Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1896 — DEATH IN THE WRECK [ARTICLE]

DEATH IN THE WRECK

AWFUL HEAD-END COLLISION AT LOGAN, lOWA. Eaat-Bonnd Flyer on the Northwesterß Craahea Into an Excursion Train -Twenty-eight Persona Are Killed and Fifty-one Injured. Horrors of the Disaster. The overland flyer on the Chicago and Northwestern road crashed into a heavilyladen picnic train near Logan, lowa, forty miles east of Omaha, early Saturday evening. Twenty-eight people were killed and fifty-one injured, many of whom will die. Twenty-four of the dead are identified and the others are so badly mutilated that identification is hardly possible. The list of the injured is a lengthy one. It contains twenty-eight or more name* of persons who were seriously hurt, dangerously so, to a greater or less degree. In addition there were at least fifty, if not a greater number, who received injuries of a minor nature. These consisted of bruises and cuts or slight disfigurements which will practically amount to nothing. A considerable number also were shaken up severely, but beyond this were uninjured. This was especially tinease among the passengers who occupied the ears'immediately behind the one whic-b was demolished. The scone of wreck and death occurred in a pieee ,of densd" woods about three miles west' of Logan: Both trains came together head on while traveling at the rate of fifty nnies an hour and was caused by Engineer Montgomery of the picnic train mistaking orders. lie should have waited, on the siding at Logan until the passenger train and the fast overland flyer had passed. He oniy waited long enough for the passenger to fly by and then pulled out on the main track with the throttle wide open and a full head of steam on. The crash came so quickly that Moutgomery had barely time to jump. The excursion train was composed of seventeeo passenger cars, loaded with 1,500 men, women and children, mostly from Council Bluffs and Omaha. They were making merry, singing and shouting. The weight of the excursion train and the speed of the freight made the wreck a fearful one. The two engines were completely demolished and the first two cars of each train telescoped. The work of death was wrought iu the first coach of the excursion train. In this were nearly 100 people and bnt a few of them escaped without injury. There was no warning, and with the wreck of the ear came death or dangerous injury to almost every occupant. All of the coaches were badly shaken up, bnt the dead were confined to the first passenger coach.