Unscheduled Stop

The night was dark but rainless; signal lights showed all clear. The exhausts of two locomotives pulling the Pennsylvania Railroad's Golden Triangle blended in a syncopated roll as the Pittsburgh-Chicago flyer raced west across the Ohio farmlands. But up the line at Coulter, a hamlet far beyond the trembling glare of the Triangle's headlight, the stage was being set for tragedy.

An eastbound freight train had stopped on the main line with a broken air hose. Another freight, pounding east behind it, had crashed into its motionless bulk, knocked a locomotive and seven heavy-laden cars across the westbound tracks. Out of the night the Triangle raced at 70 miles an hour. Brief, bright showers of sparks gritted from desperately locked brakes. Then the Triangle hit the wreckage. Both its locomotives and three of its cars tumbled off the rails. A geyser of live steam shot up. Glass crashed, metal shrieked and groaned on metal. In the stillness which followed, the train's 270 passengers, 150 of them young, newly drafted soldiers, wailed and called; many were crushed between the crashing cars. Nineteen died, 50 were injured.

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