A Rare Grade-Crossing Collision
A gasoline-powered handcar strikes a local attorney's automobile in a bizarre wreck that left a section foreman injured.
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.
Nels Johnson, of Finley, section foreman on the S., P. S. railroad, received a broken collar bone this afternoon when his gasoline handcar collided with Attorney M. M. Moulton’s automobile. The accident happened at the railroad grade crossing just below the home of N. C. Bowles. Mr. Moulton’s car was thrown from the track down the grade. A fender was torn off, three spokes in a rear wheel broken, and the windshield smashed, but the driver escaped with only a few scratches. Mrs. Johnson and Glen Smith, who were on the handcar with Mr. Johnson, were uninjured. Mr. Moulton was approaching the crossing at a slow rate of speed and after making sure that no train was coming, was on the lookout for any automobile that might have been approaching the crossing from the other side. The people on the handcar waved at him and when he slowed up they thought their signal had been seen and that Mr. Moulton was going to bring his car to a stop.
“The people on the handcar waved at him and when he slowed up they thought their signal had been seen.”
This collision between an early automobile and a rail handcar encapsulates the early 20th-century transition period when rail-dependent infrastructure and burgeoning road traffic began to dangerously overlap. It serves as a reminder that the 'grade crossing' problem was just as volatile in the 1910s as it is in current transit planning.
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