The McDonough County Voice
  • A look back at once-dangerous railroads

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  • When driving along Illinois interstate highways, you are apt to notice the electronic billboards that warn you to drive carefully by giving an update on state traffic deaths for the year. That figure is now approaching 1,000 for 2013. But no one warns us about the danger of railroads any more, and indeed, with electronic gates and lights, frequent track inspections, and other factors, they are safe. But to look back at the history of railroads in our area is to encounter an astounding amount of human carnage—and remarkable insights into earlier culture.
    When the Northern Cross (later C. B. & Q.) Railroad came through Macomb in 1855, it was proclaimed “one of the safest and pleasantest routes of travel in the state”—by those investors anxious to promote it. But all railroads were then dangerous.
    For one thing, horses were near the tracks in every town, and locomotives often startled them, causing runaways. In an article titled “Another Runaway,” for example, the January 1, 1864, “Macomb Journal” described how the livery team of P.C. Schanck suddenly bolted at the depot, “when the train arrived with its flaming light—and the rattling and clanking of the engine and wheels.” Because it had snowed, the horses were pulling a sleigh, and soon they “became detached from the sleigh, and dragged Schanck’s son out upon the ground.” Fortunately, he let go of the reins, but one horse “dashed upon the railroad tracks” and was killed by the train.
    Cows often wandered from unfenced yards, and they were even more likely to be killed. As another 1864 “Journal” article reported, “Scarcely a week passes without one or more cows being killed in this city by railroad cars.” The newspaper editor, T. S. Clarke, blamed careless engineers, “who frequently pass through the city without whistling or ringing.”
    Of course, people were frequently killed as well. One problem was the practice of men and boys grabbing onto boxcar ladders or the low sides of open freight cars as trains passed by, just to get a ride across town—sometimes with tragic results. An 1869 “Journal” article says, “A fatal accident occurred at Bushnell, on Saturday last, when a young lad named Eugene Keeling, aged about 14 years, while attempting to take a ride on the cars, as boys often do, fell and was killed. Here is another warning to those who are in the habit of climbing on and off the cars while they are in motion.”
    That probably happened more than a dozen times in McDonough County during the 19th century. In an 1893 case, “William Way, aged about 28 years and single . . . attempted to get aboard a moving train at Colchester about 5 p.m. Thursday last, but failed, was caught under the wheels, and had his head almost completely severed from his body.” He had been drinking in one of the Colchester bars.
    Page 2 of 3 - Because the number of trains increased during the century, on both the C.B. & Q. line and the T.P. & W. line, so did the carnage. In the 1890s, for example, there were railroad wrecks, due to various problems, not only in Macomb, but in Bushnell, Colmar, Marietta, Sciota, and other places. The Bushnell wreck of mid-June, 1893, for example, actually involved two freight trains that crashed head-on, “completely wrecking both engines, both tenders, and some fifteen freight cars.” A boy who had been stealing a ride on one of those trains was killed. Some wrecks, of course, involved passenger trains—like the 1897 one at Sciota which injured many people.
    Trains sometimes crashed into horse-drawn wagons, and individuals were occasionally run over as well. In an 1891 case, a man driving a wagon in Macomb was hit where the tracks crossed West Jackson Street. Severely injured, he sued the C. B. & Q. for $2,000 (the price of a nice house back then) and won the case. The lack of signals at crossings and the failure of engineers to sound a whistle contributed to many such accidents and legal cases.
    In fact, after an 1894 Bushnell train accident, which killed an elderly woman, the engineer was actually arrested and charged with murder. The case was soon dropped, but the very filing of the charge revealed that some local people, by then, “had grudges against the railroad” and wanted to hold the company legally responsible for deaths and injuries. In a sense, that case divided the people of Bushnell, which was very much a railroad town.
    One ongoing problem was that people often walked from place to place, or even town to town, along the railroad tracks, which provided a level, clear pathway. Hence, an 1893 “Journal” article about the death of Charles VonRospach, an elderly Macomb man, is titled, “The Deadly Locomotive: Man Killed While Taking His Morning Walk on the Railroad Track.” He apparently had some kind of physical problem that kept him from hearing the train behind him.
    Similar local deaths occurred in 1894 and 1895—and in later years. It wasn’t until 1929, however, that the C.B. & Q. initiated a “campaign” to inform the public that “railroad property is a dangerous place to walk.” While that helped, walkers on the tracks still died now and again.
    The coming of automobiles brought yet another kind of death by train. Perhaps the earliest accident of that sort was in 1918, near Bardolph, when a wealthy stock-buyer named Robert Hamilton was killed in his new Dodge sedan at the T.P. & W. crossing. The collision “hurled his car about 190 feet from the crossing,” as the newspaper said. With the coming of electric lines, of course, gates and lights were installed, making such crossings far safer.
    Page 3 of 3 - Because death by train was so common, and readily available, some people also chose to commit suicide that way. One well-documented case occurred in 1905, when an uncommonly bright, 24-year-old man with mental problems, Alfred Holmes, the son of noted local builder Willis Holmes, died at the North Madison Street crossing. Various eyewitnesses saw him deliberately step in front of the train wheels, which cut off one arm, one leg, and his head. The newspaper account of it all was graphic and extensive. Of course, such suicides, while infrequent, continued well into the 20th century.
    In our era, marked by long-standing railroad safety regulations, it is hard to imagine that trains were once a significant cause of death and injury, but they were. And as the many detailed Macomb newspaper accounts show, in our small-town and rural world, which had little violence, stories of railroad crashes and grisly deaths by train were often fascinating to the public. Some long-time residents could recall more than a dozen of them—a tragic aspect of local experience.
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