A regular feature looking back at what was being printed around 100 years ago in the Bristol Daily Courier. This week’s entry comes from the August 5, 1921 edition of the newspaper.
Washington Express Plows Into Freight; Cattle Killed, Cars Wrecked
Train No. 140, known as the Washington Express, eastbound on the Pennsylvania Railroad, ran into a fast cattle train at a crossover on the New York just west of Morrisville station, early this morning.
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The passenger express was mainly composed of sleeping cars. No human beings were killed or injured, but about 100 head of cattle in the freight train were slain In the collision, five cars of the cattle train were wrecked.
Morrisville was overrun with cattle and resembled a western town in the cattle country, which has been invaded by stampeded herds. This was due to the railroad men liberating the the could after the collision, in order to quell panic among them and prevent their injuring themselves in the freight cars, some of which were derailed and some of which remained on the tracks. The railroad men and townspeople were until this afternoon in corralling the cattle and getting thorn back into cars. A number of the animals had to be shot, having been injured in the collision. Nearly every barn in Morrisville quartered some of the cattle today.
The occupants of the passenger train were considerably shaken up and some suffered slight injuries, such as bruises.
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Traffic on the New York Division was partly tied up for several hours. The railroad wrecking crews, with their usual celerity, attacked the wreckage within an hour after the accident, and, by late this morning, had traffic open and the wreckage pretty well cleared away.
The accident occurred at the Morrisville tower, just west of the passenger station at four A. M.
The cattle train was crossing over from track No. 2 to track No. 1. where it was to run through on express time. The passenger train hit it at the crossover and the engine of Train No. 140 was derailed but not overturned. The occupants of the berths were considerably shaken up by impact and several were knocked from their berths. The first two sleepers were derailed, but the rest of the train kept the tracks. The weight of the sleeping cars is accountable for the fact that but two of the passenger cars were derailed. One carload of horses was on the train but none of these animals were killed.
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The wreckage of the cattle train was scattered over the two tracks and all traffic for several hours handled over on tracks 3 and 4 with the westbound trains leaving Bristol were combined, running on schedule and making the stops of both trains. There was comparatively little wreckage on the other tracks. The cattle cars were eplit up like kindling wood. Sleeping cars of the passenger train were scraped and torn along their sides, but only a few windows were broken.
An advertisement from the August 5, 1921 edition of the Bristol Daily Courier:
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