Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1903 — DEATHS IN TRAIN WRECKS. [ARTICLE]

DEATHS IN TRAIN WRECKS.

Two Great Western Trains Plane* from Track Within a Week. Three persQns were killed and twolvo or fifteen were injured in a wreck of the Chicago and Minneapolis limited train on the Chicago Great Western Railroad at South Freeport, 111. The engine, baggage car, buffet car and three Pullman sleepers were ditched. The baggage and buffet cars caught fire and were destroyed. A corpse in the baggage egy was burned. Two chair cars broke loose and ran back half a mile. Baggageman Sneeve and a number of passengers who were injured were taken to a hospital at Freeport, five miles from the scene of the accident. The Illinois Central Railroad oent a relief train and took the unfortunate persona to the hospital. The train was running at n high rate of speed and struck a defective switch. The engine rolled on its side and crushed the engineer and fireman. Engineer Sheridan was making his last run on this train. He was 35 years old and is survived by a widow and two children. The train left Chicago at 6:30 o'clock Thursday evening and was a fast train to Minneapolis. The speed was about fifty miles an hour at the time of the accident and there was no warning of. danger. The engine and the two forward cars rolled over on to their, side. The three Pullman cars left the track, kut remained upright. Two chair cars that were in the rear of the train broke loose and ran back some distance, escaping any danger. € The baggage car was soon in flames aud the illumination from the wreck was seen at Freeport. The few available persons about were soon nt work removing the injured. None, .of the passengers was near enough to be 'affeeted by the Tin- train was not scheduled to stop at South Freeport. A clear track is allotted to the train and no thought was being ghon to possible danger. As the engine loft the track it struck the cab of a freight origin.? which had taken the siding to let the limited pass. Conductor Karr of the freight train was on his engine and was badly scalded. No damage resulted to the engine that was hit.

The track was torn up for a considerable distance and traffic was delayed for several hours. It was long after midnight before the work of rescue was finished and then attention was given to removing the wreckage. This is the second accident on the Great Western within a week. The other wreck occurred at St. Charles, 111., Sunday morning. The train, which was the southwest Kansas City through passenger, passed St. Charles on time to the minute. The next stop was at Sycamore, twenty-five miles farther on, and the track between the two towns is nearly straight. The agent heard the train as it gathered headway and remarked that it was moving rather rapidly. The fin man, John Ilushorc, declared that the train was moving at the rate of forty-five miles an hour when it struck the broken rail that caused the wreck. The broken rail lay thirty feet east of a culvert about forty feet long. As the train struck the rail it leaped and swerved, and ail four wheels struck the sleepers at once. ■ Leahy, clinging to the window frame in his cab, pushed home the throttle and applied the air. The momentum of ’he train was so great, however, that it seemed not to slacken speed in the slightest ns it thundered across the culvert on the ties. Three hundred feet beyond the culvert —although to the fireman it seemed that everything happened almultaneously—the driving wheels swerved, the engine, driving its way through the frozen earth, turned sideways and, with a crash that shook the ground, rolled and plunged down the steep embankment. Behind it, the couplings holding them together, followed the four ears filled with passengers. Engineer Leahy was killed and ’h!r» teen passengers injured.