The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-05
THREE TRAINMEN KILLED
WRECK ON THE CENTRAL VERMONT
 ROAD NEAR EAGLEVILLE.

Disaster Caused by Explosion of Looo-
 motive Boiler-Engineer, Fireman and
 Head Brakeman Lose Their Lives-Two
 Former Were Brothers Fifteen Cars De-
 railed-Crowds Flucls to the Scene.
 Willimantic, Conn.,, Dec. 1.-The most disastrous freight wreck of the year, and secoNd only to the Forestville Bridge disaster of last February in loss of life, occurred mile and half north of Eagleville on the Central Yer mont railroad tonight.
 The engineer, fireman and head brake man were instantly killed.
 The train was known as the New
 York express freight No. 15. At the point mentioned it broke into two sec sections, and the forward section left
 the track, tearing up the roadbed and carrying away telegraph and telephone poles as it swept along.
 The following are the names of the
 killed
 Otis Hall, engineer, Brattleboro, Vt.
 Benjamin Hall, fireman, and brother
 of the engineer, Brattleboro, Vt.
 Warren Thomas head brakeman and
 brother of Conductor Thomas, Gouve-
 neur, N. Y.
 All three victims of the disaster were in the neighborhood of thirty-five years old. Brakeman Thomas, who had been
 working on the road but nine weeks,
 leaves a wife and two children. Pieces of the locomotive are scatter aII Nla p,a,, found 175 feet from the track, and on the opposite side from where the en- zine lies.
 Fifteen cars left the track with the engine, and the latter now lies in the swamp, headed in directly the opposite direction from which 1t was going at the time it left the rails. The New York Express" arrives at | Eagleville nightly at 7:S0 o'clock, and starts from Brattleboro. In the sec | tion which was wrecked were several cars loaded with cattle, but most of | these were uninjured. Three have not | yet been accounted for. The remainder are roaming about the sWamps and | lowlands, which surround the roadbed | Late reports leave no room to doubt NV~NAAA0SN' V | boiler was the first cause of the wreck They also show that but two of the | three men killed died instantly. The engineer was breathing when found and carried to Mansfield depot, distant about half a mile, but he died on reach | ing there. His head was terribly mu- | tilated.
 | Conductor Thomas says that the | train broke in two parts about two | miles from the wreck; that thirty sec- l onds before the cars left the rail he
 heard the whistling warning of the en- | zine 150 rods from crossing. The ex- plosion seemed to follow immediately. l The cattle in the cars belonged to | Fred S. Brown of Jewett City, Conn. | Some of the people living within a short distance of the scene of the wreck | believe that an explosion must have sbeen the cause of the wreck, as a ter rife noise was heard at the time the
 wreck is reported to have occurred. | Horace Brigham, a farmer who lives | not far away, heard the noise and 1 hastened to the spot. He says that | when he arrived there the first thing | that he noticed were the dead bodies | of the fireman and engineer. Mrs. Dr. Johnson, who lives three i quarters of a mile distant from the | track, was also aroused by the terrific
 noise
 | Nearly everyone in Eagleville and
 Mansfield learned of the accident be- | fore nightfall and hastened to the To- cality. Two trains were held back
 north of the wreck These were freight
 train No. 57 and the boat train from
 which the passengers were finally transferred to a special train made up | in Willimantic.