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Scalded to Death by Steam by KAtie Letcher Lyle Soft Cover
Scalded to Death by the Steam by Katie Letcher Lyle
Name and date written on inside front cover
Authentic stories of railroad disasters and the ballads that were written about them. Algonquin Books. Words and music to famous railroad ballads.
Soft Cover
213 pages
Copyright 1988
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
The Wreck of the Old 9714
The Wreck on the C & 034
The N & W Cannonball Wreck50
The New Market Wreck57
Billy Richardson's Last Ride68
The Hamlet Wreck77
The Guyandotte Bridge Disaster83
The Wreck of C & O No. 592
The Wreck of the 1256102
The Church Hill Tunnel Disaster116
The Freight Wreck at Altoona125
The Wreck of the Royal Palm132
The Wreck of the Virginian Train No. 3141
Three in Kentucky152
The Wreck of the Sportsman163
Spikes on the Rail173
The Wreck of Old 85182
Others:188
The Wreck Between New Hope & Gethsemane; The Wreck of the Flyer, Duquesne; The Wreck of No. 3; The Wreck of the 444; The Fate of Talmadge Osborne; The Powellton Labor Train Explosion; The Ride to Hell
Bibliography 205
Index208
INTRODUCTION
I
The city council met last night; the vote was four to three,
To tear the home town depot down, and build a factory,
To take that strip of history, and tear it off the map, To take old Engine Number Nine, and melt her into scrap ... ("Blue Water Line," Anonymous)
In my grandparents' house where I spent some years as a child in the mid-forties, there was an old wind-up Victrola with packets of needles and a cabinet full of old records. There was also a delicate lady's guitar with one frizzled string.
On rainy days, I played the Victrola. One of the first records I discovered was Vernon Dalhart's "Wreck of the Old 97." I listened to it over and over, thrilling to the words. "The Wreck of the 1256," "The Wreck of the Virginian No. 3," "The Wreck of the C & O No. 5"-all these I loved and learned. My grandfather was something of a train buff, and encouraged my singing. Among his frequent homilies was the story of the brave engineer Billy Richardson who had been tragically killed on duty. He urged me to remember, perhaps sensing that the railroad, at least as he knew it, was dying.
Lexington had once been a fairly busy rail terminal. By the tracks that ran down behind my grandparents' house I stood every day in summer, making friends long-distance with the nameless engineer who backed the only slow C & O freight engine into Lexington each morning around eleven, then took it out again a while later, this time headfirst. Soon it would stop coming altogether.
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