TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENT IN AMERICA.

Southland Times, Issue 993, 27 July 1868, Page 3

TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENT IN AMERICA.

Between 3 and 4 o'clock on the morn- , ing of Wednesday, the 15th of April, an > accident which proved very destructive to life, and by which many people were > injured who were not killed, occurred on % the Erie Eailway. The Buffalo express ■ train, which left that city at 2.20 on ■ Tuesday afternoon, was running the long i reach of thirfcy-five miles without stop- , ping, between Narrowsburg and Port 5 Jarvis, probably a little behind time. . Shortly after passing Lackawaxen, com- ; ing eastward, the road strikes into the f southern bank of the Delaware, and foi ) a dozen miles or more runs upon a verj

, crooked and rapidly descending grade, . in what we might call a groove in the i bank — the track being cut into the rock at an elevation of from 60ffc. to 100 ft. : above the river. On the right, coming east, the rugged rocks rise high overhead; on the left, the bank slopes almost perpendicularly to the river bed. It is one of the most dangerous of all the dangerous places in the famous Delaware division. Down this tortuous track, at 3 o'clock in the morning, came the train, running — according to the testimony of railroad men in the cars — at unusually high speed. Just as it reached a substation known as Carr's Rock, where j trains sometimes stop on request to put off passengers who desire to cross into Sullivan County, New York, the coupliugs broke, the locomotive, baggage, mail and one or two other cars went on, while four (some say three) passenger , cars, among them one or more sleeping j cars, usually last in the train, went i rolling over and over down the I steep embankment, mangling and ! | burning to death the passengers. More than twenty persons are known to have been killed; some were burned beyond possibility of recognition, and" half a hundred received serious, and °~~ --^ doubtless fataUniurM:-, ,&? T ger "vrtiu .. ijrag-ifrone ot the sleeping cars says: — "I was awakened from my sleep by the dragging of the car over the * ties,' and as soon as the car had reached the edge of the embankment in which the track is laid, it began to roll over and over on its side until it rolled all the waydown the embankment, which I think is from eighty to one hundred feet high. From the place where the cars first left the track to where they lay wrecked was about 200 feet. The car I was in crushed up as it rolled, like a long paper box, and when it had ceased rolling it was a complete wreck. The sides had folded open as it were, and lay level with the floor of the coach, and the narrow section of the roof, in which the skylight and ventilators are placed lay diagonally across the broken body of the car." One of the sleeping cars took fire, the cinders from the stove having been thrown about as the car rolled over the embankment. The flames spread with great rapidity, catching the clothes of the passengers, and burning about seven of them to death, and others so severely that even if they live they will be horribly disfigured. The confusion was dreadful, the darkness of the night adding greatly to terrors which were enough of themselves to fill the passengers with dismay. As soon as those passengers who had not been injured could escape from the cars, they rendered what assistance they could to those who were less fortunate. The injured persons were conveyed by special train to Port Jervis.