Over Score Of People Killed And Fifty Hurt.
Circus Trains Collide at Durand, Mich., and Men and Animals Perish-Wallace Brothers Show in Terrible Accident-Air Breaks Fail.
Twenty-two persons were killed and about fifty injured in a wreck on the Grand Trunk road a mile from Durand, Mich., Friday. One section of Wallace Brothers circus train crashed into the other. The dead were men connected with the show and employes of the Grand Trunk Railroad, on which the terrible wreck occurred. Failure of the air brakes on the rear train to work caused the collision.
The scene in the Grand Trunk yards after the collision was appalling. The wreckage of the engine and four cars was strewn about and piled high, while the shrieks of the injured victims and the bellowing of the frightened animals could be heard above the hiss of escaping steam and the excited shouts of the rescuers. It was some hours before all the injured were rescued from the wrecked cars. Some of them were in terrible agony. Some of the bodies were crushed and mangled so that identification was difficult.
It is customary to send a number of special men with circuses and that accounts for the presence of the road officers who were killed.
Air Brakes Cause Crash.
One elephant, two camels and a $1,000 bloodhound were killed in their cages and many of the other animals were injured.
The cause of the collision was the air brake on the second train getting out of order and failing to work when the engineer saw the red light of the first train which had come to a standstill.
The Wallace circus travels on two trains. In each train there are about thirty-five cars. The circus Thursday exhibited at Charlotte. Friday it was to have given an exhibition at Lapeer. The route the circus was traveling was the Grand Trunk line.
The two trains left Charlotte about midnight, or perhaps a little later. According to the rules of the railroad the second train kept an hour behind the first train. When the first train reached the Durand yards, half a mile from the depot, it stopped. As the rules require a red lantern was promptly hung on the rear end of the last car.
When the second train came along, in half an hour, the first train was still on the main track in the yard. The red danger signal of the last car was burning clearly. The engineer on the second section admits that he saw the red light in time to have stopped his before it reached the first train if the air brakes had worked all right. But the air brakes refused to respond.
The engineer could do nothing to check his train and it crashed without any check into the first train, and seven cars -rear cars of the first train and forward cars of the second train, in which many people were sleeping-were totally wrecked.
The scene after the first crash was terrible. Nearly every one in the train was asleep and the cries of the wounded and dying as they awoke from their sleep were horrifying. In the cars just ahead were the animals and their keepers. Some of the cars were partially demolished, setting loose the animals.
People killed in the passenger coach consisted mainly of the show drivers and a few performers. They were all men.
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