Union, MO Train Plunges Through Bridge, Feb 1910

75-FOOT PLUNGE THROUGH BRIDGE.

CONDUCTOR KILLED IN A ROCK ISLAND WRECK.

HAPPENED NEAR ST. LOUIS WHEN HIGH TRESTLE GAVE WAY -- TWENTY-SEVEN INJURED.

St. Louis, Feb. 10. -- Conductor JAMES D. REACH of St. Louis was killed and eleven persons injured when the Rock Island train No. 28 from Kansas City, due here at 7:35 o'clock this morning, was derailed near Union, Mo., sixty miles west of St. Louis.
The tender jumped the track on a trestle just outside of Union. The engine pulled the tender across in safety, but the baggage, mail, smoking and chair cars went over into the ravine beneath. A relief train was sent out from here. One of the injured, the baggageman, is in a critical condition.
The trestle is seventy-five feet high and the cars which went to the bottom of the ravine were reduced to debris except the steel day coach. Twenty-seven passengers in the day coach were bruised and scratched.
Conductor REACH was crushed to death by a safe when the baggage car turned over in its drop. The four Pullman cars, one of which was partly pulled from the rails before the coupler attaching it to the day coach broke, remained on the bridge.

Chillicothe Constitution Missouri 1910-02-10
__________________

Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!