Terror on the Rails
Saboteurs remove a rail from the Northern Pacific track near Buckley, nearly killing hundreds in a deliberate act of destruction.
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 examination was made last night where the Northern Pacific overland train was derailed, west of Buckley, by a traveling man who was previously in the railroad business. He corroborates the statement that the rail had been removed by train wreckers for the purpose of wrecking the train and slaughtering the whole train load of passengers. Chief Clerk M. M. Perl, of Assistant General Superintendent Dickinson's office, says: 'There is no doubt that the rail was removed for the purpose of wrecking the train.' C. E. Bailey, a Buckley hardware merchant, arrived here this evening. He, with 300 men, women and children, went to the scene of the wreck last night. We found the train on fire, and had it not been for the citizens of Buckley every car would have burned. It was simply a miracle that several were not killed as it was. Why, the postal clerk had the hair on the back of his head singed, his coat burned off and the front all burned out of his vest and shirt before he could cut his way out with assistance from outside the burning car.
“It was simply a miracle that several were not killed as it was.”
In the 1890s, train derailments were a common source of public panic and investigative news. Today, these events persist as high-stakes transportation disasters requiring complex forensic analysis.
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