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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)

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ordinarily does not attempt to compete
for business from Pittsburgh into Johnstown. Its only route between
those two cities leads over small branch lines among the mountains south
of Johnstown, and is over double the length of the Pennsylvania main
line route. The first train to reach Johnstown, however, was one over
the Baltimore and Ohio lines, and, although they made no attempt to
establish a regular line, they did on Sunday get two relief trains out
of Pittsburgh and into Johnstown. Superintendent Patten, of the
Baltimore and Ohio, established headquarters in a box car two miles
south of Johnstown, and telegraphed to Acting Superintendent McIlvaine,
at Pittsburgh, to take for free transportation all goods offered for the
relief of the sufferers. No passenger trains were run, however, except
the regular trains on the main line for Cumberland, Md., and the
branches from the main line to Johnstown were used entirely by wildcat
trains running on special orders, with no object but to get relief up as
quickly as possible. Nothing had left Pittsburgh for Johnstown, however,
to-day up to nine o'clock. Arrangements were made for a relief train to
go out early in the afternoon, to pick up cars of contributed goods at
the stations along the line and get them into Johnstown some time during
the night. "No specials" was also the rule on the Baltimore and Ohio,
but Acting Superintendent McIlvaine recognized in the _Sun_, with its
enormous possibilities in the way of spreading throughout the country
the actual situation of affairs in the devastated district, a means of
awaking the public to the extent of the disaster that would be of more
efficient relief to the suffering people than even train-loads of food
and clothing. The _Sun's_ case was therefore made exceptional, and when
the situation was explained to him he consented, for a sum that appalled
the representatives of some other papers who heard it, but which was,
for the distance to be covered, very fair, to set the _Sun's_ men down
in Johnstown at the earliest moment that steam and steel and iron could
do it.

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