APPALLING RAILWAY ACCIDENTS

Lake County Press, Issue 974, 8 August 1901, Page 2

APPALLING RAILWAY ACCIDENTS

[Per Mail at Auckland.] The Chicago and Alton's Vestibuled, Limited, passenger train collided with the fast live stock train between Marshall and Norton (in the State of Missouri). Seventeen persons were killed and seventeen are in the hospitals. The passenger train was travelling in three sections. The wrecked train was the first section. The trains collided head on to the engines, and were pushed to either side of the track, the baggage and chairs being piled on top of the engines. The dining car tipped over, and the forward cars of the train were telescoped. Some of the cars took fire, and the wreck was soon a blazing mass. Steam and scalding water escaped from the engines. burning many passengers frightfully, and enveloping the wreck in a cloud which made the rescue work difficult. The bellowing of the cattle as they were mangled and the shrieks of the injured passengers —many being imprisoned—as ' the scalding steam poured upon them were awful. The victims prayed aloud, and pleaded to the rescuers to hasten. Thev were taken out as rapidly as possible, but there were not enough helpers. After spending some hours in this terrible situation, the injured were compelled to take a long r'de to Kansas City on the rescue train. The train wrecked was cue of the finest passenger trains in the United States. Sixteen persons were killed and about fifty injured in a train wreck in Indiana. The train consisted of eleven cars, and was going at a high rate, when it plunged through a trestle which had been undermined bv the rains. The embankment on both sides of the little stream dropped at a sharp degree a distance of 40ft. Owing to the momentum of the train the engine appeared to fall back to the bottom. Five cars went down the bank, and one sleeper and one nrivate car remained on the track. It is believed that the wash-out was caused by a cloudburst.