The Engineer Who Stayed at the Brakes
A Burlington passenger train hit an open switch outside Selah at 30 miles an hour. Engineer William Gordon and fireman Meyers died; the passengers lived because Gordon never let go.
NORTH YAKIMA, April 25. — While running at a speed of 30 miles an hour past Selah station, six miles northwest of North Yakima, the Burlington passenger train No. 41, over the Northern Pacific railroad, was wrecked Sunday. Engineer William Gordon, of Ellensburg, and Fireman Meyers, of Pasco, were instantly killed, and R. Pratt, of Seattle, a mail clerk, and William Brogan, of Seattle, mail weigher, slightly injured.
That many passengers on the heavily loaded train were not injured was due to the presence of mind of Engineer Gordon, who lost his life in the effort to save those under his care, when he shut off the steam, threw on the air brakes, and even placed the emergency brake in the 400 feet the train ran from the time it struck the open or defective switch.
Conductor Churchill, who was taking tickets in the day coach, says when the engine left the track the train was going at the normal speed of 30 miles an hour. Suddenly the air brakes were set, the engine whistle gave the short distress blasts, and a second later the crash came.
The engine, No. 280, pulling the train, had left the main line, and gone into the switch just east of Selah, jumped the track and been dumped over an embankment about five feet high. Forced by the momentum of the heavy train, the mail car had swept by the overturned engine and been turned about a quarter over, and the baggage car had followed. Both cars were badly damaged. Apparently, after giving the warning signal, Engineer Gordon had attempted to get from the cab, for his body was found between the boiler head and the tender. The body of Meyers was found pinned under the tender, his arms outstretched.
“Engineer Gordon lost his life in the effort to save those under his care, when he shut off the steam, threw on the air brakes, and even placed the emergency brake in the 400 feet the train ran from the time it struck the open or defective switch.”
The Selah switch wreck is a reminder that the men who ran Washington's rails absorbed the risk of every mile, and that a single defective switch could turn a routine run into a funeral. Today's freight corridors through the Yakima Valley still carry the same traffic past the same ground, and the safety culture that grew out of wrecks like this one is the direct inheritance of Gordon's last 400 feet.
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