Gibson, NY Train Wreck, Jul 1912

41 DEAD, 50 HURT AS EXPRESS HITS EXCURSION TRAIN.

At 65-Mile Speed Lackawanna Flier Crashers Into Crowded Cars Near Corning, N. Y.

ENGINEER IGNORES SIGNALS

Two Day Coaches Split in Two and a Pullman Crumpled Up by the Onrushing Locomotive.

VICTIMS KILLED IN SLEEP

A Few Passengers Who Rise to Learn Cause of Delay Witnesses of Tragedy.

SWIFTLY RUSH TO SUCCOR.

Injured Are Hurried to Corning Hospitals While Dead Are Laid Out for Identification.

MANY VICTIMS FROM HERE

Officials Blame Disaster on Express Engineer, Who, They Say, Ran By Warning Semaphore.

Special to The New York Times.

CORNING, N. Y., July 4.---Train No. 9, the regular train of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, which leaves Hoboken nightly at 9 o'clock and is due here at 4:47 o'clock the next morning, was halted near Gibson, a small town three miles east of here, shortly after 5 o'clock this morning. In front of it was a freight train, stalled on the steep incline to Gibson, by the pulling out of a drawhead. An engine from the passenger train-two had been put on to surmount the grade at Groveland with a heavy excursion crowd bound for Buffalo and Niagara Falls---was detached and was striving to push the heavy freight train ahead to a siding, when the rails began to sing with the hum of an approaching train.

Most of the passengers aboard No. 9 were asleep. Some few were dressed and out on the track watching the removal of the freight train. Through the heavy mist, which was crawling up the mountain from the Chemung River far below these few passengers presently saw a glaring headlight sweep around the curve a few hundred feet back of their train, a curve which ends a straight stretch of track ten or more miles, along which every train of the division flies at topmost speed. The watching passengers had scarce time to scramble down the bank beside the track. Then the locomotive of United States Express Train 11, with ten heavy express cars behind it, crashed into the rear of a day coach, which, with one other directly ahead of it, formed the end of No. 9. Ahead of these were three Pullmans, a baggage car, and the engine and tender.

As if they had been made of cardboard, the day coaches parted down the middle, half of each toppling over on either side of the track, and the monster engine, 100 tons of steel, which an instant before had been moving at sixty-five miles an hour, cut into the rear steel Pullman, crumpled it up as if it had been a tin can and came to a halt in the midst of this wreckage.

In the debris lay forty-one persons instantly killed or so injured that they died soon afterward. Between fifty and sixty others were pinned injured in the wreckage. The lists of the dead and injured in this worst disaster in years on the Lackawanna, which had previously had only two persons killed by train accidents since 1900, are as follows:

THE IDENTIFIED DEAD.

ARMSTRONG, Mr. and Mrs. WILLIAM M., 1,020 Park Avenue, Hoboken, N. J.

BRANDES, CHARLES, 12 Folsom Street, Brooklyn.

DYAK, HERMAN, Newark, N. J.

ERWIN, Mrs. C. E., Chicago, Ill.

FREEDMAN, SARAH, New York.

HESS, Mrs. EDITH A., Scranton, Penn.

IVEY, Dr. E. V., OF Bellevue Hospital, New York; home in Suffolk, Va.

JONES, Mrs. ANNA HILL, Scranton, Penn.

LAIRD, GEORGE, 188 Tenth Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

LAIRD, PHILLIP, 2 years old, of Brooklyn.

LAIRD, MABEL, 5 years old, of Brooklyn.

LOWERY, EVELYN, colored, 104 Oak Street, Newark, N. J.

NELSON, ANTON, Grove Street, Jersey City, N. J.

NOVAK, ANTONIO, Scranton, Penn.

PATOUSKI, M., immigrant, ticketed to Buffalo.

PRATT, F. C., 16 Hunt Avenue, Buffalo, traveling salesman.

PRAVELOWSKI, REGINA P., Russia.

REYNOLDS, Mrs. LILLIAN, 211 Spencer Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

SCHULTZ, ERNEST, Buffalo.

SETTEDUCATI, Mrs. LUCY, 123 Baxter Street, New York City.

SMITH, JAMES, colored Pullman porter, Newark, N. J.

ZIMMER, Mr. and Mrs. JOHN, Scranton, Penn.

THE UNIDENTIFIED DEAD.

WOMAN, with gold pendant on chain, amethyst setting and three pearl pendants.

LARGE NEGRESS, about 45 years of age, wearing blouse dress, earrings and ring on one hand.

GIRL, about 3 years, white dress.

MAN of about 35 or 40 years, black hair, striped suit, and diamond stick pin.

WOMAN, blue dress and band ring.

WOMAN, aged 30, wearing diamond ring, gold.

The New York Times, New York, NY 5 Jul 1912
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Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!