When help reached the site, the wreck looked unreal. Seven cars were thrown off the tracks—some half-buried in the dirt, others twisted into crooked piles. A cattle car had exploded into splinters. Thirty head of cattle lay dead or dying, their moans drifting across the fields. The Davenport Democrat and Leader said the pitiful sounds could be heard for blocks.
How
the three-man crew lived through it was a mystery.
Engine
No. 2529, run by engineer Thorpe, had been crushed into a tangle of iron. The
fireman crawled out first on his hands and knees, shaking and scraped raw but
alive. A witness said he looked like a man clawing his way out of the jaws of
something that meant to kill him.
The
third man had it worse. A heavy iron rod had shot across the cab and pinned him
down. Crew members fought their way through shattered glass and smoking metal
to reach him and hauled him free before things got worse.
And
things nearly did.
Both
trains caught fire. Flames worked their way up through broken timbers and
spilled grain, threatening to turn the entire wreck into a single roaring
blaze. The crew, battered as they were, got the fire under control.
No
one could say for sure why it happened. Investigators believed Thorpe may have
missed the signals on the track. His engine, moving at only 25 miles an hour,
drove straight into a stopped westbound train. The impact tore up thirty feet
of track, smashed cars into scrap, and flipped seven railcars like toys.
Even
with the crew accounted for, searchers picked through the wreckage for hours,
convinced someone else might still be buried under the twisted rails.
The
newspapers boiled it down to one line: “Three men miraculously escaped death.”
Looking at what was left of Engine 2529, it was hard to see it any other way.
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