Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1884 — RECKLESS RAILROADING. [ARTICLE]

RECKLESS RAILROADING.

Somebody’s Blunder Causes a Fatal Collision on the West Shore Road. [Syracuse Dispatch.] As a Rochester express on the West Shore Road from this city was drawing onto a branch track opposite Snvannah Station, the Atlantic express from Buffalo crashed into the baggage car and made a clean sweep of the smoker, taking an entire row of seats with it and leaving the two cars and the front end of the first passenger a total wreck. Two men were killed and four seriously wounded. Nearly all of the victims were employes of the Baltimore and Ohio Telegraph Company, and were on the way to their homes m Rochester to spend Sunday. Many curious circumstances are narrated in connection with the disastrous occurrence. Some passengers occupying seats with the killed and injured escaped unhurt. George Waggoner, of this city, stood on the front steps of the smoker, and seeing the headlight of an approaching engine, he ran to the other side and jumped. He remembers being carried along by the car, but suddenly became insensible. On recovering, he found himself on a heap of loose dirt twenty feet from the track. He was not injured. The two sons of Mr. Waterbury’s were at the station to meet him. Not finding him, they left for home shortly after the accident, under the impression that he had waited here for the next train. An hour afterward they were summoned back to the wreck, when upon closer inspection the elder boy discovered among bodies he had himself helped to remove the mangled remains of his father. The relatives of the killed and wounded inveigh bitterly against the recklessness which made the accident possible. The West Shore Company is censured on all hands, the universal opinion being that under proper management the disaster could not have taken place.