The record-union., 1897-03-02
Has Narrow Escape From Terrible
Accident.
Saved From Destruction by the Hero
ism of a Track k-Walker-Brought
to StandStill Just as the Nose of
the COw-Catcher Buried Itself in a
Huge Mass o. BowIders Which Had
Slid Down Upon the Track.

WASHINGTON, March 1.-What
surely would have been a bad, and
might have been a terrible accident,
was narrowly averted from the Balti-
| more and Ohio train which brought
| Governor Tanner and his staff into
| washington. 1t was by the merest
chance that the train was not thrown
down into a gorge 500 feet deep, and
had such catastrophe happened it is
| difficult to see how many of the merry
passengers on board could have es-
capped instant death
! ON the train, in addition to Governor
Tanner and his staff, were Congress-
men Belknap and Lorimer, Senator Lit
tier of Springfield and a considerable
number of other passengers on their
way to Washington. The Governors
train had been late ever since it left
Chicago, and was an hour and a half
behind time when it crossed the Ohio
River at Bellaire. There the train was
cut IN two and the section carrying
Governor Tanner and his staff started
tor Washington in the hope of making
up some of the lost time. The engineer
III charge made all the time he could,
and soon the train pulled by two en-
gines, was climbing mountains, swing
ing around cliffs and dashing through
tunnels
little after 2 o'clock in the morn
ing, just beyond Moundsvile, a little
station seven miles west of Benwood,
While the train was going forty miles
an hour, rounding a sharp cliff, the
engineer in front saw a small bonfire
on the track, and in front of it a man
waving frantic directions at him to
stop. He obeyed at once, reversed his
engine, as did the engineer behind put
on all brakes, and both strove by every
means in their power to bring the train
to halt.
For a moment which seemed an
hour, the effort was fruitless. The
train dashed through the fire; and
would have run over the man had he
not stepped aside. 1t swept forward,
seemingly without any diminution of
speed for a while, and then the brakes
caught, the train slowed up and finally
stopped with the nose of the first cow
catcher buried among a lot of powders,
some of them weighing tons, which
had slid down from cliff above and
completely covered the track.
Had the train struck them with any
force at all, it must have been de-
rallied, and that, in that place, meant
horrible accident. The roadbed
there is nothing but large cut in the
face of bluff, TO the left the cliff
towering up a hundred feet, with hard
ly room between it and the tracks for
the man who gave the warning to
squeeze himself as the train went by.
To the right was a sheer descent of
another hundred feet or more into a
narrow gorge, at the bottom of which
rushed a mountain stream, swollen
out of its banks by melting snow.
Had the train been precipitated into
the gorge the fatalities which would
have resulted would have been fright
ful to contemplate 1t would have
been almost impossible for anyone on
board to escape alive. When the train
was stopped the man who had given
the warning had a strange story to
tell. His name was John Fitzpat-
rick, and he was the section hand
whose duty it was to patrol that
stretch of track. He had come out
without his lantern. as he had neg
lccted to procure any oil for it yester-
the dark, there was sudden noise UP
the cliff to his left. and, with it a quick
rush of huge powders came down upon
him. any one of which. had it hit him,
would have swept him into the gorge
below.
For moment he was too scared to
even think; then he awoke to reali-
zaton Of what had happened. and the
20 hot 80
due at any moment Clamboring back
over the high bouIders in the dark, he
started to run down the track to meet
the expected train. He had no lantern
to signal it with, and so, going as far
as he dared, he built a fire on the track
with sticks he pulled off the branches
in the old cliff at the side of the track,
and used it for danger signal
The road is all curves here, in and
around the cliff, so the light could not
be seen at any considerable distance
So he put himself in front of ii. and
when the train came, as it did ten
minutes afterwards. John Fitzpatrick
stood there before the beacon fire and
yelled and danced like demon until
the engineers saw him and fought to
stop the train
AS ii was, they succeeded. It is
doubtful if another ten feet of head
way would not have resulted in fear
full accident which might have cost IL
linois Governor and certainly would
have resulted in many deaths.
When the passengers saw what had
happened they gave attention to the
trackwalker, and his THANK you. sir"
was punctuated by the jingle of some
thing that fell merrily into the re-
cesses of the bluest pair of overalls
any West Virginia trackwalker ever
yet wore. Many of the women passen-
gers braved the cold and came to the
scene and they also said things to old
Fitzpatrick.
Thus, by the narrowest of margins
the only man who could have saved the
train averted death. Had he been kill
ed or even rendered unconscious. no
power on earth could have prevented a
frightful disaster. 1t took Fitzpatrick
fully ten minutes to Chamber over the
pile of earth to reach the tracks on
the other side. His hands were cut