Coal Train Wreck near Newcastle
Twelve coal cars jump the track on a steep descent, resulting in a serious injury for one brakeman.
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.
An accident occurred on the extension of the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad yesterday, near Newcastle, which resulted in the demolishing of twelve coal cars and the fracture of Wm. Hall's collar bone. It appears that a train of twelve cars had been loaded at Coal Creek, and were being run down to Newcastle. As there is quite a down grade on that road, there was no engine attached to the cars, but two men were placed on them to brake them down to the camp. In going around one of the sharp curves in that piece of road, the foremost car jumped the track, quickly followed by all the balance. William Hall, brakeman on the front car, seeing that a smash up was about to take place, made a leap, cleared the gulch into which the cars were tumbling, and struck against a stump, breaking his collar bone. The wounded man was brought to town, and the fractured bone set.
“Seeing that a smash up was about to take place, made a leap, cleared the gulch into which the cars were tumbling.”
This reflects the dangerous, improvised nature of early industrial infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest, where gravity and manual braking were the primary means of moving heavy coal shipments through steep terrain.
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