A RAILROAD HORROR.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 221, 24 September 1887, Page 4

A RAILROAD HORROR.

Shocking Scones. One of the most terrible misfortunes of the rail, on record, occurred on the night of August 10th, on the Toledo, Peoria and Western line, near Forest, Illinois. The exact time Avas midnight. The train had left Peoria about live o'clock tho evening previous carrying more than 000 excursionists bound to Niagara Falls. Two miles east of Forest was a little trestle on fire, caught from a burning piairie, it is said, no ilonger than fiiteen^feet, and above the ditch |no nighea than six feet. The train nuraIberecl sixteen cats, all but one carrying ipas&engers, and the whole drawn by two (engines. The burning tristle safely bore the first encrino ; but the wheels of its tender were caught in the tanking rails, and a frightful wreck ensued. Car after car leaped the narrow eha&m, and telescoped the coaches proceeding. The great weight and impetus of half-a-dozen Pullman I Hlecpei>> dw\ o their huge frames with terrible force against the chair cars and day coaches. Three cars were so telescoped together that it was almost impossible to tell the ruined ones from those uninjured. The floors were swept of seats and passengers, shoving all into a mas-s at the end The sleepers escaped, and as the passengers emerged from their berths half-clad, their eyes met a scene of indescribable horror. To fight the fire and prevent the wounded pinned in the wrecked cars from being roasted to death, there was no other means than dry earth, and this for four hours fifty men dug with unaided hands, unmindful of bleeding fingers, and at la&t succeeded in smothering the flames. There was no water in the little channel spanned by the culvert, and there were no picks nor shovels to be had for loosening the earth. When morning came it was found there were over one hundred and thirteen dead passengers, and at many wounded, more or less seriously. Two of the unfortunates, badly crushed, and learning that their wives and .children had perished, managed to extricate a revolver from their pockets and blew their brains out. The origin of the fire at the culvert is being discussed, and tho awful impression is deepening that the place was set on fire, and that the catastrophe is the result of a wellplanned scheme for robbery. No sooner had the wreck occurred than plundering commenced, and the shoes that covered the feet of the dead were even taken off. Rings were [ plucked from the fingers of the corpses, and money and valuables taken from the pockets of those too badly wounded to resist. The thieves went into the cars while yet the fire was burning fiercely underneath, and when the poor wretches who were pinned there begged them for God's sake to help them out, stripped them of their watches, jewellery, and searched their pockets. When the dead bodies were laid out in the cornfields, these human hyenas turned them over in their search for valuables, and that the plundering was done by an organised gang was proven by the fact that sixteen purses, all empty, were found in one heap. Had the thieves been caught they would have been lynched, but they managed to escape while tho horrors of the surroundings were at their height.