 |
RAILROAD ACCIDENT
Brandon Times, March 8, 1872
RAILROAD ACCIDENT.--One of the
most destructiv railroad accidents we have ever known, as far as smashing up cars is
concerned, occurred to the up freight on Monday evening, this side of Reed's Corners, and
just beyond what is known as the "battle ground." The train consisting of some
23 cars besides the engine and tender, was going down the grade, at the rate of about 15
miles per hour, so the conductor said, when a rail broke, throwing nineteen of the cars
from the track, breaking up therteen so badly that is was not possible to get them into
running order again. There was an embankment five or six feet high, where the train ran
off, and the cars were some of them thrown down the bank, one landing partly over the
fence into an adjoining field. Some of the cars lay on the track, one or two being thrown
half away around, lying directly across the track. Fortunately, there was no one on the
cars which got off the track, and no lives were lost, nor personal injuries received.
The scene, when we visited the place, the next day, was one that we would not
wish to witness often. The debris was then cleared from the track, but the ground beside
the track for rods was strewn with broken trucks, smashed up car boxes, while of the
remains of the thirteen cars, still there, there was hardly material enough to make three
whole cars.
As it took all night, with the help of a wrecking train from Horicon, and all
the hands that could be gotten together to get the track clear, the up passenger train did
not get through that evening, but ran up to the break and then transferred the passengers
to a train from Ripon, and then returned here and tarried until morning, when after going
up and getting the passengers from the train which ran down from Ripon, it went into
Milwaukee as if nothing had happened. The freight train came over the track sometime
during the forenoon, of Tuesday, and by night the trains ran as usual.
It will be observed by all that we are having an unusual number of accidents
resulting from broken rails, etc., this winter, and the fact is becoming very evident that
the track of this division of the St. Paul road is getting pretty well worn out and needs
overhauling. In this instance the only damage done was to the property of the company, but
had it been a passenger train instead of a freight, the los sof life would have been
frightful. |
