Head On Collision at Glade Spring, September 1, 1899

[NW Mailing List]

Abe

Wrecked head end collision Extra 297 Class G Roanoke built and 281 Class 
G Baldwin Built, with Train 86 and Class G Roanoke built Engine 310 at 
Glade Spring, VA on Sept. 1, 1899.

Guess 281 did not make it in the photo.

Jim Blackstock

On 4/1/2019 10:20 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:
>
> Immediate gratification  --  the spirit of I want it and I want it NOW 
> --  has been the prevailing Zeitgeist since the tumultuous days of the 
> 1960s.
>
>
> But sometimes gratification is delayed for a significant time, as in 
> the instant case.
>
>
> That afternoon in 1964, now 55 years ago, when I first walked into the 
> telegraph office at the Glade Spring depot, a framed photograph on the 
> wall caught my eye.  It was a truly awful photograph, having obviously 
> been photo-reproduced several time, and being degraded with each 
> reproduction.  It was blurred, the extreme contrast blew out any 
> details in the highlights, and details in the shadows were swallowed 
> up by the blacks.  The frame was probably the cheapest frame ever 
> made, the glass was grimy, and the whole thing, uncared for, hung 
> crookedly on the wall.
>
>
> But the photograph depicted a head-on collision, at some undetermined 
> date in the primeval past, right in front of the Glade Spring's Grand 
> Union Terminal Depot.  None of the railroaders workers, of course knew 
> a thing about the collision, or even cared.
>
>
> And so it was that I used my 35mm camera to take a picture of the 
> framed photograph on the wall.
>
>
> The miracle of Photoshop now reveals the date lettered onto the 
> photograph to be Sept. 1, 1899.
>
>
> And the miracle of ;the Newspapers.com digital archive now provides us 
> a brief, single-paragraph article from the Baltimore Sun on the 
> following day, September 2, 1899.
>
>
> The cause of the collision?  The regular train, No. 86, "got beyond 
> the control of its crew." Which sounds like a generic explanation for 
> 90 percent of the railroad wrecks which have ever happened.
>
>
> So as my good deed for the day, I am attaching both the photograph and 
> the newspaper article.  And for those of you who never saw good old 
> Glade Spring depot, a photo of that is attached, as well.
>
>
> We shall leave it to the Estimable Mr. Jim Blackstock to come up with 
> the engine numbers.  He has a good crystal ball...
>
>
>        -- abram burnett
>
> overseer of the turnip patch
>
>
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