I posted this one on a different OGR thread last year. It is still my favorite bizarre train accident.
A dispatch from St. Louis. October 25, 1884, says: "One of the funniest accidents that ever happened occurred to a special train of the Missouri Pacific road last night. The special runs only on Fridays to give residents of the Kirkwood area and nearby stations an opportunity to visit the theaters and other attractions in the city. Last evening the special left Union Depot at 11:30 with a very good load of passengers. The train had just reached its regular gait when the passengers were suddenly thrown forward with great force. Visions of a disastrous collision flashed through everyone's mind. When none came the most active members of the passengers got off the train. When they cast their eyes around they thought they had encountered a cyclone. The remains of a two-story frame house was strewn about the track and over the forward cars. A number of people in very abbreviated garments and scared-to-death expressions of countenance stood around shivering in the cold while a flagman called out lustily for his red lantern. After some confusion it was learned that an enterprising house-mover had undertaken to change the location of a house during the hours of night in which he calculated there would be no travel. He had taken the precaution of carefully studying the time card to make sure that no regular train would be along. As an added precaution he bribed the flagman with a bottle of "Robinson Country" to go down the track about 100 yards and flag any train that might appear.
With everything ready the house mover began his work. So sure was he of the success of his planned efforts that he permitted the owners of the house, their two children, a servant, and six boarders, to go to bed unwarned. Before getting the mansion on the track where a locomotive could strike it amidships, the mover, whose name is John Lloyd, found a little difficulty in the matter of telegraph wires which he promptly cut. Then he got the house on the track. The watchman, in the meantime, had gone down the track and become so intimate with the contents of the bottle, that he couldn't tell a locomotive from a Congressman, and then the Kirkwood train came along."
