The darkest day: February 27, 1917

Photograph not reproduced here. The image that goes with this story is held by huntingdoncountyhistory.com and its credit does not permit republication, so it is cited rather than copied. See the original.

Checked against the record. CORRECTED, and one claim in the original was simply wrong. WRONG, now fixed: the original called it a 'coal freight'. Every contemporary account calls it a fast PREFERENCE freight. The coal in this story belongs to a victim, not to the train: Chester A. Minds was a coal operator in the Clearfield region. That is the likeliest route by which 'coal' migrated onto the freight. CUT for want of a source: the original said 'photographs of the wreck were sold as postcards across the state.' Real-photo wreck postcards were an ordinary trade in 1917, but no source opened here says it happened for this wreck or that they sold statewide, and 'across the state' is a scope claim that needs its own source. No source was found for it, which is not the same as finding it untrue. It stays on the list of things to look for. CUT: 'the deadliest day in Mount Union's history.' A superlative needs every rival counted and none has been. What the record does support is the Evening Public Ledger's own description of the crash as the most disastrous the Pennsylvania Railroad had suffered in years. TIGHTENED: the original said relief crews came 'from the Altoona shops.' The sources say a relief train set out from Altoona carrying Superintendent N. W. Smith of the Central Division with doctors and nurses. Altoona is sourced; the shops as the specific institution are not. NUMBERS THE SOURCES DISAGREE ON, therefore left out: the infant son is 'Chester A. Minds, Jr., two weeks old' in the Harrisburg Telegraph and 'Owen Minds, aged three weeks' in the Democratic Watchman; Maud Minds is 28 in one and 35 in the other. The death toll is 'at least twenty' (Harrisburg Telegraph, AP), 'twenty persons, nineteen passengers and a porter' (Evening Public Ledger) and 'nineteen people instantly killed' (Democratic Watchman). The Ledger's precise formulation is the one used above because it accounts for the difference. CONFIRMED: the date and the 12.08 a.m. time; Mercantile Express as train No. 6, out of Altoona at 10.35 p.m.; the express standing at Mount Union station with brake trouble while the crew tested airbrakes; dense fog; the rear sleeper split; all the dead in the car Bellwood; Chester A. Minds of Ramey, Clearfield County coal operator and Penn football star, bound for his wife's father's funeral; the powder-plant accommodation train pulling out just before; the Altoona relief train at one o'clock with Superintendent N. W. Smith, doctors and nurses, more physicians picked up at Huntingdon; and the carload of coffins strewn over the wreckage. Blame was placed at the time on freight engineer A. T. Cook of Harrisburg, who said the block signal at 'MO' tower showed white; the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Public Service Commission both investigated.