Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1911 — RESEMBLED COMET ON RAILS [ARTICLE]

RESEMBLED COMET ON RAILS

Blazing Train Rushed to Stretch of Prairie to Avoid Firing Timber Land and Town. Blowing its / whistle frantically a Northern Pacific engine dashed through Bellingham, Wash., and out into the country, ahead of a tralnload of blazing cedar logs, narrowly missing a north-bound passenger at Anacortes. The wild ride occurred about 9 p. m., and the fiery cars leaping along the rails made a brilliant spectacle. Hundreds of persons ran into their homes frightened lest a comet was sweeping the horizon. The train was stopped ten miles south of town and the burning cars of logs left to destruction. When about four miles from Rogers' logging camp, where the cedar logs were loaded, one carload becameignited from a spark out of the engine. The fire quickly spread by the rush of the train, and the engineer, seeing the futility of stopping in the heavy timber and endangering other property, put on full speed. The heavy woods run almost to Bellingham’s northern edge and the danger was not passed until after the blazlng.train had traversed the forest and cleared the city when the stretch of prairie south of the city was reached. The engineer, although seeking to save the property of others from fire/ did not think of the caboose on the rear of the train, and while the cars were being pulled along at fifty miles an hour the occupants of the caboose were vainly trying to leap to safety on likely looking spots along the right of way. J. Cole, rear brakeman, landed on his head In a quagmire, but extricated himself. Conductor George Baxter sustained a broken leg in leaping from the car. The caboose was partly destroyed.—Minneapolis Journal.