The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-09-29
twenty-five Are Known To Be
Dead; Estimate Injured at s..
Engineer Admits Oarelessness
Caused Crash; Goes Mad.
CAR SPLIT LIKE A BISCUIT
Portions of Human Bodies
Scattered Thru Wreckage.
Two Frisco Passenger Trains
Hit in Oklahoma.


combination Jim Crow and smoking
car open as a biscuit is opened for
buttering. the steel mail and express
car on Frisco passenger train No. 407,
cut a swath of human lives that
reached from end to end of the car,
when it met a deadhead equipment
train in a head end collision about
three miles south of Kellyville at 2:46
Friday afternoon.
Engineer Rule, in charge of the
passenger train, who escaped death
with the rest of the crews of both
engines, ran down the track in de-
mented state. and was picked up by
a light engine bearing doctors to the
scene two miles from the scene of the
wreck. During lucid intervals, he
stated to DIR. Z. II. Martin, Bristow
physician, on the light engine, that
he had not forgotten his orders. but
thought that both the trains covered
bv his meet order for Kellyville had
passed.
Engineer Tells of Wreck.
He was oiling his pump, he told DR..
Martin, while in the hole" at Kelly
willie. and was not paying strict atten-
ton to the passing trains. His orders
were to take the siding at KellyYille
and wait to let a nortnbound passen-
ger train and a train composed of
empty cars returning from carrying
troops to Oklahoma City pass his
train Instead of making sure that he
had a clear track he started his train
with the troop train only few miles
ahead, speeding at forty miles an
hour he himself. opening the throttle
all the way to make up the time lost
while waiting. Three miles south of
Kellyville, his train just clearing a
zoe foot trestle, and so feet above
the stream bed, the trains came to-
gether.
The two engines were wedged so
that the smoke stacks were not a foot
apart. The driving wheels of the pas
senger engine stood suspended at the
front a foot in the air. Neither engine
left the track.
The known dead at an early hour
Saturday morning were:
ARTHUR TRACY of Tulsa, con-
nected with the Globe Clothing COM
pany.
Il JOHN CROWNOVER, deputy sher-
5in Of Shamrock. Okla.
+. NJ. HUTCHINSON, an employe
-of the Pioneer Telephone and Tele-
graph company, Tulsa.
WHITNEY, a. negro train porter,
rteadheading back on sick leave.
JOHN TIGER, an Indian of Bris-
tow.
Corpses Not Recognize BILE.
Twenty-Five are known to have lost
their lives and the estimated number
of injured is sixty-five. rhe work OF
identifying the dead is slow owing to
their mangled condition. Portions OF
bodies. pieces of arms and legs scat
tered thru the wreckage. In many
cases the clothing, ripped to shreds
was not enough to shroud the bodies
il had covered. Up to midnight auto
trucks were still performing their
igruesome journey from the wreck tc
Bristow, bearing corpses that were
scarcely recogniza BILE as human re-
mains. One man had been split ir
two.
The wreckage was so Uttered with
blood and parts of bodies it reSembled
a shambles. The tangled iron and
splintered wood was red in the cars
that had been telescoped. That any
one came out of the combina ton cal
alive is a marvel. The floor of the
mail and express car sheared off the
seats Of the passenger car as hay il
cut, and the human freight was piled
up before it in a tangled heap. Il
was in this car that the deaths oc.
Cured In the day coach following
the passengers were shaken out OF
their seats, and huddled like sheer
against the front walls of the coach
their anguished cries carrying a mile
across the fields.