With a little editorial license for the thread subject... and it only could have happened on the RGS...
Telluride Journal
March 22, 1906
ENGINE DITCHED AT DEEP CREEK
Yesterday Afternoon on Double Header Train – Second Engine Derailed - Burros Cause of Accident
From Wednesday’s Daily
Yesterday afternoon as the Ridgway-Telluride train rounded the curve at Deep Creek water tank, four burros which had been lying on the dry ground under the tank jumped up and started across the track and were struck by the head engine on the double header train, which left the track and run down the little grade tearing up the rails so that the engine coupled to the train ran off on the ties nearly full length before it could be stopped. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it caused the train crew to work all night and until after 9 o’clock this morning before the train could resume its journey to Telluride.
No blame can be attached to anyone for the trouble, for there was not a ghost of a show to avoid the accident. Engineer Holland and Fireman Watkins were on the head engine, which has made regular trips with a pilot plow ahead of Jay’s train for the several days in order to make the time the train has to make over slippery rails and through snow drifts. Both of these men know the road like a book and both are vigilant in the discharge of their duty. When they rounded the curve within a few yards of the tank the track was clear, and not until nearly to the tank did the burros get up and try and cross. There were four jacks and three were killed and one crippled, one or more of them getting under the pilot of the engine and derailing it, the head end swinging around and running clear from the track but not turning over.
The track torn up was rebuilt under the train engine, the crew worked hard all night to do it, and reached Telluride at 10:30 this morning. As soon as the incoming and outgoing mail, express and passengers could be unloaded and boarded again, the train pulled out for Ridgway, leaving at 11:05.
Passengers on the train were taken to Placerville, where they were comfortably cared for all night, and no one save the railroad boys suffered to any great extent from the accident.
The train crew was about all in before they got into the accident, but they worked all night and will have a strenuous time all day, but little or no complaint was uttered by them.
From a passenger on the train the Journal learns since the above was written, the train had been delayed at Placerville an hour or more by a small accident. The trucks came from under one end of one coach and it was necessary to raise the coach with jack screws, replace the trucks and run a king bolt down the car floor to hold them in place, this taking about an hour.
When the burros were struck only the two front pilot wheels of the second engine went off of the rails and these were quickly restored and the train backed down to Placerville. Everybody was in bed and the hotel accommodations limited. But the hotel people got up and prepared a meal. There were 31 passengers on the train and they got supper soon after 1 o’clock and were distributed around as best they could. Our informant with six others slept on the floor of a grocery store and about a dozen rested on the floor of the hotel office.
But on the whole they are grateful that it was no worse, no one received a scratch.
