The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1882-02-14
A MIRACULOUS MASH UP
Was that Down the Pacific Re-
Gently, in Which Nobody was
Killed, but Everybody
Badly Scared

From gentleman who was passenger
on second No. 2, last Wednesday morning,
some further particulars concerning one of
the most complete wrecks which has ever
occurred on any railroad, when nobody was
killed, were obtained. The train was 60
ing at the rate of about thirty miles ar
hour, when, at a quarter to four O'Clock,
few hundred yards beyOud Elijah. about
seventy miles this side of st. Louis, the
engine left the track at a switch, and rolled
over about twenty-five feet down an en-
bankment and finally turned entirely over,
head first, performing a sort OF
somersault. The baggage and ex-
press cars, smoking car, general
car and one end of the sleeper
left the track also. The baggage car was
mashed up unrecOgnizably, the baggage
man, who was sitting in the rear end of
the car, miraculOusly escaping pulveriza-
ton. The scene is described as terrible
in the extreme. Not single passenger or
employe on the train was killed, though
several were considerably shaken up, and
Louis Fisher, the fireman, was terribly
scalded across the shoulders from the es-
Gaping steam, but not fatally so. Gilbert,
the engineer, escaped without other in
jury than a general bruising from his
rough and tumble down the embankment.
Jim Merrifeld, the conductor of the
train, had narrow escape from instant
death. He was sitting on a seat in the
smoking car and was being entertained by
the antics of a party OF negro soldiers, who
were giving a concert for the benefit of the
passengers, and was thrown violently up
wards and forwards by the air cylinder of
the Westinghouse brake, which crashed
up through the floor of the car. narrowly
grazing his leg, and firing him as from a
catapult out of the seat, striking the
bottom of it,
+. A. Lewis, a messenger in the employ
of the Pacific express company, running
between Sedalia and DenisOn, was sitting
in the express car with his feet up on the
stove. When the crash came he was thrown
a straddle of the stove and there caught
and held. He grinned and bore it manfully,
but will wear a mustard plaster for week
or two.
A fat Dutchman who was dreaming
sweetly in an upper berth of the sleepe.
was thrown violently to the floor of the
car, and upon discovering his situation,
turn to his slumbers.
nc WISCh ltStI dc Ouc VI tuC DiOos
fearful which ever happened on the road,
and that many people were not killed and
mangled is nothing short of a miracle. The
BAzOo's informant, an altogether reliable
gentleman of this city, stepped
off the train Immediately after
the accident, having been thrown
from his seat, and found the engine lying
at the bottom of the embankment, the
steam blowing off at terrible rate from
the broken gauge cocks, the head of
the smoking car resting on the wrecked
engine, anu the tender of the engine ABOUT
fifty feet AWAY The. baggage car was so
much damaged that it was afterwards
burned where it lay, as the fragments
were not worth gathering up. The switch
was found to have been in perfect order,
and it is uncertain what the real cause of
the accident was. A rail was found COM
pletely severed, as ii it had been done with
a knife, where the wheels had passed over
it, but had undoubtedly been twisted around
under the train by the tearing up of the
track. Every person who was on board
the train has lifelong cause for congratu-
lating himself on his escape.