St. Paul daily globe., 1891-05-20
BLOW-Up
Deplorable Accident to a Train
Load Of Laboping
Men.
Eighteen Lives Destroyed In
stantly and Many More
Injured.
A Coil Of Rope and a Spark
Started the Appalling
Catastrophe.
Disastrous Flames in Florida
Cost a st. Paul Company
Heavily.


was horrible accident near here to-day
by which the loss of life is estimated at
between sixteen and twenty, and the in
jured as many more. An engine and
one fiat car were conveying load Of
Italians and twenty-four cases of dyna-
mite, each case containing fifty
pounds. The Italians were being taken
TO section of the road where third
track was being laid. A coil of rope lay
in front of the truck of the engine. Just
as the train was passing Holmes Point.
midway between Tarrytown and Irving
ton, spark from the locomotive ignited
the coil Of rope. The moving
train famed the flames and
before the Italians realized their
danger one Of the packages of dynamite
exploded. William Brannigan, the en-
gineer of the derrick train, happened to
be $50 yards from the train at the time.
He tells the following story: "When
the coil OF rope set fire to the first
package Of dynamite one of the
men, seeing it on fire, sprang off
the fiat car. He fell under
the wheels and was killed. The next
moment there was rumbllng noise,
dense cloud of smoke and flying mass
shot up into the air. Before the explo-
sion some of the Italians had tumbled
off, and few saved their lives by so
doing. The train had just come to
stop" Brannigan saw one man blown
fifty feet in the air. He fell into the
Hudson river. Another man was
Blown Into the Bluff.
The others were blown in various
directions. Several are supposed to
have been blown into the river. James
NiSkern. of Yonkers, was one of the
his tools sharpened. The gang was then
working at Mount st. Vincent. While
he was away in Tarrytown the gang
was moved. When Niskern was return
ing from Tarrytown he saw the wreck
made by the explosion. He says he
counted sixteen dead men on the track
and sixteen wounded. He understood
that twenty men had been blown into
the Hudson river. Most of them were
Italians. George Hecker, the en-
glneer of the train, was cut
on the head. So was Fireman
Leonard Pam. Pam also had
three or four ribs broken, and he was
badly shocked. John Smith, brakeman,
or, was badly injured. and was sent to
his home at Tivoli. Jimmie Morrison,
boy employed in carrying powder, was
also killed. John Mccarthy, the time
keeper, was killed. The others
killed were all Italians. 1t is
now said that eighteen in all were
killed. The names of the Italians are
not known. They are known only by
numbers. Twenty-Five men are in-
jured. Among them was Tom Finne-
gan, the blacksmith and foreman, his
leg being smashed. Two bodies have
been taken out of the river. No
body knows how many more re-
main there. The two Italians who
so badly frightened that they ran to the
river wall and jumped into the river.
They have not been seen since. The
waiting room of the beautiful new sta
ton in Tarrytown was turned into a
temporary hospital, where all the sur
geonS who could be gathered up oper-
ated on the sufferers. The wounded men
were stretched upon the waiting room
floor, and there one of them, an Italian,
died. The floor after their removal
looked like the floor of an abattoir.
The blood lay about in great pools.
Uncertain Figures.
AS to the number of men on the train
accounts differ. Some say there were
thirty-three. The highest estimate
places the number at over forty.
Disston, the boss, thinks there
were over forty, and as mat
ter of fact the number of
those blown either to atoms or into the
river is to certain extent matter of
speculation. The train was torn to at
hn 4ron nlr1 ,.i.N
their beds and great hole dug out of
the earth, totally blocking traffic
on the railway for many hours.
Up in Tarrytown, over across
the river in Nyack, and
all up and down the stream it was ter
rifle. The ground trembled as though
in an earthquake; the walls of several
Tarrytown houses were shaken and
cracked. and in the Tarrytown streets
the window glass fell in showers to the
sidewalk. Even over i'll Nyack
heavy Danes Of glass were
The beautiful houses
which line the bank for a mile
or more on each side of the scene of the
accident suffered more or less. The
hillside was scorched and blackened,
and here and there huge limbs of trees
were wrenched off as though by thun-
derbolt. In TarrytoWn scores of clocks
stopped, and it is in this way that
the exact hour of the explosion, 11:2O
O'Clock is fixed. Tonight the number
of dead is eighteen. Of these thirteen
are accounted for and the remaining
five are in the river. Gangs of men in
boats are now dragging the river for
these, but the. tide is running so strong
that there is little chance of
recovering them to-day at least.