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History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher

History

History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.

Name: History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
Author: Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Floods -- Pennsylvania -- Johnstown (Cambria County)

Travel was resumed up the valley of Conemaugh Creek for a few miles
about five days after the flood, and a weird sight was presented to the
visitor. No pen can do justice to it, yet some impressions of it must be
recorded. Every one has seen the light iron beams, shafts, and rods in a
factory lying in twisted, broken, and criss-cross shape after a fire has
destroyed the building. In the gap above Johnstown water has picked up a
four-track railroad covered with trains, freight, and passengers, and
with machine shops, a round-house, and other heavy buildings with heavy
contents, and it has torn the track to pieces, twisted, turned, and
crossed it as fire never could. It has tossed huge freight locomotives
about like barrels, and cars like packing-boxes, torn them to pieces,
and scattered them over miles of territory. It has in one place put a
stream of deep water, a city block wide, between the railroad and the
bluff, and in another place it has changed the course of the river as
far in the other direction and left a hundred yards inland the tracks
that formerly skirted the banks.

Add to this that in the midst of all this devastation, fire, with the
singular fatality that has made it everywhere the companion of the flood
in this catastrophe, has destroyed a train of vestibule cars that the
flood had wrecked; that the passengers who remained in the cars through
the flood and until the fire were saved, while their companions who
attempted to flee were overwhelmed and drowned; and that through it all
one locomotive stood and still stands comparatively uninjured in the
heart of this disaster, and the story of one of the most marvelous
freaks of this marvelous flood is barely outlined. That locomotive
stands there on its track now with its fires burning, smoke curling from
the stack, and steam from its safety valve, all ready to go ahead as
soon as they will build a track down to it. It is No. 1309, a fifty-four
ton, eight driver, class R, Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive. George
Hudson was its engineer, and Conductor Sheely had charge of its train.
They, with all the rest of the crew, escaped by flight when they saw the
flood.

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