100 years ago near Cheney: Gruesome train crash kills five, injures many

From our archives,

100 years ago

Five men were killed and scores of people were injured in a gruesome train collision at South Cheney. A Burlington passenger train was stopped at the station when the Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited passenger train, going the same direction on the same tracks, plowed into it.

A group of six female students from the Cheney Normal School were on a hike when they witnessed the accident. They said they were standing on a knoll watching the train come in when they saw a brakeman rush down the track about 200 feet, waving a lantern.

“This he continued to do until the train was practically on him. Just as it passed him, they heard the explosion of the torpedoes (warning devices) and immediately the crash.”

Dense fog was given as one reason for the accident. Also, both trains were “running on strange tracks without pilot crews” because of flooding, washouts and detours.

All of the men killed and most of the injured were in the Walla Walla sleeper car of the Burlington train, which was the second-to-last car. The last car was empty.

One of the dead was Elton Fulmer, the head of the Washington State College chemistry department. Bodies were crushed and mangled in the wreckage and rescuers were “made ill by the spectacle.”