Miraculous Escape as Overland Train Derails and Burns
A Northern Pacific train heading to Tacoma crashes near Buckley, destroying mail and express cars by fire, though passengers report no major injuries.
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.
Northern Pacific overland train No. 1, due in Tacoma at 10:35 p.m., was wrecked one and a half miles from Buckley on January 2. The express, baggage, and mail cars were overthrown, caught fire, and were totally destroyed, along with a tourist car. By the help of the passengers, the balance of the train—consisting of two sleepers, a smoking car, and a coach—was pushed away from the fire. The engineer, fireman, mail clerk, express messenger, and baggageman, with one of the brakemen, escaped with slight injuries. Engineer Harvey Reed reported that he saw a rail was gone from the track just ahead. He reversed the engine and applied the air brakes, slacking speed slightly before the crash. The engine kept to the ties for a short distance, then turned toward a gulch.
“It is considered a miracle that some of the passengers were not killed, or that the cars and locomotive were not crushed.”
This 1893 disaster highlights the fragility of early rail infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest, where sabotage and track maintenance were constant civic anxieties. Today, while we have moved on from steam engines and wooden cars, the vulnerability of our regional transit corridors to geography and human error remains a familiar theme in local news.
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