People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1896 — FRIGHTFUL DISASTER [ARTICLE]

FRIGHTFUL DISASTER

ONE HUNDRED PERSONS KILLED OR INJURED. Kapra— am. Ik* R«*4ku Bailroad Emmm Atlantic City. N. J. CrMktt Thfavfb • Crow dart Piuurlraala Kxcnraioa Train—Tkta Known Dm* A railroad accident occurred Thursday night Just outside of Atlantic City, N. J. Forty-one pereons are dead, and the lfet of the wounded numbers fiftysix. ‘ The Reading railroad express, which left Philadelphia at 5:40 o’clock in the afternoon for Atlantic City crashed into a Pennsylvania Central excursion train at the second signal tower, about four miles out from here. The Pennsylvania train was returning to Bridgeton with a party of 500 excursionists from that place, Millville and neighboring towns. At the second signal tower the tracks of the two roads diagonally cross. The Reading track was given the signal, but the switch either failed to work or the speed of the express was too great to be checked In time. It caught the excursion train broadside and plowed through, literally cleaving it in two. The engine of the Reading train was shattered to pieces. As soon as the news reached Atlantic City the utmost consternation prevailed. Relief trains were dispatched to the scene, loaded with cots and a force of surgeons. As quick as the bodies were recovered they were carried into the local hospitals. A general flrealariu was sounded, and the department promptly responded aiding in the work of digging for the victims. The first Reading relief train bors into the city twenty-seven mangled. ’*

corpses—men, women and children. The next train, not an hour later, carried fifteen of the maimed and wounded, and two of these died soon after reaching the city. As train after train rar to the scene of the wreck and came back with the wounded, the sanitarium, which serves as the city hospltil, quickly found its capacity overtaxed. Meanwhile others of the dead and injured were being carried to the private hospital at Ocean and Pacific avenues. Edward Farr, engineer on the Reading train, was killed outright, as was another railroad man who rode on the engine with him. This man, whose name has not yet been learned, saw the collision coming, and leaped from the cab an Instant before the crash. Almost at the same instant the engine cut its way through, and caught him directly In Its path. His body and that of Farr were found under a heap of debris, hut the engineer lay In what rematped of the cab, and his right hand still clasped the throttle. The fireman on the train had leaped a few seconds before, and escaped with trifling Injuries. Mrs. Edward Farr, wife of the Reading engineer who was killed, when informed of her husband’s tragic end, throw up her hands with a frantic shriek and fell dead at the feet of her informant. The excursion train bore five tribe* of the Order of Red Men—the Bridgeton, the Niagara, the lowa, the Ahwantenah and the Cobanslck—with their wives and children.