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The baggage, ear was about 14 inches narrower than the passenger coach, and a little higher on the trucks, and the force of the concussion drove it like the smaller scctiou of a spy-glass, into and through the passenger coach immediately behind. The baggage car remained intact, and narrower, as we have said, came crushing through the coach, sweeping off the top hut leaving the sides of the car unbroken. Like a monster battering ram it swept everything before it, and scarce a single passenger in the forward part cscajjed instantaneous death.As it entered the coach it jumped the forward trucks upon which it rested, and the end dropping about twelve inches, for want of support, gave the baggage car an angle of about thirty degrees.— And to this simple fact the escaped pas-seugera of the ill-fated coach owe their lives. Had the baggage car gone thro’ on the same line upon which it entered, not a soul could have escaped. Thus it was that the forward passengers were instautly crushed to death. A little further, and the elevation of the death-dealing car brought in line with the tops of the scats, and here it was that heads were crushed like egg shells. A little further, and those only who were standing were struck down, while but a step beyond, passengers escaped without a scratch save from the splinters of the wreck.AN APPALLING SIGHT.Language has no power to depict the scene. Within the cdVnpass of a few feet inside that fatal car was compressed the bruised and bleeding bodies of the dead, the maimed and the dyiug. The red velvet cushions had a deeper dye from the life blood of the victims, and the removal of the bodies, living and dead, from the debris of the car was full of horror.A number of the dead were so tightly wedged between the bottom of the baggage car and the passenger coach that the baggage car had to be raised by jack-screws before they could he taken out. The car drippedjwith blood like a slaughter pen.NO LADIES INJURED.
Newspaper Details
La Porte Weekly Union
La Porte, Indiana, US
Wed, Nov 09, 1864
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 27 Sep 2022
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