Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1902 — BAD RAILROAD WRECKS. [ARTICLE]

BAD RAILROAD WRECKS.

Fatal Disaster* Occur on Pennsylvania and the B. A O. Railroad wrecks in several parts of the country caused loss of life Thursday. Two of them were in Ohio and one la Nebraska. In one, which occurred on the Panhandle, not far from Xenia. Ohio, the co'.’.itlon of the limited train with a loaded coal car which had broken away from a siding and run upon the main track wrecked the engine, burying the engineer beneath it, and caused the explosion of the gas tank under one <A the coaches. This set fire to the coaches. Six passengers, five men and a woman, were burned to death in sight of trainmen and passengers who had escaped from the other coaches, but were powerless to rescue them on account of the intense heat of the fire. Many other passengers were injured. The wrecked train was the Keystone Limited, from St. Louis for New York. While running at over sixty miles a* hour it crashed into a freight car ladei with coal, which had escaped from a freight train and which came tt the limited on a down grade, running at th# rate of forty miles an hour. The impact was terrific and was followed immediately by the explosion of gas tanks beneath the Pullmans. The limited train consisted of a big engine, two mail cars, a day coach and four Pullmans. All but the two rear sleepers were wrecked. There were fifty passengers on the train and it is considered marvelous that any escaped. Many were asleep when ths crash came and those in the Pullman cars were hurled from their berths into the mass of wreckage. For more than two hours the debris burned, and It waa only put under control when the fire department from Dayton arrived and reenforced the local firemen. Thirty miles south of Zanesville, Ohio, on the Ohio and Little Kanawha branch of the Baltimore and Ohio the rear car of a train passing over a high trestle broke its coupling. The car ran on the ties until it fell and rolled down an embankment forty feet high. The coach was demolished, two persons were killed, four mortally injured and a score seriously hurt. A Rock Island train jumped the track three miles west of South Omaha, Neb., ' killing the fireman and fatally injuring I the conductor. Two express messengers were hurt.