Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1898 — THIRTEEN MEN KILLED. [ARTICLE]

THIRTEEN MEN KILLED.

Pennsylvania Train Runs Into Gang of Twenty Workmen. Thirteen Italian and Polish laborers were mowed down and killed on the Hackensack Meadows just west of Jersey City at 8 o’clock Friday morning by the Millstone mail train on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Engineer John Van Nostrand was in charge of the train. Eleven of the laborers were killed outright. Two of the injured y died within an hour after the accident. The killed and wounded were laborers at work repairing the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. They were in charge of Section Foreman William Cork, The gang consisted of twenty men and nearly all were either killed or injured. The Millstone local train’s engineer did not see the men on account of the fog and the smoke of a west-bound train which had just passed the gang in an opposite direction. As Engineer Van Nostrand’s locomotive struck the men a fearful cry went up. It startled the engineer aud the passengers of the train. Just then the smoke lifted and the engineer saw a shocking sight. All along the track for a distance of 200 feet lay bodies and fragments of bodies, some of the victims were breathing their last, while others had been cut into pieces. The cowcatcher was covered with blood. When the train stopped many of the passengers fainted at the sight. The corpses and the wounded were placed in the freight car of the Millstone train and taken to Jersey City.