N&W in 1910--Bad wreck

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
December 25, 1910

FOUR MAIL CLERKS DASHED TO DEATH IN MOST SERIOUS WRECK NORFOLK & WESTERN HAS EXPERIENCED IN A SCORE OF YEARS
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Engine and Eight Coaches of Train No. 16 Piled in Heap At Entrance to Tunnel at Naugatuck
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CONFLICTING REPORTS AS TO NUMBER INJURED
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Two of Dead Mail Clerks, J. W. Herndon and L. W. Dowdy, Had Arranged to Spend Today With Their Families and Their Homes at Roanoke Had been Gaily Decorated in Honor of Their Coming
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REPORT THAT WRECKAGE TOOK FIRE IS DENIED BY OFFICIALS
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    The official list of dead and injured in the wreck at Naugatuck corrected up to midnight is as follows:
    JAMES R. HERNDON, mail clerk, Roanoke, Va.
    LAMA W. DOWDY, mail clerk, Roanoke, Va.
    C. C. GOODE, mail clerk, Columbus, Ohio
    O. M. BELL, mail clerk, Waverly, Ohio
Seriously Injured
    C. H. Davidson, mail clerk, Columbus, Ohio
    R. H. Edwards, express messenger, Roanoke.
    E. M. Bailey, extra expressman, Eggleston, Va.
Slightly Injured
    Engineer Robinson, Portsmouth, Ohio
    Fireman, name unknown
    C. A. Kemmelman, mail clerk
    Extra expressman, name unknown
    Woman passenger, name not given

    It is reported that a number of other passengers received slight injuries, while it is also stated that the engineer and fireman on the first engine escaped without injury.  R. R. McAllister, of this city, was the news butch on the train and it is not known here whether or not he was in the first passenger car when the wreck occurred.
    The express agent here said last night that E. M. Bailey, who was seriously injured, had instructions to leave [the train at] Williamson and wait for No. 16, on which train he was to return to this city.  On account of the rush of business he went on to Fort Gay where he joined the crew on No. 16, the ill-fated train [The wreck site is between Fort Gay and Williamson.].  Charles R. Davidson, one of the mail clerks killed [sic, see C. H. Davidson under "Seriously Injured" above], was also deadheading to this city, and was riding the mail car against the rules.

WORST IN TWENTY YEARS
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Most Serious Wreck on Norfolk and Western Since Thaxton Disaster
    The most serious passenger train wreck the Norfolk and Western has experienced in twenty years occurred at Naugatuck last night, about 6 o'clock, when second No. 16, en route from Columbus to Norfolk, was piled up in the tunnel west of that place.  The wreck was caused by the tender of the second engine jumping the track with the result that both the head engine and its follower were wedged together in the narrow single track tunnel.
    When the engines stopped, the mail car, an express car, a baggage car and one passenger coach piled into the opening, killing four mail clerks and injuring the express messenger so badly that he cannot live.  Two other baggage and express men were injured as well as an engineer and a fireman.  Reports which reached this city, but which have not yet received official confirmation, said that several passengers were injured, but an official report from Roanoke states that but one passenger, a woman, was injured.
    The mail cars and express cars were badly smashed and the reports which reached this city stated that the one passenger car which entered the tunnel was also badly broken.  This car is supposed to have been a combination car which is used as a jim crow car when it reaches this city.  If this is true, it is likely that it was used as a smoker and was probably crowded with passengers en route to Williamson.
    The wreck tied up the entire western end of the Pocahontas division, although it occurred on the Sciota division.  The wreckage was so badly packed in the narrow tunnel that it was impossible to get the engines and the head cars out, but about 11 o'clock six coaches--two Pullmans, a dining car and three day coaches--were pulled back from the wreck, after three of the cars had been placed on the track, and were taken to Kenova, from which point they will run this morning as train No. 4.  At midnight the possibility of getting even a part of the train through was entirely abandoned and the annulling of the train was the only course left.
    A fire at Matewan destroyed nearly all of the commercial telegraph wires with the result that it was impossible to get any information from Williamson by either telephone or telegraph.  On this account the only information at hand is that which the officials are willing to give out.  If rumors were to be believed the city was filled with them last night.  Some reports which seemed to come from reliable sources stated that several people had been injured, while one report, which failed entirely of verification from any source, stated that the wreckage had caught fire.  The railroad officials state most positively that the wreckage did not catch fire [The remainder of the sentence was too indistinct on the microfilm to transcribe.]
    The train which was wrecked was running as second No. 16, due to the fact that a first section was made up at Williamson to take care of the local business the regular section would ordinarily carry.  This first section was itself held out by a wreck at Panther which stalled all the eastern and western movements.  No one was killed in this wreck which also occurred in a tunnel.
    The most serious wreck in the history of the Norfolk and Western occurred nearly twenty years ago at Thaxton, when a passenger train ran through a bridge killing a number of people, said last night to have been seventeen*.  The wreck next in importance occurred at ?? [Name was too indistinct on the microfilm to transcribe.] in 1893, when a freight train loaded with coke ran into the rear of what was then train No. 7, but which now runs as No. 4.  The passenger train was en route to the west and had large number of people on board for the World's Fair at Chicago.  Six were killed, all of whom were in the rear Pullman.  Among those who lost their lives were two professors from Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg.  What is considered the next most serious wreck occurred at Narrows several years ago.
    There have been a number of minor accidents and wrecks on the road, but the loss of life in these cases has been small when compared with these mentioned.
    The Norfolk and Western has had a most notable record as a passenger carrying road and on account of the excellent record not long ago the president of the system was asked by a prominent trade journal printed in Baltimore to write an article [The remainder of the paragraph was too indistinct on the microfilm to transcribe, but the gist was that the number of people killed in passenger train wrecks on the N&W was much smaller than on most other railroads.]
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*About 1:25 a.m., July 2, 1889, N&W passenger train No. 2 was wrecked at Newman's Fill about one-half mile west of Thaxton station when the fill over a culvert gave way under the weight of the train because water from a "cloud burst" exceeded the capacity of the culvert, was dammed up and washed away part of the fill.  Seventeen people were killed and twenty-one injured, many some minutes after the initial wreck when the sleeper, Beverly, fell off the fill onto the preciously wrecked cars below.  --Fourteenth Annual Report of The Railroad Commissioner of the State of Virginia, 1890--available online.

Gordon Hamilton
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