Source: The Mining Journal
Marquette, Mi.
February 18, 1888 Saturday

A Terrible Ride

At 7330 Thursday evening that thrilling locomotive shriek
was heard which instantly told people in Marquette that there
was a runaway train coming down the grade from Bruce mine and
whose blood-curdling intonations brought men to their feet at
a bound as soon as they struck the ear. Nearer and nearer
came the long shrill shrieks, rising higher and higher in
pitch and louder and louder, until the very air seemed to
quiver in sympathy, and almost human agony seemed expressed
in the wild danger signal which a brave engineer and fireman,
facing almost cetain death themselves, were sending ahead to
warn men along the road and to clear the main line for the mad
rushing train. Quicker than it has taken to tell it the train
came thundering down through the yards into the city, the en-
gine still sounding that awful danger signal which will never
be forgotten by those who heard it then or last summer. Hun-
dreds were in the streats by the Front street yards when the
train came down past the Fourth street crossing like a whirl-
wind and with a blaze of flame, which made every car seem on
fire,pouring from under every wheel from the two-fold fric-
tion between the rails, the wheels and the tightly set brakes.
Men shuddered as they thought of the sharp curves by the rock
cut on the east side of Front street and realized that sure
distruction awaited the whole train there, while there seemed
no possible chance for stopping its mad career before cross-
ing that street. Like a meteor the train rushed across Third
street and was lost to sight behind the buildings. Then a
sudden silence came. There had been no crash, the train did
not cross Front:street. Each turned to his neighbor with an
expression of amazement on his face, then a wild rush for Su-
perior street began.

In two or three minutes the street was choked with excited
man. There at the depot just where each east bound passenger
train engines stop, stood the big mogul freight engine No. 32
as quietly as if obedient to the will of its fealess engineer,
James Ahearn, who stepped from the cab as calmly as if he had
not come down the grade for five miles with certain death star-
ing him in the face. Sitting quietly on the box at his side
of the cab was his young fireman, Frank Kelly. Each saic that
he never expected to be numbered among the living at that mo-
ment for each knew that if the yards were passed safely the
runaway train could never strike the curve by the approach to
No. 3 ore pier without going into the lake. Ahearn said that
he had expected to bring up there anyhow, but was amazed at .
finding his engine still on the track when the little curve by
Third street was passed. He felt over his engine, trying ev-
ery wheel and piece of mechanism as carefully as a man feels
of a favorite horse just stopped after a runaway. Borrowing
his lantern the Mining Journal representative passed back with
a trainman to see what was left of the train, and find what
had caused its almost miraculous stoppage. The three box cars

 
pe 2 A Terrible Ride - 2/18/1888

next to the engine were empty. The forward truck of one had
left the track and was turned across it. Then came the flat
cars, which were loaded with square timbers for the new ore
pier. Some of these were on the track, other had lost their
trucks and others were buried under the box cars of copper,
for this was the "copper train'' which passes through here every
evening, east bound. The wonderful stopping was soon discover-
ed. When the cars began to jump, the timber was buried in ev-
ery direction. Some of the huge sticks had become massed under
the trucks of one of the cars, and acting as a mighty brake,
had brought the engine and the few cars still on the track to
a standstill.

Clear up to Third street the cars were scattered. Timbers
had shot through the air in all directions. The whole end of
the railroad barn was crushed in by some; Jensen's place on
Spring street was badly damaged by others; some were buried
deep in the snow; while one could walk home from the depot to
Third street on the big sticks without touching the ground.
One box car stood squarely across the street by Kraemers's
and seemed to have been just checked in an attempt to demol-
ish his place. All the cars were badly damaged but the fi-
nancial loss is not heavy. The confusion shown in the wreck
from the depot to the Third street flagman's box was indes-
cribable.

Mr. Ahearn and his fireman stated that they had resolved to
stick to their engine come what might. They were powerless to
control the train but with rare courage they stuck to their
post of duty when death seemed certain and although the deep
snowmade a leap for life almost surely successful. Sharkey,
the head brakeman, and whose brother was killed on the Mack-
inaw division last summer, stuck to the train until it reach-
ed Fourth street, when he leaped in the dark, fortunately land-
ing in the huge snow drifts by the crossing. He was pale and
quivering with excitement when he got out and went home at
once, but uninjured. The conductor and other brakeman cut
loose the caboose when they realized the danger, and thus
saved themselves. The train got away from them at the five
mile post; Spring and Third streets were blockaded by the
wreck. The men who man engine No. 32 have no need to ever
vouch for their courage; there are no braver men in Mi., for
the terrors of that ride can never be pictured in words.

\BSS&A

Locomotives