axle struck this frog in such a way as to make it jump the track.
The rear car was instantly derailed. From the frog to the bridge was
some 1200 feet. With the appliances then in use the train could not
be stopped in this space, and the car was dragged along over the
ties, swaying violently from side to side. Just before the bridge
was reached the car next to the last was also thrown from the track,
and in this way, and still moving at considerable speed, the train
went onto the bridge. It was nearly across when the last car toppled
off and fell on the north side close to the abutment. The car next
to the rear, more fortunate, was dragged some 270 feet further, so
that when it broke loose it simply slid some thirty feet down the
embankment. Though this car was badly wrecked, but a single person
in it was killed. His death was a very singular one. Before the
car separated from the train, its roof broke in two transversely;
through the fissure thus made this unfortunate passenger was partly
flung, and it then instantly closed upon him.
The other car had fallen fifty feet, and remained resting on its
side against the abutment with one end inclined sharply downward. It
was mid-winter and cold, and, as was the custom then, the car was
heated by two iron stoves, placed one at each end, in which wood was
burned. It was nearly full of passengers. Naturally they all sprang
from their seats in terror and confusion as their car left the
rails, so that when it fell from the bridge and violently struck on
one of its ends, they were precipitated in an inextricable mass upon
one of the overturned stoves, while the other fell upon them from
above. A position more horrible could hardly be imagined. Few, if
any, were probably killed outright. Some probably were suffocated;
the greatest number were undoubtedly burned to death. Of those in
that car three only escaped; forty-one are supposed to have perished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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