People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1894 — LIVES CRUSHED OUT. [ARTICLE]

LIVES CRUSHED OUT.

Meager Details of a Disastrous Collision Down South. Chester Court House;, S. C., Jan. 18. —The limited train No. 35, from New York to Florida, on the Richmond & Danville, was run into by a Georgia, Carolina & Northern train at the crossing here at 1 o’clock this morning. Twenty-five people were either killed or injured. The sleeper was full of people and was struck in the center and crushed. Not a person escaped unhurt. The day coaches were turned upside down on the side of the track. They were nearly full of passengers and few on board escaped some injury. The passengers on the sleeper comprised chiefly prominent people of Washington and New York. Those in the day coaches were persons who, making a short trip, all had retired before midnight and when the crash came few except the trainmen were awake. There was not a moment’s warning and almost in an instant the monotonous rumble of the train’s wheels was succeeded by the cries of the stricken passengers. Those in the sleeper bore the brunt of the disaster, and to them all attentions were immediately given. The car presented a ghastly specta cle. Pressed against the broken fragments of the car were almost shapeless masses with life and identity crushed out almost simultaneously. Scattered about were others in whom life still remained, hut whose piteous cries were as hard to endure as their companions who were dead. For a minute the terror of the scene, exaggerated if that be possible by tha darkness and the hissing of from the engine, baffled the courage of the few who were able to render any aid. They soon recovered their self-possession enough to turn to the practical work before them and the work of rescue began. There was an awful plenty of material for stretchers, and the wounded who could be reached were quickly placed on the backs of car seated and placed beside the ’ttfrcck until they could be removed to a more suitable place. Others of the wounded were so hemmed in by the debris that it required considerable time to free them from their imprisonment. They, too, were finally got out and placed on the hastily improvised cots.