The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1889-06-06
THE FORCE OF THE DELUGE.
How 1t Played Fantastic Freaks with Tracks,
Cars and Locomotives.
Snecial fo fha Indiauauolis Iouruay

How It Played Fantastic Freaks with Tracks,
Cars and Locomotives.
Special to the Indianapolis journal
JOHNsTOwN, Pa, June 5.-From Johns
town up the valley easy communication
has been opened as far as Conemaugh, two
miles, and it is possible for any one here to
readily behold a sight never before seen in
this world, and which no one who does not
see it himself will ever believe did really
exist. It is described here as we'll as words
can describe it. but merely as a duty to
history, and not with the idea that any one
who cannot look at it will ever think it
true. Every one has seen the light
iron beam shafts and rods in
factory lying in twisted. broken and
criss-cross shape after a fire has
destroyed the factory. In the gap
above Johnstown the water has picked up
four-track railroad covered with trains,
freight and passenger, and with machine
shops, a round-house and other heavy
buildings with heavy contents, and has
torn the track to pieces, twisted. turned
and crossed it as fire never could. 1t has
tossed huge freight locomotives like bar
rcls and cars like packing boxes, torn them
to pieces, and scattered them over miles of
territory. 1t has in one place put stream
of water city block wide, between the
railroad and the bluff, and in another place
it has changed the course of the river as
far in the other direction and left hun
dred yards inland on which are the tracks
that formerly skirted the banks. Add
to this that in the midst of this
fire, with the singular fatality that has
made it everywhere the companion of the
food in this catastrophe, has destroyed a
train of vestibule cars that the food had
wrecked; that the passengers who remained
in the cars through the flood and until the
fire, were saved, while their companions
who attempted to fee were overwhelmed
and drowned, and that through it all one
locomotive stood. and still stands. compar-
atively uninjured, in the center of the
wreckage. This disaster and the story of
one of the most marvellous freaks of this
marvellous flood is barely outlined.
That locomotive stands there on its
track now, with its fires burning, smoke
curling from the stack and steam
from its safety-valye, all ready to go
it. 1t Is No. 1909, a "a ton. eight driv-
ers, Class K, Pennsylvania railroad loco
motive. George Hudson was its engineer,
and conductor Sheehy had charge of the
train. They. with all the rest of the crew,
escaped by flight when they saw the flood.
The windows of the playground where q
giant force played with masses of iron as o
child might play with pebbles begin with
a bridge, or a piece of a bridge thirty feet
long. that stands high and dry upon two
ordinary abutments at Woodvale. The
part of the bridge hat remains spanped
the Pennsylvania tracks. The tracks are
gone, the bridge is gone on either side, the
river is gone TO new channel,
the very earth for hundred
yards around has been scraped off
and swept away. but this little
span remains perched mp there twenty feet
above everything in the midst of desert
of ruins, the only piece of a bridge that is
standing from the railroad bridge to South
Fork. It is a light iron structure, and the
abutments are not unusually heavy. That
it should be kept there when everything
else was twisted and torn to pieces is one
of the queer freaks of this food.
Near by are the wrecks of two freight
trains that were standing side by side
when the food caught them. The lower
ends of both are torn to pieces, the cars
tossed around in every direction, and
many of them carried away. The
whole of the train on the track