Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1914 — LIVE WIRE SINGED HIS HAIR [ARTICLE]

LIVE WIRE SINGED HIS HAIR

Pennsylv tnia Trainman In Great Good Luck He Was Not Half Inch Taller. Glensl )e, Pa. —All the hair on top of the head of William Tennent, a trainma.i on the Trenton Cutoff railroad, vas singed off when his head was grazed by an electric wire charged with 2,300 volts. The accident happened while Tennent was stand mg on top of a boxcar of his traJn as it passed beneath a bridge at Corson’s station. As the wire grazed his head Tennent was hurled flat on the top of the :ar, partly conscious. He fell parallel with the car, but not to the gTound, and when the train reached Whitemarsh station other trainmen ' were sent back to investigate. They found that heavily charged wires of an electric company passing under the bridge bed had sagged at least three feet, and that the gases and soot from engines had eaten away the insulation. * Tennent’s bead as he stood ,on the boxcar, was “flush” with the sagging wires, and if he had been a half inch taller or If the wires had sagged half an Inch more he would have received the full force of 2,300 volts and been .nstantly electrocuted.