Passenger Train Derails Near Walla Walla
An engineer is severely scalded after a train crashes through a bridge near Riparia, prompting insurance agents to offer a reward for arsonists.
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.
WALLA WALLA, July 27.—Shortly after leaving Riparia Friday morning the passenger train from Farmington crashed through a small bridge and the engine and baggage car were precipitated to the creek bed, the baggage car piling on top of the engine. The air brakes were applied soon enough to save the passenger coaches, they being stopped just at the verge of the embankment. In the fall the fireman was thrown from the cab and landed in the baggage car without injury. Engineer O. C. Graham was terribly scalded about the feet and legs, but suffered no internal injury. He was caught in the cab and pinned so that it was impossible to remove him despite all efforts until nearly three hours had elapsed. He is now in the hospital in this city. How the bridge was burned is unknown. The insurance agents of Walla Walla met last night and organized, with W. B. Whitman, president, and L. A. Shaw, secretary. They have offered a standing reward of $500 for conviction of incendiaries.
“The baggage car piling on top of the engine. The air brakes were applied soon enough to save the passenger coaches.”
The precarious nature of early rail infrastructure and the immediate, sometimes desperate, public response to industrial accidents and suspected sabotage defined the frontier economy in the late 19th century.
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