Narrow Escape from Railway Disaster
Two passenger trains collide near Palmer after failing to stop on a curve; hundreds of lives saved by low speeds.
There was a close call for a disastrous collision on the Northern Pacific at Palmer, a station near Tacoma, Monday. The east and west bound passengers rounded a curve and crashed together before the engines could be stopped. Fortunately, owing to the proximity of the trains to the station, they were not going at a high rate of speed and thus hundreds of lives were probably saved, as both trains were heavily laden. The engines were badly wrecked and the passengers well shaken up, but no other damage resulted. The cause of the accident is to be investigated, and in the meantime several of the trainmen have been laid off.
“The east and west bound passengers rounded a curve and crashed together before the engines could be stopped.”
This incident serves as a grim reminder of the dangers inherent in early rail expansion, where human error and primitive signaling often put hundreds of lives in immediate, daily jeopardy.
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