Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1893 — A Costly Fifteen Seconds. [ARTICLE]

A Costly Fifteen Seconds.

“The greatest transformation scene I ever saw,” said a railroad engimer, “was on the Pennsylvania Railroad, near Rohierstown, Pa. It was a lightning change, too, if there ever was one, A leng train of loaded jumbo coal cars was going east, and running at' a high rate of speed. “Suddenly a brake rigging on one of the cars near the head of the train came loose in some way and dropped to the rails. The collision of the wheels of the car with the obstruction snapped an axle, which threw the car from the track. Instantly car wheels, brakes, timbers, rails and coal were flying thick in the ai-\ as car after car went piling upon the first one and one on another. Ten cars were torn to splinters. “Two others were hurled over on the other track, and two tumbled down an embankment.. Not a truck or bit of brake apparatus was left tn a single one of these cars, and the ten others were simply piles of stove wood and scrap iron. The rails were completely ripped from the ties for a distance of 400 feet on the east-bound track, and for 200 feet on the west-bound track. “The roadbed for that distance was covered two feet deep with coal. Th« whole thing was done in less than fifteen seconds, and it cost the company SIO,OOO. —New York Sun.