The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-05-13
While Running at a Terrific
Rate of Speed.
Dining Car Full Of People Leap
ed Into the Air.
MANY WERE SCALDED.
Some PiniOned in the Debris
We're Roasted Alive.
Wreckage Caught Fire But Was
Soon Extinguished.

Santa Barbara, Cal, May 13.-The
funeral train to carry the bodies OF
the victims of the Honda wreck to
their former homes in the east is be-
ing made up and will leave Santa Bar
bara as soon as the inquest is finished
this afternoon.
There are between 200 and 500
Shriners and their friends in this city
who will leave here this afternoon. One
coach of a special train will be fitted
UP as a funeral car and will carry the
bodies of twenty-one dead. The train
will proceed over the northern route
via San Francisco. At the San Luis
Obispo the eleven bodies there will be
taken on board and the Shriners who
are in that city and able to travel will
also go east this train.
A telephone message from San Luis
Obispo says there has been no more
deaths among the injured. The total
of dead is thirty-two.
Santa Barbara, Cal, May 13.-WhiIe
hurrying northward over the Coast
line of the Southern Pacific railroad
Saturday afternoon, homeward bound.
after a week of fraternizing ard fiesta
in Los Angeles, 145 Shriners of Ish-
maelia temple of Buffalo and Raiah
temple of Reading, with their families
and friends, were hurled into the midst
of death, when their special train, run
ming fifty miles an hour, struck a de-
fective switch at Honda, a lonely sta
ton, on the sand wastes of the Pacific
beach, derailing the train. smashing
the coaches into finders killing thirty
almost instantly and fnjuring more
than a score of others. The bodies Of
twenty lie in the morgues of Sa nta
Barbara and ten more are-at San Luis
Obispo. The injured, many of whom
are terribly hurt and will proba bly, die,
are in two sanitariums at San Luis
Obispo.
The statement that the train was
making a terrific speed when it struck
the defective track is borne out by the
fact that it covered the sixty-one miles
of curves and crooked track between
here and Honda is exactly 100 minutes.
Came Without Warning.
There was no warning of the impend-
ing calamity. The special plunged up
on the defective switch and in an in
slant the big locomotive, baggage car,
diner and Pullman coupled with it
were hurled together in a huge heap
of wreckage The engine shot for
ward on the broken track, tearing up
the rails and ties and twisting the huge
iron spans into fish hooks. The bag
gage car half buried itself in the sand
on the right side of the locomotive 1t
was smashed almost to kindling wood.
The dining. car, in which were thir-
ty-two people eating their MONDAY re-
past, leaped into the air and was
thrown directly on top of the demol-
ished locomotive. Nearly every per
son in this coach was instantly killed
Scores were scalded by steam escap-
ing from disconnected pipes in the
kitchen of the diner
The terror and turmoil of the scene
were indescribable. Many of those
who escaped instant death by the first
impact were crushed by the rear
coaches hurled upon the wreckage
Others, pinfoned in the debris, were
roasted alive. The wreckage caught
fire from the Goals of the engine. but
-4-I-1
the passengers who escaped injury.
Engineer Frank Champlain was
pitched with his cab twenty-five feet
beyond the engine and got up and ran
three-quarters of a mile, seeking help,
before he discovered that his arm was
broken and that he was severely scald-
ed. A man standing behind his wife
in the baggage car was hurled through
soft and yielding sand almost unin-
jured. The woman was forced
through the floors and wreckers had
to life tons of baggage to get her body
out.
Caught I'm Death Trap.
But the unfortunates who occupied
every seat in the dining car were
caught in veritable death trap. Only
two of the nine men of the diner crew
are numbered among the dead. The
remainder, though cooped up in the
narrow kitchen and pantry, sustained
but a few cuts and bruises.
A last call for luncheon had Just
sounded few minutes before the dis
aster.
Rajah temple of Reading occupied
the last car on the train and were the
last ones to go forward to the diner.
The car was filled almost entirely with
Reading people when the wreck oc-
Cured. An instant after the smash
those who were not rendered insensiblo
or otherwise incapacitated by the ter
rife impact jumped from the train to
render aid, but the gruesome scene be-
fore them untitled many for the work
they had to do in the long hours be-
fore relief arrived.
Frightened women. peering through
he windows of the undamaged
sleeper, tainted when they saw the
bodies of their friends strewn along
he roadside, blood from the gaping
staining the sand drifts all
about. Men who toiled hard at the
ask of rescue COLLAPSED completely,
many of them before the work was
Mrs John w. Cutler, of Bingham
-on, whose husband is also among the
killed, was in the baggage car at the
ime of the crash, where she had
gone to rearrange her trunk. Her
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