N&W in 1907 -- Accident

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
October 18, 1907

EXPRESS MESSENGER LOSES LIFE IN WRECK
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Bluefield People on Ill-Fated No. 3 Sunday Experienced Only a Slight Shaking Up
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SAME TRAIN HAD NARROW ESCAPE LAST NIGHT
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    Roanoke, Va., Oct. 14.--One of the most unusual, as well as one of the most disastrous wrecks sustained by the Norfolk and Western railway, happened about 4 o-clock Sunday [Oct. 13] afternoon when the fast passenger train No. 3, coming to Roanoke, was sideswiped by an eastbound coal train about one-half mile west of Montvale, in Bedford county.
    The dead:
    K. P. UMBARGER, expressman of Wytheville. [the list of injured is omitted here]
    The passenger train was coming to Roanoke running as a good rate of speed, and just as it was passing an eastbound coal train, the flange on one of the wheels of the coal train broke and the car jumped the track, striking the passenger train about the center of the express car.
    The express car, baggage car and one of the coaches were thrown from the track and fifteen of the coal cars were piled up in a mass.  The accident happened on a curve, and in a cut, and made the wreck look very bad.
    The injured were brought to Roanoke last night.  Mrs. Zeigler, who was the most seriously hurt, was taken to Hotel Roanoke, where she is resting easily.
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    Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Blackstock and children, of Giles street, Bluefield, were among the passengers on the ill-fated train, but being in the Pullman experienced only a very slight shaking up--in fact, they were so little disturbed that they thought it was nothing more than a very rough place of road bed and did not know for some minutes that a wreck had occurred.
    The same train had a narrow escape from being wrecked last night.  At Willowton, some sixteen or eighteen miles east of this city, the pony trucks of the engine left the track and the train ran twenty-nine car lengths with the front wheels of the engine bumping over the cross ties.
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Gordon Hamilton
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