The Newtown bee., 1894-08-10
4 RAILROAD ACCIDENT AT srEpSEY DEPOT.

4 RAILROAD ACCIDENT AT STEPNEY DEPOT. TWO ENGINES TRY TO PASS ON ONE TRACK.
 Last week Friday morning, Stepney Depot witnessed a railroad accident. It was the same old story of two engines trying to pass on one track, but couldn't do it, and happened in this wise. The morning train north and the morning train south meet at Stepney every morn- ing and as the north-bound train has the right of way, it is the business of the south-bound train to run in on the siding and let the north-bound train go by. On last Friday morning, the north-bound train arrived at Stepney first and stood on the main track waiting for the south bound train to side track as usual. Con- ductor Lane and Engineer Bowers were in charge of the north-bound and Con- ductor Flynn and Engineer Lyman in charge of the south-bound train. The south-bound was perhaps a minute or two late in leaving Botsford but Con- ductor Flynn consulting his watch, re- marked after taking up the tickets and when near Stepney, "we'll get there on time," and we were moving pretty fast. Engineer Lyman, when up in the woods just before rounding the curve into Step- ney, applied the brakes and found they were in working order and the train came around the curve at lively gait. But he miscalculated and did not take into account the very slippery condition of the rails, and before any one was aware as to what had happened, the en- zines had come together with a crash. Fortunately Engineer Bowers saw that Engineer Lyman could not stop in time and had started his train backward, which considerably lessened the force of the blow. The passengers on the down train were pretty well shaken up, but | were all out of the cars in short order. | The engines were badly broken, the head of both of them being broken out and the cowcatchers being twisted all out of shape. The cars were only slightly damaged. The only passenger on eith- CT train to receive injury was Marcus c. Hawley of Newtown. MT Hawley, with W. F. Hayes and several others, had just gotten up from their seats to go out and get their morning papers MT Hawley was ahead and when the crash came he was thrown forward and his hand went through the glass in the front window of the car, lacerating the fingers of his right hand quite badly. MT Hayes lost his balance and fell on the floor but was not seriously hurt. This is the first ac- cident that MT Hawley has ever met with in all of his 45 years of railroading. He has been across the continent more than so times and has travelled almost contin- uously between New York and Newtown but never before has he been in smash up or received injury in any way. His wounds were temporarily dressed at A. B. Curtis home near the station and and he gave up his trip to New York and returned home. The engines were too badly damaged to proceed on their journeys and new engines were tele- graphed for. After a wait of about two hours the 9 o'clock train south came down and took the passengers on to Bridgeport and few moments later an extra engine arrived and proceeded northward with the north-bound train. The blame for the accident seems to have
 been with Engineer Lyman. for either he miscalculated the distance and the slippery condition of the rails, or else the brakes failed to do full duty, and he
 was going too fast to stop where he should have done.