Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1872-03-07
The Terrible Accident on the Louis
willie & Cincinnati ShOrt-Line
Railroad.

k01lrO1Os
When our reporter reached the scene
the wounded had been partially removed
from the wreck and laid upon the ground,
awaiting surgical aid, but the spectacle
even then was heart-reDdng and pitliui
in the extreme Every face was covered
with blood, and meanings and walllngs
of pain filed the air.
The calamity was sudden and over
whclming. Not even the engineer, whose
conduct is designated by the wounded
passengers as noble and heroic, had any
premonition or warning of the fatal dan
ger. The train running at moderate
rate of speed reached bridge, and in a
momentum the twinkling of an eye
crashed through the span and lay in the
bed of creek twenty-five feet below, an
almost indistinguishable mass of smashed
timber, horribly mixed up with nearly
seventy human beings shrieking and
struggling for life.
This terrible smash occurred at half
past eleven o'clock yesterday forenoon,
at point on the railroad four miles be
yond Verona, and one and a half miles
this side of Zion staten, where the rail
road crosses Ten-mle Greek over a
Finck suspension truss bridge, :of
sixty feet span, resting on two
stone piers. The train was the reg
ular passenger, which left Louisville at
1850 a. m. and due at Covington at
1920. 1t consisted of two passenger
cars, one baggage, and one mail car, Cap
tain d. b. Vors, conductor; Dallas Pull
man, engineer. The speed of between
eighteen and twenty miles per hour was
checked as usual in approaching bridge,
"a ..xJ.x Il hn
locomotive had reached the solid and near
the end of the structure the crash came
The tender and four cars went down.
The front passenger car was smashed to
pieces; the mail and baggage cars OF
stronger build, were not so badly wreck
ed, and the hindermost partially escaped,
having lodged with one end up against
the far stone pier. The seats, how
ever, were torn from the fastenings, and
were piled up at the lower end, with the
unfortunate passengers, in a shocking,
quivering mass. The scene of the disas-
ter is distant from Covington about thirty
miles, and is wild and rugged in the cx-
IRENE. The country around is mountain
Gus and very sparsely settled. There was
only one human habitation in sight and
that wretched cabin into which few
only of the wounded could be crowded.
Fortunately the day was bright and the
atmosphere genial.
When the crash occurred the engineer
jumped from the locomotive rushed down
to the wreck and eXtingulshed the fires
with water scooped from the creek. This
forethought was executed with a GOODNESS
and dispatch which the injured passen.
gers praised and were grateful for, since
the act undoubtedly saved many from a
: death at the bare contemplation of which
the face blanches and the heart sickens.
The spectacle of the wreck, when the
mOke from the locomotive and extin-
! slished fires cleared away, was singular.ly
hrsh and shocking. There was the
seemingly inextrcable mixture of wound
et and bleeding human beings, and shat
teed bridge timbers, railroad iron, shreds
OF clothing, unaccountablY torn from the
w.arers and scattered all around; the
bRwling creek, the desolation and silence
.. OF the rugged hills and the sudden hor-
rr, all flashed upon the consciousness at
ace, and leaving the problem of the
cuse to be worked out without a single
cue or key, while humanity shudders at
the recital. and the DOOR victims endure
the pain.
The wounded were carefully removed
to the relief train, and brought to Coving-
ton, where they arrived at seven O'Clock
last evening.
As already limited, the cause of the ac-
cident is, and will probably remain, a
mystery, although those who can recall q
similar disaster on this very road, soon
after it was opened, will not be without a
shrewd guess. At that time bridge of
the same pattern and construction gave
way, nine miles from Co,ington, and pre-
-
killing two, and wounding ten or twelve
persons. -CincinaaH Commercial, FEB. "a.
BY this accident two persons-John G.
Brock, of Sparta, Ky, and Harrison Ju-
liam, the colored porter of the train-were
killed, and fifty-three others were injured,
some of them badly.