"Oh! How Much of Sorrow!"

Grand Excursion, Wednesday, August 10th, Peoria, Ill. to NIAGARA FALLS and return for only $10.00 for the round trip. Come and be with us on this wonderful excursion trip.

Thus read placards posted in stations of the Toledo, Peoria & Western R. R. 50 years ago last week. Some 750 people from Peoria and nearby towns made reservations. A train dispatcher took along his bride. A superintendent of the T. P. & W. attached his private car, invited a party of friends. Sixteen coaches hauled by two locomotives were necessary to accommodate the crowd. Setting gaily forth, the train presently reached tiny Chatsworth. Ill., took on six more passengers, chugged out of the station at 11:35 p. m. Some two miles outside the town it approached a small wooden culvert over a 10-ft. ditch. As the train rounded a knoll just before the bridge, Engineer David Southerland in the first engine suddenly screamed in horror to Fireman Rodgers: "My God! The bridge is burned! Jump for your life!"

The fireman promptly jumped, escaped with minor bruises. Engineer Southerland. seeing he could not stop in time, signaled frantically to Engineer McClintock in the second locomotive, then pulled his throttle wide open, tore loose from his train and hurtled onto the culvert. The engine carried across the bridge even as it crumpled, safely reached solid tracks beyond. But the second locomotive and the whole train behind piled up in the ditch. Eleven of the wooden cars telescoped or were splintered to matchwood. There was no fire, but when rescuers from Chatsworth reached the spot they found 81 dead, 372 injured --Illinois' worst railroad wreck.

No blame went to Engineer Southerland since his action was the best course to save the train. When an engine is torn loose, air brakes lock on the other cars, which can be stopped quicker with the engine's weight and momentum detached. Engineer Southerland kept his job until his death two years ago. About eight years ago the railroad was acquired by the Van Sweringen interests, taken out of receivership.

Last week, on the anniversary of the accident, tiny Chatsworth (pop. 1,100) held a memorial service in the Village Park. Seventy-nve-year-old Louis Joseph Haberkorn, one of the first to reach the scene, presided, introduced nine survivors. Service ended with singing of the ballad The Bridge Was Burned at Chatsworth, written shortly after the wreck by one T. P. Westendorf, whose initials are the same as the unlucky railroad's. Excerpt:

From City, Town and Hamlet--

They came, a happy throng--

To mew the great Niagara--

With joy they sped along--

CHORUS

But oh! how much of sorrow!

And oh! how much of pain--

Awaited those who journeyed

On that fated railway train. . . .

A mighty crash of timbers,

A sound of hissing steam--

The groans and cries of anguish--

A woman's stifled scream--

The dead and dying mingled

With broken beams and bars;

An awful human carnage,

A dreadful wreck of cars. . . .

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