Two Drunk Loggers Asleep on the Tracks; One Never Woke
Louis Dunn and Cephus Gott, loggers for the Rauch crew, lay down on the Great Northern rails after a night of drinking. A train found them — killing Dunn and maiming Gott. It was the second Rauch man killed by a train in six months.
The engineer of Great Northern train No. 4, which arrived at Newport about 1:30 Wednesday morning, reported that he had hit a man in the west end of the local yards, and members of the train crew went back, but returned without having found the body. About 5:30 a.m. a freight crew approaching from the west saw the body of a man laying on the track, stopped the train and came to the town to notify the authorities.
The dead man was found to be Louis Dunn, an employee of the Ray Rauch logging crew. His body was laying between the rails with one leg cut off near the body, the left arm also severed and fearful bruises about the head. About twenty feet from the track lay Cephus Gott, also an employee of Rauch's, with head and body badly cut, and who had returned to consciousness just a short time before being found by the crew of the freight train.
The body of the dead man was taken to the Miller morgue, where it will be held for a few days while an effort is made to get in touch with relatives. He was a Canadian about 34 years old, and his mother and brother live at Kington, Ont. Gott was given medical attention and although badly hurt will recover.
Dunn and Gott came to town in the early evening and proceeded to get drunk. They were seen going west on the railroad track about midnight, and evidently sat down to rest when the effects of the liquor overcame them and they went to sleep. Several flasks of whisky were found on them.
This is the second man of Rauch's camp to be killed by Great Northern trains, the first death having occurred last December about half a mile further west.
“Several flasks of whisky were found on them.”
Loggers coming to town to drink, then stumbling home along the rails, was a grimly common pattern in railroad towns like Newport — and the second such death in Rauch's camp in six months suggests a systemic hazard, not just bad luck. Today the same stretch of track still cuts through town, and the question of how to keep people safe around freight and passenger lines remains a local concern.
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