100 years ago today: Runaway train kills one and injures two

A wild runaway train ride near Ellensburg left one dead, two injured and an entire freight train nearly incinerated.

The train was on the electrified Milwaukee Road line when the engineer of the electric locomotive realized that the motor generator was generating too much current on a steep downhill stretch.

When the engineer tried to engage the air brakes, they failed to function.

The train was gaining momentum every second. By the time the train reached a switch point, it was going so fast the three cars at the back of the train – a Mallet engine, a water car and a caboose – flew off the track. Yet the locomotive and the rest of the 58-car train remained on the track and continued picking up speed downhill. The cars were loaded with lumber and oil.

“Onward plunged the heavy train toward the Columbia River,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

About a mile and half later, 13 cars jumped the rails and caught fire when they made contact with the high-power wires. Ten more cars jumped the track a little farther on, but these cars missed the wires, and did not catch fire.

Finally, 7 miles from where the trouble had started, the remainder of the train hurtled toward a bridge. The remaining freight cars flew off the tracks, crashed into the power lines, and “were soon a mass of smoldering ruins.”

The runaway locomotive was the only part of the train left on the tracks. “Freed from its load, the electric locomotive rolled on to Beverly, where it was gotten under control.”

One brakeman, riding in one of the boxcars, died in the wreckage. Another was injured. A third man, who had apparently hopped a freight car, was also injured.

“No one ventures to estimate the speed, other than to predict it was the fastest railroad trip ever taken in the mountains of Washington,” said the Spokesman-Review.