Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — Boiler Explosion—Terrible Destruction to Life. [ARTICLE]

Boiler Explosion—Terrible Destruction to Life.

The boiler of the engine Centralia, of the Easton & Amboy Railroad, exploded on the morning of the Ist at the Raritan siding near South Somerville, N. J. The following particulars- are given in the New York papers of the 2d: The engineer, the foreman of the laborgang and three other men were killed, and thirty-three laborers were scalded, some of them fatally. The cause of the explosion is said to have been the wornout condition of the boiler and the lack of water kept in it. The engine left Boundbrook about seven a. m. with a construction train, consisting of a caboose and number of empty gravel-cars, for the purpose of assisting in the repair of the road. The engine was attached to the rear of the train and directly in front of it was the caboose and another containing about forty-eight laborers. When the train reached the siding, about two and a half miles west of Boundbrook, it was run upon a side-track in order to allow the eastern-bound passengCr-train to , pass. While standing here the boiler of the engine, without any warning, exploded, wrecking the locomotive, shivering the caboose to atoms and pouring steam and boiling water into the car in front of it. The laborers occupying the caboose, unconscious of danger, were talking and laughing together, and when the shock came were scattered like leaves before a hurricane. Some of them were blown through the roof and sides and by the force of the explosion were lifted twenty or thirty feet into the air. But eight men escaped uninjured. Many were severely wounded by flying fragments of the cars and engine and two or three were fatally scalded. Five were killed almost outright. The boiler was carried high in the air and landed about 100 feet from the scene of the disaster. Col. Palmer H. Thompson, foreman of the labor-gang, was burned about the body and injured internally. He died about four p. m. He was commander of a Pennsylvania regiment of militia during the late war, and leaves a wife and one child. When the physician came to attend him he said: “ Attend to others first; lam not hurt as badly as they are.” Before dying he described bow the force of the explosion had thrown him through the roof of the caboose, and thirty feet high. While falling he thoftght of clutching the telegraph-wires, which he saw many feet below him, to break his fall, but, thinking it would be useless, refrained. He alighted on a tie, which broke* in one of his ribs and burst in one of his lungs, which produced a fatal internal hemorrhage. ■ • Boundbrook was the scene of intense excitement, as the explosion, though it occurred two and a half miles from there, was distinctly heard. Wood-choppers working several miles distant heard the reverberations and hurried to the scene. Many stories were afloat as to the cause of the accident, but, in the excitement that prevailed, It was impossible to ascertain where the blame rests. The crop of sorghum in the South, Southwest and West this season is greater than ever before known. The season seems to have particularly favored it, and the quality of the sirup is said to be unusually line. There is a good demand for It as fast as it is manufactured, and the prices obtained are remunerative and satisfactory. In this section the raising of sorghum and the making of molasses from it has much fallen off; indeed we do not know of a single instance in this neighborhood where the business is prosecuted. In Bucks and Chester Counties there is still a fair quantity manufactured, hut it is not on the increase. —GermatUmcn (Pa.) Telegraph. „ ——- ■**'• » —Since October, 1845, the American Suhddv-School Union, by the personal labors of its missionaries, organised 10,084 Sunday-schools in the States and Territories west of Ohio and north of the Ohio River, and in those west of the Mississippi River, besides distributing religious literature to the value of $208,381.70. In this work they reached 1,266,954 children and youth. « -