The Tragedy on Trestle No. 4
A father's desperate attempt to walk his children to safety during a heavy snowstorm ends in a devastating train accident on the outskirts of Tacoma.
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.
Mr. Sylvester, who resided at Summit Station, set out to walk to Tacoma with his three children. As the county road was muddy and full of snow, he decided to follow the west side of the railroad track. The party walked merrily along, chatting as parents and children can. No thought of danger entered their minds until they had reached the middle of trestle bridge No. 4. They were suddenly startled by the rumble and roar of a locomotive whistle. It was observed, to their horror, to be but a few yards away. It was past its time—11 a.m.—and the train had crept up on them unobserved. Tillie, the eldest child, aged thirteen and a half years, was slightly in advance of her father. With great fear in his heart, the father grabbed two of the children and stepped onto one of the bridge’s crossbeams out of danger. He called to Tillie to follow his example, but the child was so frightened that she could not hear him. Tillie, when she heard the whistle, bounded forward like a deer. The engineer reversed his engine and opened the sand valve. In an instant, the brakemen sprang to their work and set every one of them to the limit. The little girl had by this time gained within the third bent of the bridge; thirty feet more and she would have been safe. She turned to look back to see how the train was to her, and in doing so slipped and the engine passed over her, crushing her little form frightfully. The engine had only passed its own length over where she fell when it halted. The mangled form fell down fifteen or sixteen feet to the ground. When she was picked up, it was found that life was not yet quite extinct. The poor child was carried to Fourth street, near Mill, and later to her grandfather’s house on First street. Notwithstanding the efforts of Doctors Wells and Saylor, the little sufferer died at 10 o'clock yesterday afternoon.
“The engineer... said he would not have had it happen for any amount of money. 'It was a down grade,' he said, 'and it is impossible to stop a train there.'”
The precarious nature of walking along rail lines was a common danger in 1880s Tacoma, reflecting a time when infrastructure development often outpaced pedestrian safety. Today, the struggle has shifted to the preservation of public spaces like the Prairie Line Trail, which repurposes those same historic rail corridors into safe, accessible corridors for modern citizens.
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