Illinois Central RR,,,,,,,Vaughn, MS. Pretty famous "event". Surprised that nobody commented earlier.
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Casey Jones?
Casey Jones died on this date, 1900 with one hand on the brake and one hand on the whistle.
I stopped by Vaughan back in August of 2014. The "town" is gone except for a few houses. The accident would have happened about the area that the rails disappear in the middle of the picture. A local resident told us there used to be a cast iron marker sign, but someone stole it. The iron pipe post was still there... don't know if the sign has been replaced since then.
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Coincidentally I had a Casey Jones pale ale at a local brewery today. It's situated on a former rail line - now popular hiker/biker trail - Washington & Old Dominion.
Nice Ten-Wheeler, Firewood !
Sim Webb, Casey Jones' Black fireman (that was the era when a Black man could fire, but not run a locomotive) lived another 57 years. Casey told him to jump, while he vainly tried to stop his train.
Windup Guy - Interesting photo of a completely unremarkable bit of quiet, unused railroad track. Reminds one that any patch of land could have been the site of a horrific incident, now lost in the flow of time. It has been said that every square foot of Europe is blood soaked.
mark s posted:Nice Ten-Wheeler, Firewood !
A lot better looking and more functional than my Rivarossi shelf queen!
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It has been said that every square foot of Europe is blood soaked.
I would say that's true: feuds upon feuds. This stretch of track should almost be a national monument area.
Hero or Rule breaker? Did he run the flagman? or was there a flagman? There's a term called " being dead right"
I wonder what really happened.
IMO, back in those days Casey Jones was a "can do" guy. A real hero that worked his best: giving his employer 110%.
Today he would be completely confounded by all the rules and regulations. He would probably have found work in a field much less constrained by rules and regulations.
Casey would probably say that attorneys and their law suits would soon bring all work to a complete halt.
It's "Vaughan." 
Trains printed a pretty good article about the Casey Jones wreck a while back, something tells me it was during the 1970's. Anyway, there was no physical evidence of torpedoes or burned-out fusees having been placed, and the only surviving witnesses to the wreck were the (white) rear end crew of the freight train, and Simeon Webb the black extra board Fireman with Casey Jones. In Mississippi. In 1900.
Fireman Webb said all the right things at the investigation. Many years later, after the likelihood of his being lynched was almost nonexistent, he recanted and stated that they had heard no torpedoes and seen no fusees at the required flagging distance.
However, Let's not polish Casey's halo too brightly. Casey Jones was no stranger to the discipline system He had been sent to the house on a couple of previous occasions, and had more than one notation on his permanent record for excessive speed. He may have been exceeding the authorized speed in weather that was reducing visibility approaching Vaughn. The freight crew headed in as required to clear the passenger train at Vaughan, but the siding was also occupied by another train and the combined length of the two exceeded the length of the siding. The two trains had sawed one passenger train by, and were in the process of sawing back in the opposite direction to saw Casey's train by, when one train experienced an air hose separation and everything came to a stop, with the rear end still out on the main track ahead of Casey Jones. The only solution would be to
- Flag the passenger train
- Restore the brake pipe on the disabled train so the brakes could be released and saw both freight trains so they were out on the main track at the other end of the siding and in the clear on the end where the passenger train was presently cooling its wheels.
- Pull the passenger train down and stop it on the main between siding switches.
- Saw the freights in the reverse direction to again foul the main behind the passenger train and clear the main ahead of it.
The rear end crew of the freight was unaware of the undesired emergency brake application on the other freight train, and it would be a realistic supposition that they believed they would soon move all the way into the siding and, despite their statements to the contrary, were actually not protecting as required, to the rear of their train. Although there were several contributing causes, there was only one root cause. But it's all a calculated guess. Three men actually knew and all three told the same story at the time. In Mississippi. In 1900. A reportable cause was developed, and was not disputed by the engine crew of the passenger train. The Engineer was dead, and, the Fireman was in no position to survive if his story contradicted that of the freight crew. Case officially closed.
After reading some of the related articles, I got to thinking: Could this have been averted had Casey not made up that big chunk of lost time? Also, I noticed that after the wreck all the injured men were compensated but none of the injured women. As others have noted, 1900 was a different time.
Tomlinson Run Railroad
