Virginian in 1910--Narrow escape

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
October 22, 1910

FIREMAN AND BRAKEMAN HAVE NARROW ESCAPE
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Jump From Runaway Virginian Train After Thrilling Ride at Speed of Ninety Miles an Hour
    O. U. Mitchell, a Virginian fireman, and W. J. Dudley, a brakeman on the same road, are alive after one of the most thrilling rides any trainmen have ever had in this section.  The men rode on a runaway freight train, made up of nineteen cars and an engine, for two and a half miles and then jumped from the train just before it was wrecked, when it was easily making a speed estimated of about seventy miles per hour.  People who saw the train of 50-ton cars and the engine pass say they never saw a train make such speed and they were almost certain the fireman, who could be seen trying to stop the engine from which the engineer had jumped, and the brakeman would be killed.  Even the officials are at a loss to see how the men could have made the thrilling ride and escaped serious injury if not death.  Neither of the men was injured outside of the severe shaking up they got when they leaped from the flying train.
    The train got away from the crew while it was being made up near Bishop.  The engineer, seeing what had happened, jumped, leaving the fireman and brakeman unconscious of the danger until they began to see by the speed the train was making that it was running away.
    At first they dared not jump but when they saw the train gaining speed by leaps and bounds between their sentences to one another they finally decided to take the chance.  The train at this time was making over sixty miles an hour and had gone about two miles.  Both men jumped to the ground and were thrown and a few seconds later they heard an awful crash when twelve of the nineteen cars and the engine piled up on a curve.  Officials of the road state that only about eight car lengths of track was torn up on account of the suddenness with which the wreck came and then all the cars and coal were piled one on top of another.
    Dudley was able to go out on a train yesterday morning and was back at his work braking trains in spite of his narrow escape from death.
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[Anyone know where Bishop is located on the Virginian?]

Gordon Hamilton
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