WRECK ON DENVER AND RIO GRANDE
Caused By Soft Tracks - Cars Went Into Ditch - Several Seriously Injured.
Soft track caused by recent heavy rains was responsible for a wreck yesterday on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad at a point four miles north of Servilleta, and about thirty miles south of Antonito. Two passenger coaches and a baggage car were ditched and overturned, but none of the passengers or train crew was killed or fatally injured. Those seriously hurt were:
PHILLIP STIMMEL, conductor, internal injuries.
EARLE HALEY, brakeman, rib broken and body bruised.
CHARLES A. CARRUTH, railway mail clerk, bruised about body and hands burned.
JAMES D. McOORMICK, Denver, leg hurt and head cut.
WALTER PITZPATRICK, Denver, leg hurt and back injured.
Train No. 425, south bound from Antonito to Santa Fe, which is scheduled to arrive in this city at 3:30 pm was bowling along yesterday morning about 11:30 o'clock when the accident occurred. The entire train with the exception of the hind coach had passed over the defective piece of track. The trucks of the last car however, caught on a broken rail, rolled down an embankment about four feet high, dragging off the coach in front and the combination baggage and mail car. The engine and two freight cars loaded with merchandise remained on the track. The engineer applied the emergency brakes as soon as he realized that something had gone wrong with the rear end and thus saved the entire train from going into the ditch.
Eleven passengers were on the two coaches which were derailed and turned turtle. Those in the last car which left the track first fared the worst. For a time the accident looked very serious and there was a scene of indescribable confusion, but the excited passengers recovered from their fright when they learned that no lives had been lost. One of them fainted from exhaustion and excitement after reaching Servilleta.
Brakeman Haley was probably the most seriously injured of anybody in the wreck. In addition to a rib of his left side being fractured he sustained external injuries that will lay him up for several weeks. He was removed to his home at Antonito on the northbound train. Conductor Stimmel escaped without any broken bones but he complained of pains in his abdomen and back. While he was not as badly hurt as the conductor and brakeman, Railway Mail Clerk Carruth had a miraculous escape from a horrible death. His hands were burned by red hot coals hurled from the stove in the combination mail and baggage car. He was thrown close to the stove and had a close call from being incinerated. Besides the burned hands he received numerous abrasions and bruises. The mall was scattered all about, soaked in oil, ink and muscilage.
Of the eleven passengers on the train only one was a woman and she was probably the coolest of them all. She was sitting near the stove in the rear car when it went into the ditch but scrambled out from her perilous position none the worse for her experience except a bad fright. The stove was tipped over and burning coals scattered about which caught fire but the blaze was extinguished in its incipiency. Kerosene dripped from the lamps in the overturned cars and had the flames communicated with the oil they would have been difficult to extinguish.
When all of the passengers had been accounted for they boarded the engine cab and the two box cars and were taken to Servilleta. The woman passenger was allowed to ride in the cab. Other passengers climbed inside the box cars which were filled with sacked flour and still others rode on the top of the car. A special train was sent out from Alamosa to finish the run to Santa Fe and a wrecking train from the same place cleared away the debris. It was 1 o'clock this morning before the extra train reached here.
Walter Fitzpatrick and James D. McCormick, two of the passengers who were injured in the wreck, came on through last night to Santa Fe, and were interviewed this morning by a reporter of the New Mexican. They place the blame for the accident to a broken rail rather than the spreading of the track because of soft roadbed. They said that they noticed where almost a foot of one of the rails had been broken off.
"I was In the rear car asleep when the accident happened," Mr. Fitzpatrick told the newspaper man. "I occupied a double seat, sitting on one, with my feet on another. When the coach left the track it rode along the ties for a distance of about a car length and the sudden jolting woke me up. The first thing I knew the car was tipping over, and I was thrown against the opposite side. I crawled out the back end of the car. It's a good thing that the embankment was not steep or the wreck would have been disastrous."
Messrs, Fitzpatrick and McCormick are cable splicers in the employ of the Colorado Telephone Company, who were on their way from Denver to Albuquerque.
Santa Fe New Mexican, November 03, 1906, page 1
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