Now it was coming after George Would that hot smoking juggernaut get him h Geoorge held his breath certain that it was the end but half way down the car the engine stopped The car was filled with cries and groans Injured people were everywhere The car was burning as were all the tle other cars in the trains set afire by the upended coal stoves that heated them Says George The scenes I witnessed then were indescribable The car was a twisted misshapen mass of ruin Burning ruin with the locomotive embedded in its midst Dead wounded and helpless humans were lying along its entire length Passengers from the few cars that wera were not harmed seemed stunned and it was the less serious serious- seriously ly wounded wounded some some of whom had been in the worst of the wreck wreck who who realized that help must be given to the dead and dying and that some some- something something thing must be done about those pinned in flaming cars Wreck Cost the Lives of 30 Passengers George himself was one of the latter He couldn't get out alone and only did with difficulty when three or four men came to help When at last they pried him loose he was still in a state of half His clothes from his neck to his waist had been torn completely from his body They led him away through a scene of the most frightful dis dis- I order Moaning bleeding scalded victims lay in rows by the side of the track and every minute rescuers brought out more I Every passenger in the rear car was killed outright Few escaped in the next one The engineer of the express train died a afew afew few minutes after the accident All AIl told thirty people were killed and scores were injured And George well George well every time lime he thinks of that wreck and the way that locomotive came crashing right into the car after him he counts himself pretty lucky not to have been one of those poor devils in the last car |