Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1884 — IN A SEA OF FLAMES. [ARTICLE]

IN A SEA OF FLAMES.

yarning Oil Envelops s Train on a Pennsylvania Railroad. Three Persons Cremated, and Thirty Others Badly Injured. [Bradford (Pa.) Dispatch,} One of those disasters peculiar to the oil country shocked the people of Bradford today. An entire passenger train on the Bradford, Borwell and Kinzua Narrow-Gauge railroad was destroyed by fire. The train ran through a river of oil which had escaped from a burst tank on the steep hill and coursed down over thi snow and into the bed of the track, down which it ran for fully half a mile. The grade at that point, which was very steep, allowed this great leeway. The train consisted of an express car and passenger coach, both well filled with passengers. The engineer was not aware of the dangerous ground his train was traversing. The moment tho oil came in contact with the furnace of the engine it ignited and at once enveloped the" entire train in a mass of flame. The engineer, Patrick Sexton, applied the air-brake and reversed the engine. The halt was very brief. The track for over 600 feet ahead was a roaing sea of flame. Great clouds of dense black smoke ascended heavenward. The engineer opened wide the throttle, and away thundered the train through a sea of smoke, flame, and oil. The speed attained was terrible, and acted as a huge fan to the conflagration. The engineer saw a sharp curve ahead, and, quickly reversing his engine, with his fireman, Mike Walsh, jumped into the snowbank which lined both sides of the road. Both were terribly burned. The entire train was derailed and thrown down ah embankment. In the fire-hemmed coach the scene beggared description. Locked in and helpless in a furnace of fire, traveling at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, their anguish knew no bounds. Men of nerve lost their heads, women fell to the floor in a swoon, and the cries and lamentations of little children were heartrending. There was a dash through doors and windows and through the sweeping flames, which cooked the-flesh and singed the hair on the faces and heads of the imprisoned passengers. In the dash for liberty it was everybody for themselves, and men in their desperation jumped from the speeding train and fell prostrate to the ground, burned and mangled. So intense was the heat that one minute after the train entered the sea of fire every window was cracked. Two-thirds of the passengers jumped through the narrow windows, the inajorlty escaping with severe burns, while (the lucky few escaped without a scratch. Three persons, all of them women, were found burned to death, and about thirty more or less seriously Injured. Some of the injured will in all probability die. Several of the persons extricated from the wreck have their limbs charred so badly that they will have to be amputated.