Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1891 — COLLIDED AND CRUSHED. [ARTICLE]

COLLIDED AND CRUSHED.

Frightful Railroad Accident on the Lake Shore. Nine Postal Clerks and Railway Employes Caged and Killed. I A specialfrom Cleveland on the 10th says: Train No. 21, the Toledo express, west bound, on- the Lake Shore railroad, collided with train 14, east bound, known as the fast mail, at Kipton, 0., a small station some thirty miles west of Cleveland, this afternoon. Absolutely nothing but small splinters was left of the forward mail car, and the engines of both trains were completely demolished. The force of the collision was such that the cars reared on end as high as the little depot, and that | building was shattered and crushed by the heavy mass falling against it. No passengers on the fast mail, which carries a parlor coach, were killed or seriously injured, although the seats were all tom loose from the bottom of the coach and passengers and chairs piled in a mass at the end. The postal clerks did not escape, and six of Uncle Sam’s faithful servants" were killed. The two engineers were also killed. A boy named Dantzig, son of a section boss, sitting on the depot platform, was struck by the cars and fatally injuredThe fireman of No. 21, named Staley, re siding at Toledo, was fatally injured and died to-night. The scene at the wreck is indescribableIron rods, splintered fragments of lumber and debris of mail are scattered in all directions. The engineer of No. 14 stuck bravely to his post and was found with his hand on the throttle, blackened and mangled, after the shock. His fireman jumped. As near as can be ascertained there was a - conflict in orders. A dispatch was first sent that the trains should meet at Oberlin,seven miles east, and almost immediately afterward it was followed by another announcing Kipton as. the meeting place, but the latter was too late. No. 21 had come almost to a standstill when the collision occured, while tlie other train was running at the rate of forty miles an hour. The track was cleared some two hours after, and the passengers on train 14 brought to this city. Not a passenger coach on the west-bound train left the track. The bodies of the dead were horribly mangled. Limbs were torn off, and the bodies crashed out of almost all semblance to human beings. The accident is the most frightful that ever happened on that divisionof the Lake Shore road, and the first serious disaster to the fast mail.