Frightful Catastrophe of the Pennsylvania Railroad

Adapted from the Lewistown Gazette, September 28, 1864

“On Wednesday morning last, about 4 o’clock, the Fast Mail, East, on the P. R. R., ran into a coal train at Thompsontown, 11 miles east of Mifflin, causing a most dreadful loss of life and property. Owing to the excitement naturally caused by such an affair, it is somewhat difficult to get a correct account of it. We copy the following particulars from an account given in the Pittsburgh Commercial.

The responsibility of the sad event is laid upon the conductor of the coal train which had stopped at the station for water, as being guilty of the most inexcusable ignorance in occupying the Fast Line’s time, or of the most culpable negligence in failing of the precaution of sending a signal man to the rear to warn the approaching train, especially as the position of his train was at the end of a curve and in the midst of a dense fog. The passenger train approached at full speed - the engineer not discovering the fatal obstruction until within fifty yards of it. He instantly reversed the engine, and after whistling “down brakes” twice, applied the locomotive brakes which are connected with all the brakes on the train.

But the reversion and check were too late, as the distance was far too short for a check upon the speed under the most favorable circumstances. Scarcely more than a second elapsed before the locomotive had leaped entirely through one coal car, and half the next. The baggage car was elevated at the rear end from the truck, when the whole momentum of the train was instantly expended in driving the baggage car so completely through the first passenger car that the framework of the one fitted closely and entirely within the other. The first passenger car was quite full, containing at least fifty persons, many of them women and children. These were, from the nature of the collision, either crushed under the baggage car or driven in a mass to the rear of the passenger car, the doors, of which were locked, as if to make death doubly sure an escape (so to speak) the more impossible. But horrible to tell, the crash of wood, iron and glass was scarcely over when flames were discovered in the rear of the car, and within four minutes had enveloped this holocaust of dead, dying and mangled human beings in one common funeral pile [pyre?]

It is not known whether the fire originated from the stove or from the gasometer, the later being more probable. However, it started so quickly and spread so rapidly that the passengers who immediately hurried from the rear cars to the front, only reached it in time to find the flames already under headway, and be compelled to listen to the horrid chorus of the crackling flames of the burning cars, the agonizing groans of men and heartrending shrieks and screams of women and children, alike powerless either to quench the flames or rescue the hapless victims from their prison of fire. Only one ax could be obtained and little or nothing was accomplished with this- one or two openings being cut through, only to find an inner wall made by the transfixed baggage. Six persons in all were rescued from the car; the remaining, estimated at at least forty persons, were crushed to death or, having been wounded, were burned alive.

The forward platform of the third passenger car, having been driven upon the rear of the second, it was, made impossible to detach them, they quickly took fire, and were rapidly consumed. There were a number of wounded in these cars, but none killed. All were gotten out, although it was by almost Herculean efforts that the doors were broken open and the inmates rescued.

When the accident occurred, a message was immediately sent for assistance. Afterwards, two construction trains arrived simultaneously from the east and from the west, with a large force of workmen and all the necessary appliances for clearing the tracks and replacing the rails which had been out of shape by force.”

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