Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1886 — A CLOSE GALL. [ARTICLE]

A CLOSE GALL.

Scores of Lives Saved by ,the Nerve and Ccolness of an Engineer. [Denver special.] The passengers who arrived this morning on the Salt Lake train report an almost miraculous escape from a fearful accident in the Black canyon yesterday morning. Mr. W. F. Wakeman, formerly business manager of the. San Francisco Alla, who was on the train, thus describes the accident: “At about 7:30 o’clock yesterday morning our train/ consisting of thirteen cars, drawn by two engines, was coming through the canyon at a rate of about twenty miles per hour. I suddenly felt a shock, then a series of bumps and jars that convinced me that the train was off the track. In the rear of the Pullman, in which I was, was the private car of General Superintendent Bancroft, and attached to his car was an observation car. Here nearly one hundred passengers, including Mr. Palmer and bis Madison Square Company, en route to Denver/ were gathered, contemplating the beautiful scenery through which we were passing. The first jolt frightened everybody, and in an instant a perfect panic prevailed. Ladies fainted, others became, hysterical, white men blanched with fear, bril compelled to remain quiet. Each moment we expected to be dashed to pieces against the rocks, or else be thrown into the canyon below. One young man named Barnev,’a commercialtraveler, was standing on the steps at the time the cars left the track. He became so thoroughly frightened that he jumped blindly forward. He was thrown violently against the rocks, and kept bounding between them and the cars until they were stopped. The horrible jolting continued for a distance of nearly three hundred yards. When the train stopped we carried Mr. Barney into the cars, and gave him ever}- possible attention. Fortunately, he Fad sustained no serious injuries internally, and we patched up his bruises as best we could. When the train reached Pueblo he was turned over to the care of a physiciap. Those of the cars off the track were badly wrecked, and the escape of the train from being hurled into the bottom of the canyon is almost marvelous. The nerve and presence of mind of the engineer were all that prevented the train from being a wreck on the rocks below, fbr had the train gone a few feet further it could not have been saved.”