| From the Richmond Dispatch |
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| April 11, 1864 |
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| Terrible Railroad accident |
| A terrible railroad accident occurred on
the {Richmond &} Petersburg Railroad
last Fridaymorning, by which four men were killed and two others
wounded. The freight train left Petersburg for Richmond at five [o'clock]
A. M., the engineer, Wm. A. Perdue; the conductor, J. T. Bragg; the
fireman, H. C. Deales, and Wm. Parish, a brother-in-law of the
conductor, riding on the engine. When in
the deep cut two miles and a half this side of Petersburg, and exactly
opposite the residence of Mr. James Dunlop, the boiler of the engine
blew up with a tremendous noise, which was heard at a distance
of ten miles. The engineer, with both legs and his right arm blown off
and his head horribly mangled, was thrown over into an adjacent field.
The conductor's right leg was blown off. He survived perhaps a half an
hour. Deales, the fireman, and Mr. Parish were scalded to death. A
negro train hand was badly wounded in the head by a flying fragment of
the engine, and a soldier who was with
the train as a corn guard was slightly wounded in the face. |
| The engine,
the Thomas Dodamead, a first-class machine, worth $56,000, was
literally blown to atoms, and is a total wreck. The tender and two
forward cars were badly crushed. The force of the explosion was such
as to stop the train on the instant, though it was running at the rate
of ten miles an hour. Some idea of the violence of the concussion
caused by the explosion can be formed from the fact that, though the engine
was in a deep cut at the time, every pane of glass in the windows of
Mr. Dunlop's house, a hundred yards off, were broken out. The
explosion being heard in Petersburg, and the cause conjectured,
assistance was immediately sent to the wrecked train. |
| Two of the victims of this disaster -- Mr.
Bragg, the conductor, and Mr. Parish -- were natives of Fluvanna
county, whither their remains have been sent. The cause of this
explosion must ever remain a mystery, as all those who might properly
explain it perished by it. Probably the engineer was carrying an
unlawful amount of steam, a thing which, however, other engineers have
done a thousand times before with impunity. But conjecture is useless
where there is no fact upon which it can be based. |
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