When many more trains were running regularly on more tracks, train wrecks were quite common.
They were caused by snow, landslides, broken rails, items on the track and human error. Derailments and accidents pepper the pages of Blue Earth County’s history.
• The first recorded train wreck in the area was April 18, 1875. A St. Paul and Sioux City locomotive derailed at Bradley’s Ravine, 5 miles north of Mankato.
Vandalism was suspected, as the engine had hit some cord wood lying on the tracks. The train came off the rails but continued to move along on the track’s ties. When the train struck the trestle, the ravine’s bridge collapsed. The locomotive’s slide 25 feet into the ravine broke coupling between train cars. Fifty-three head of livestock were killed.
The conductor and brakeman managed to brake the end of the train. The last two cars were occupied by 40 members of Si Pluckett’s Theatrical Troupe as well as its stage scenery. The only injury was the brakeman’s dislocated thumb.
It took a week to clear the tracks.
• In September 1899, a derailment happened at the Union Depot when the afternoon passenger train on the Omaha Line and the Chicago and Northwestern stub train (a train used for short trips) were both stopped on the same track. A runaway caboose and 12 cars that had been stopped on a slope north of the depot crashed into the two trains. They were hit first by the caboose that was first pushed sideways on the track, then cut in two by the force. The Northwestern train was pushed back into the Omaha train, resulting in the “telescoping” of one engine and a baggage car to becoming kindling, according to a news report.
There were no serious injuries; however, passengers were shaken up and bruised. People standing on the platform had run for safety.
• The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Line’s road was damaged in a derailment in December 1909 near the Maple River Bridge about a half mile east of Good Thunder. A break in the rails had caused the cars to roll down a 12-foot embankment. The train was running late, having been held up at Wells; it may have been speeding.
Of the people aboard, 42 were injured. Some had suffered cuts and broken bones from being thrown into a heap as the cars tipped. Several passengers were thrown out windows. One passenger, Mrs. Erick Coleman, was pinned under her seat and could only be freed with the use of an ax. Most of the injured were riding in the smoking car.
Brakeman Frank McNeal was declared a hero for walking to Good Thunder to get help in spite of a gash on his head and a broken arm.
• A gruesome accident occurred on the edge of Eagle Lake in July 1924. An eastbound Northwestern Road train hit an Oldsmobile car stopped on the track. The John Arnold family, from Diamond Bluff, Wisconsin, was on its way to visit relatives in Iowa.
Eight family members were killed; a ninth was badly injured but survived.
The report in The Free Press described a grim scene at the noon-hour accident. The driver should have been able to see the approaching train because the view was unobstructed but may have simply panicked when he realized he was too close.
• A 10-car mail-and-passenger train and a 75-car freight train crashed head-on early on June 14, 1951, between Mankato and Lake Crystal. The northbound passenger train had left Lake Crystal at approximately the same time the southbound freight train had left Mankato.
A telegram had been sent to Lake Crystal instructing the northbound train to pull over to the side at Cray; however, the message didn’t get delivered to the engineer.
When the yardmaster in Mankato realized the order hadn’t gone through, he jumped into his car and drove hell-bent, hoping to stop the train at the Minneopa State Park crossing. When he arrived, the freight had just passed. He watched the red lights of the caboose until they disappeared at 3:36 a.m. Shortly after that, the two trains met head-on.
The engineer of the freight train died. The engineer of the passenger train was seriously injured. The fireman suffered head injuries when he jumped from the cab.
Three engines were demolished in the crash because the freight train was hauling a second engine. Eight box cars and one oil tank car on the freight train were derailed as were two baggage cars and a mail car on the passenger train. Forty sheep died in the wreck.
Some residents may remember the following wrecks: a 1926 derailment of a tank car filled with gasoline near Minneopa State Park; a car-train crash near Janesville in 1956 that killed the car’s driver and derailed 13 cars; the derailment of a Mankato-to-Wells freight train in 1965 a mile north of the Red Jacket Bridge; and a 10-car derailment between Mankato and Eagle Lake in 1990.
Derailments continue to occur occasionally; but it appears there are been no fatal accidents for over a decade.
(For more information about historical topics, visit BECHS in person at 424 Warren Street; call 345-5566; or go online at: BlueEarthCountyHistory.com).