WRECK OF WOMEN’S TRAIN.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 167, 1 July 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

WRECK OF WOMEN’S TRAIN.

SEVEN TEACHERS KILIjED

An exclusion train carrying 200 school teachers from Syracuse and Utica to Masmngton, while travelling at 50 miles an hour, on 29th April, left tho iails near Easton, Pennsylvania, and plunged over a 40 foot embankment ihe tram caught fire; and it is reported that a guard was killed, six women wore burned to death and another u Hv‘ii an< l ’' o seriously injured. With the exception of the engine driver, stoker and three guards the tram carried no mon. As it' rolled down tho embankment the. train ripped open ihe side of a largo oil tank, ‘the contents of which flowed over the wrecked carriages. Nearly half the teachers were imprisoned beneath the overturned carriages while the rest were strewn beside tho rads. Almost immediately the carriages burst into flames from the locomotive’s ashes. The eng-’ne driver lav beside the locomotive with both arms broken, one guard was found dead and the stoker was unconscious. Under the direction of the two ren aining guards the uninjured women smashed t;*e carriage window's with stones and pic-es of wreckage, and nulled their unconscious friends out. of the debris.lx*fore the flames could reach them. Within an hour the entire train was consumed bv flames, but when the muster roll of teachers was called onlysix were missing. One other was killed. Fift.v women were badly injured and severed maimed for life. In rolling over th'* embankment the train tore up a telegraph pole and snaupori the wires. so that it was hours before anv definite news of the disaster rear- 1 -ed the r.-ulway officials. Meantime every neighbouring farm was convert'xl m+o r* temporary hospital and the countryside was swept, for doctors and nurses, who hurried to tho sm_ne in carts and motor cars.