Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1912 — LIMITED TRAIN IN BAD WRECK [ARTICLE]

LIMITED TRAIN IN BAD WRECK

Pennsylvania’s New-York-Chi-cago Flyer Leaves Track. I THREE ARE DEAD; 67 INJURED Cars Are Plunged Down Embankment Almost into Juniata River, After Being Derailed by Broken. Arch Bar. Harrisburg, Pa., Feb. 16. —One of the fast Chicago-New' Yoik flyers, the Pennsylvania limited, eastbound, was wrecked at Warriors Ridge, four miles west of Hundingdon. A dining car and eight steel Pullman sleeping cars left the track and plunged down a thirty-foot embankment. ■ Of 102 persons on were killed and sixty-seven injured, several of these seriously. Thirty or more of the injuredi were taken to the Blair Memorial hospital at Huntingdon, where they were cared for by the local staff, supplemented by a corps of surgeons and nurses from Harrisburg and Altoona. . The dead. 1 as far as known are: Harry A. Nauss, New' York City. Mrs. J. F. Tavenner, Cordova, 111. Mrs. Hall, colored matron on Pullman car. Train No. 12, which followed the limited), was held at Warriors Ridge until all passengers who were unhurt or only slightly injured had been taken from the wrecked cars. These W’ere then put aboard No. 12 and carried east. Some of the slightly injured stopped off in Harrisburg over night to recover from the shock. The majority continued on to New- York and other eastern destinations. The wrecked train, though behind time, yas running at only ordinary speed. When, as it passed between the end of the mountain at Whrriors Ridge and the river the two locomotives and a combination baggage and mail car parted from the remainder of the train, consisting of a dining car, eight Pullman sleepers and an observation car, all of steel. All except the observation car left the track andwent over the bank, turning on their sides toward' the water. The observation car toppled slightly, bul did not go over The locomotives and combination car kept the track, running several hundred yards before they could be stopped. C. A. Preston, superintendent of the middle division of the Pennsylvania, reported to the state railroad commission that the wreck was caused by the breaking of an arch bar under the front truck of engine No 3,350, the locomotive nearest the train. The theory generally accepted is that the combination car, being an old style wooden affair, passed safely over the broken piece, but that the first of the steel cars, all of which sit low er than the old wooden ones, caught the obstruction and jumped the rails, the shock breaking the couplings and permitting the two engines and combination car to run ahead.