Morgantown, IN Train Wreck, Aug 1988

DOWN AN EMBANKMENT.

A Fatal Accident on an Indiana Railway.

A passenger train on the Fairland and Franklin railroad met with a frightful accident near Morgantown, Ind. The mail and baggage cars and passenger coach were thrown down a steep embankment, and twenty-one persons were injured, ten of them fatally.

The train was running at its usual rate of speed when the accident occurred. The locomotive had passed a broken rail, but the engineer did not notice it. When the baggage car struck the defect it jumped from the track dragging after it the mail car and one passenger coach. The three cars were plunged down an embankment of fifty-four feet.

The passengers were hurled violently out of their seats. The car furniture was wrenched from its fastenings and thrown about, striking several of the passengers and pinning them to the floor of the car. The coach turned over three or four times in its descent. Not a passenger in the car escaped injury.

There were no facilities for caring for the wounded, as the accident occurred in a sparsely settled location where telegraphic and other facilities are very meager.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1988-08-17
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!