Fatal Rail Yard Accident Claims Newcomer
A sailor known only as 'Nels' is killed while walking the Northern Pacific tracks at night.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A newcomer in the city, known as 'Nels,' was run over and killed by Northern Pacific switch engine No. 308 at about 11:30 o'clock last night. Nels and a friend started from Washington street for his home in the southern part of the city about a half hour before the accident occurred. They walked down South Third street to the railroad tracks, and following them toward the southern part of the city, they encountered a switch engine. Nels stepped to one side of the track and his companion to the other, but after the engine passed, Nels' companion found him lying upon the track, horribly injured. The engineer, having felt the shock, stopped the engine, and the crew brought the victim to the crossing at Commercial street. Nels died before reaching the hospital. Very little is known about the man, other than that he was a sailor who arrived in Seattle two days ago from Michigan.
“The crew picked up the almost shapeless mass and brought it to the crossing at Commercial street.”
Railroad accidents were a common and brutal reality of 19th-century industrial life in Seattle, where train tracks bisected neighborhoods. The area around Commercial Street—now part of the Pioneer Square and SODO districts—remains a hub for transit, though it has long since traded its deadly surface-level switch engines for modern, safer infrastructure.
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