Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1911-08-31
twenty-five Persons Killed and
Sixty Injured in Wreck on
Lehigh Valley.
VETERANS AMONG DEAD
Two Cars Jump Track on Tres
tie and Drop forty-tive Feet
to River Bed,

Manchester, N. Y, Aug. 26.-With a
list of killed and injured far from
complete twenty-five persons are
known to have lost their lives and
between fifty and sixty to have been
injured, many of them seriously, in
the wreck of Lehigh Valley train No.
4 on a trestle near here.
Two cars of the train plunged off
the structure, were hurled against the
stone embankment and dropped to the
bed of Canandaigua outlet, forty-five
feet below, when the fast running
e%astbound train was derailed and
broken in twain on the viaduct.
Another car rolled down the embank-
ment beyond the river. The remain
ing eleven cars of the train kept the
roadbed.
The first car which went over, a day
coach, plunged into the creek and
was crushed upon the rocky bed. 1t
landed upon its side and few of the
occupants escaped death or serious in
jury. The following car plunged head
first into the chasm and with the for
ward end resting in the creek stood
balanced almost perpendicularly.
The wreck, aside from its fright
fully calamitous character, is remark
able in that two cars from practically
the center of the train were singled
out for the disastrous plunge into the
river bed.
The train carried many veterans re-
turning from the Grand Army en-
campment at Rochester and at least
two of the old soldiers were known
to have gone to their death in the
wreck. A large proportion of those
Eilled and injured were women.
Train Crowded With Passengers.
Crowded with passengers, many Of
whom We're war veterans and excur-
sionists from the G.. A. R. encamp-
ment at Rochester, the train, made up
of fourteen cars and drawn by two
big mogul locomotives. was forty min
utes late when it reached Rochester
Junction and from there sped east
ward to make up time before reaching
Geneva.
The engines and two day coaches
had just passed the center of a 400
foot trestle over C~anandaigua outlet,
$50 yards east of the station at Man
chester, when the Pullman car Austin,
the third of the long train, left the
rails. 1t dragged the dining car with
1t and two day coaches and two Pull
mans followed. All bumped over the
ties a short distance when the coupling
between the day coach and the rear
end of the diner broke. The forward
end of the train dragged the derailed
Pullman and the diner over safely,
after which both plunged down the
embankment and rolled over.
The free end of an i'll fated Lehigh
Valley day coach, in which most of
the victims We're riding, showed out
over the gulf and, followed by a
Grand Trunk day coach, stripped the
rear guard of the south side of the
trestle and plunged to the shallow
river bed more than forty feet below.
The end of the first day coach that
went owe struck the east embank-
ment of solid masonry and, with the
other sixty-foot car behind it, both
smashed against the wall with ter
rife force.
Both cars were filed with passen-
gers and in a few moments the cars
lay a mass of crumpled wood, metal
and glass under which a hundred men,
women and children were buried,
many of whom had been killed in
Stantly.