EXTRAORDINARY RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

Lake County Press, Volume IX, Issue 468, 29 April 1880, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

A- railway accident, unattended by loss of life, but presenting a spectacle at once terrible and picturesque, took place on the 13th ult., on-New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad, in the woods near Southfields, New Jersey, a small station aooutW miles distant from New York. An oil train containing 20- tank-cars was run into by a freight train, whose driver, owing to a' heavy snowstorm, was unable to see the signals against him. The engineer and driver of the oil train managed to save their lives by jumping into a snowbank jtist before the collision; but the engine of the freight train crashed into the oil-cars, and lay huddled up' with them on the tracks. The fire of the engine soon spread to one of the oil-tanks, and in a few minutes the whole mass was wrappedin flames. Nine tanks containing 180,000 gallons of 'crude' petroleum were at once in a blaze. The oil ran' into the woods, and "giant tongues of flame shot heavenward." Occasionally an oil-tank would become overheated, the gas would generate too fast, and an explosion, from the effects of which the ground trembled as from an earthquake, would ensue. "A scene of wilder grandeur," it is stated, "could not well be imagined." The scene must, indeed, have been almost inconceivably grand, for not only were the trees m tile neighborhood reduced to ashes, but " one by on» the telegraph wires were separated, and their ends fell to the ground." The heat was so intense that the railway officials and a few hundred spectators from thV adjacent villages were obliged to remain at a distance until the fire had expended its force, and things assumed' a less sublime but more comfortaWe aspect.