Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1907 — STILL ANOTHER FEARFUL WRECK [ARTICLE]

STILL ANOTHER FEARFUL WRECK

By one of the strangest coincidences in the whole history of railroads, the Big Four had two fearful wrecks last Saturday. One early in the morning at Fowler, elsewhere described, and the other late that night on the Indianapolis and St. Louis branch, but still in this state, and at Sanford,a small place northvest of Terre Haute, and just across the line from Illinois. It was also the strangest and most inexplicable wreck in some respects that ever happened. A passenger train was running past a freight train which stood on a siding, when a terrible explosion occurred in one of the freight cars which blew the passing passenger train to fragments. The known dead number 23 and of the 32 injured several will die. The car which exploded was supposed to have been loaded with powder, but it is now thought that it may have been dynamite smuggled in under the name of powder, to save freight, the rate on the dangerous dynamite being four or five times as much as on powder. If it was dynamite it may have been exploded by the jar of the passing passenger train, or some other cause.