Shoemakersville, PA Train Wreck, Sept 1890

SCORES KILLED.

A Frightful Disaster on the Reading Road.

A Crowded Express Train Thrown Into the Schuylkill River.

Shoemakersville, a station on the Reading Railroad, fifteen miles north of Reading, Penn., was the scene of a terrible wreck soon after 6 o'clock on a recent night. Advices received on the day after the accident report that thirty are known to have been injured, and from forty to fifty killed. Those killed were nearly all railroad hands.

The train was what is known as the Pottsville express, leaving Reading at 5:43 P.M. The train was fifteen minutes late and it had on board a large number of people who had attended the Berks County Fair, in Reading, during the day, and firemen from the coal regions, who had been in attendance at the State Firemen's Convention in Chester during the past few days. The train only stops at the most important stations along the route, and generally runs at the rate of forty miles an hour.

As the train was late, the engineer, it is supposed, put on a good head of speed, and it was flying along the rails at a lively rate. At the point where the accident occurred a freight train had just run into a coal train, throwing several coal cars over on the track on which the passenger train was coming along.

The passenger came along on the track filled with the debris of broken coal cars and dashed into the mass of timbers and a small mountain of coal with fearful velocity. The engine gave a plunge and then dashed down the embankment to the dark and swift-flowing waters of the river twenty feet below, followed by the tender, the baggage car, the mail car, and three passenger cars, all well filled. Instantly cries arose from 100 stricken human beings. Everything was confusion and great excitement prevailed.

The news of the disaster traveled with lightning speed over the country roundabout, and the villagers and the farmers living in the surrounding neighborhood flocked to the scene, but they could give very little relief.

The night was coming and the lights on the train even went out, and the terror-stricken passengers, some of them imprisoned in the cars, fought desperately to get out. Some of the cars were broken, and the passengers who were not too badly injured managed to make their way to shore and grope about for some relief.

Up to ten o'clock at night six bodies had been taken out.

Near midnight, the body of Mail Agent GREENALK was rescued as it was floating down the river. He had been crushed to death in the mail car at his post of duty.

It is a singular fact that so many of the train hands should have met their death in the wreck. They had no chance to jump, and went down to their death almost unconscious as to their impending fate. The crash and rush down the embankment, were all the work of an instant when all was darkness and death. Toward midnight an Italian was detected in the act of robbing the dead and injured, and he was promptly arrested.

Physicians and surgeons and a force of 300 workmen were taken to the spot, and with the aid of a traveling electric light plant, the work of clearing away the wreck was at once proceeded with.
Work was slow and the dead and dying were taken out with great difficulty.
At 2 o'clock next morning fifteen bodies had been taken out. The number of injured is estimated to be thirty.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1890-09-26
__________________

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