Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1897 — WRECK ON THE RAIL. [ARTICLE]

WRECK ON THE RAIL.

A TERRIBLE DISASTER ON THE NEW YORK CENTRAL. Fast Express with a Load of Slumbering Passengers Makesan Awful Leap Into the Hudson-Goes Over the Embankment to Destruction. Many Lives Lost. A disastrous raflroad accident occurred on the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, a short distance below Garrison’s station, early Sunday morning. The train was the State express, due in New York at 7:30 o’clock, and was made up of engine No. 872, a combination baggage and express car, a smoker, two ordinary passenger coaches and four sleepers, in charge of Conductor Parish. The train left Albany at 3:15 o’clock, on time, and was going at a good rate of speed when it passed Garrison's. It was a mile and a half below there when the accident occurred. Conductor Parish says the track seemed to fall out from under the train, the train seemed to shoot into the air, and the next minute it appeared to fall into the river. Into the waters of the Hudson the ears plunged, draggwigthrough the water the helpless passengers. There was nothing to presage the terrible accident which so suddenly deprived so many human beings of life. Two cars were left on the track. The engine did not stop until it lay submerged fifty feet below the surface. The two forward cars followed and were piled upon the engine. The smoker and two following ordinary cars broke from the train and ran some distance along the bank and then into the water. Two of the sleeping cars ran into the river, but fortunately were left only partly under water, the windows toward the shore being left above the surface. First reports gave the total number of known dead at nineteen; the estimated number, twenty-eight. Neither engineer nor firehian will ever tell the story of that terrible moment, for, with his hand upon the throttle, the engineer plunged with his engine to the river bottom, and the fireman, too, was at Ills post. Behind them came the express car, the combination car and the sleepers, and these piled on top of the engine. It is known that it was a trifle foggy and that the track was not visible! but if there was any break in the lines of steel it must have been of very recent happening, for only anjrour before there had passed over it a heavy passenger train laden with human freight. The section of road was supposed to be the very best on the entire division. There was a great heavy retaining wall all along tile bank, and, while the tide was high Sunday, .t was not unprecedented. What stH'nfs to have happened was that underneath the tracks and ties the heavy wall had given way and when the great, weight of the engine struck the unsupported tracks it went crashing through the rest of the wall and toppled over into the river. As the train plunged over the embankment the coupling that held the last twe of tlie six sleepers broke and they miraculously remained on the broken track? — In that way some sixty lives were saved.