Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1901 — AWFUL TROĹEY COLLISION [ARTICLE]

AWFUL TROĹEY COLLISION

Fivt Killed and Fourteen Hurt Near Albany, N. Y. TWO CARS MEET HEAD ON. Hitormtn Try to Kneh m Switch at the Home Time—Men, Women and Children Form Shrieking Pyramid; Mixed with Blood. Five persons were killed and fourteen injured in a head-on collision between two of cue big motor cars on the Albany and Hudson railway and Power company’s line about two miles beyond East Greenbush, N. Y., and six miles from Albany at 6 o’clock Sunday afternoon. The accident occurred while the cars were running at a rate of. between thirty and forty miles an hour. The dead are: Frank Smith, motorman; William Nichols, motorman; Maud Kellogg, of Round Lake; Annie

Rooney, of Stuyvesant Falls; David Mahoney, mate on the Dean Richmond. Fatally injured: George C. Barry, Troy, hurt internally; Fred J. Smith, Albany, injured internally. The scene of the accident was a point about two miles out of Greenbush, on the line of the AlDany and Hudson railway. The road is a single-track line, with switches and sidings, and the two cars, bound in opposite directions, were trying to make a switch when they dashed into each other. The point where the cars met on the single track was at a sharp curve, and so fast were both running and so sudden was the collision that the motorman never had time to put on the brakes before south-bound car No. 22 had gone almost clean through north-bound car No. 17, and hung on the edge of a" high biuff, with its load of shrieking, maimed humanity. One motorman was pinioned up against the smashed front of the southbound car with both legs severed and killed instantly, while the other one lived but a few minutes. Fully 120 men, women, and children formed a struggling, shrieking pyramid, mixed with blood, detached portions of human , bodies, and the wreckage of the cara Some of the least severely injured of the men extricated themselves, and began to pull people out of the rear ends of the two cars, and almost every one was taken out in this way, and nearly all were baaiy injured. The few women and children who had escaped injury and death were hysterical, and added their cries to the shrieks of the dying and mutilated. Men with broken arms and bones, dislocated joints, and bloody heads and faces tried to assist others who were more helpless. Help had been summoned from East Greenbush and vicinity, and in a little time the bruised mbss of humanity and the mutilated dead were loaded on extra cars and taken to Albany. There ambulances and physicians' had been summoned and the postoffice turned into a morgue and hospital. As fast as the physicians could temporarily fix

up the wounded they were taken to their homes or to the hospital. With both motormen killed, it was hard to get at the real cause of the accident, but it is fairly well determined that It was caused by an attempt of the southbound car to reach a seoond switch, Instead of waiting for the north-bound car at the first siding.