Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1906 — 50 DIE IN WRECK. [ARTICLE]

50 DIE IN WRECK.

Disastrous Head-on Collision on Baltimore & Ohio Road. TWO SCORE ARE HURT Immigrants, Caught While Asleep, Perish in Burning Cars. 1 _ A s* ■ Rapidly Moving Freight Cra«he. Into Second Section of Passenger Train—Sleeping Passengers Burled Under Debris and Many of Them Are Cremated When Coaches Burst Into Flames—Blunder Takes Big ToU of Life. Fifty persons were killed and forty more injured, some fatally, in a headon collision between a Baltimore & Ohio passenger train and a freight train near Woodville, - Ind., early Monday morning. Six passenger coaches and a number of freight cars were burned, and many of the victims were cremated before the rescuers could drag them from, the wreckage. The disaster was caused by some one’s blunder. The crash, when the two trains came together, was heard a long distance, and the inhabitants of Woodville and the neighboring towns hurried to the scene and began the work of rescue. The darkness added to the horror of the scene. The fitful flaring of the flames as the inflammable, parts of the shattered trains began to burn soon lighted up the wreck. The cold made the work of the first rescuers more difficult. Doctors were hurriedly sent for and a score of them from near at band responded. The rescuers worked frantically with axes and whatever other tools were ready at hand to free the imprisoned Injured before the flames should reach them. As fast as the injured could be attended by the physicians they were made comfortable on the train that bore the hospital cots. This train was loaded with as many of the hurt as could be accommodated and started to Chicago. The trains that came together were the fast freight, known technically as "first 98,” driven by Engineer Burke and in charge of Conductor Moste, and the second section of express and passenged train- No. 47, driven by Engineer Reneman and in charge of Conductor Brooks. The passenger train was from Locust Point, Baltimore, Md., and carried 167 passenger, nearly all immigrants, made up of Russians, Servians and Poles, according to an Associated Press dispatch. At 3:10 a. m. the freight train backed into a siding at Babcock, Ind., to allow the first flection of the express to pass. For some reason the freight pulled out again and continued on its way east It met the six-coach express train at Woodville, a station four miles from Laporte. Both trains were running at high speed. They crashed together on a curve. The engineer of the freight train had only time to reverse his levers, shout to his fireman and leap from the cab. The engineer and fireman of the express train did not know of their danger soon enough to make any effort to save their lives. The two engines were shattered and the heavy freight train plowed part way through the lighter passenger and express. The cars of the latter train crashed together and piled up in a mass of splintered wood, twisted steel and shrieking humanity. Three of the foremost cars of the freight train were added to the pile and the engines and tenders were in the center of it Fire from the fireboxes of the engines soon communicated Itself to the shattered cars.