WAUPACA REPUBLICAN POST

Friday, September 09, 1898

 

MIGHTY NEAR IT.

 

Caboose Punched - An Oil Tank and Flat Derailed and Dumped on Friday p.m

 

     Freight No. 24 came in from north about four o’clock.  A blockade of freights at the station caused some delay in switching to sidings in order to clear the track for the two passengers north and south bound which meet here at 4:13.  The breakman seeing the time limited hurried back and placed torpedoes on track and then ran to his caboose to get his flag.  He had only time to get a short distance when passenger No. 2 came thundering round the curve at the Brewery crossing.  Engineer Fally shrieked his whistle and set the air brakes, then he and his fireman Mr. Cutting jumped just as the engine struck the caboose.  It derailed and dumped an oil car and a flat ahead of the caboose and lifted the rear of the caboose bodily from the hind trucks and derailed the forward trucks.  The wrecked flat was soon cleared and the hind wheels to the caboose rolled out of the way, then Engineer Fally pushed the caboose like a wheel-barrow down to a siding near the depot and then went back for his train.  Every thing else except his head-light was O.K. but it put trains out of joint as to time about two hours; but best of all no body was hurt.  Engineer Fally said:  “I heard the torpedoes as I commenced to set the breaks as usual down grade at the Brewery curve and when I saw the flag and caboose a few seconds later I set “em harder, then concluded it time to look for a soft place to jump.  I have been an engineer thirty-five years, never lost a life yet, neither do I want to or my own either.”  A good record.

     Messrs. Charles Churchill and Richard Lea and their wives were on the train; just returning from their trip and they thought it rather funny to ride seven thousand miles and then receive their first scare just as they arrived to their home city limits.  They however said that the sudden stop was so easy no one on the train at the time realized “what might have been.”