The 1910 Wellington Train Disaster

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Күн бұрын

Just after one o'clock in the morning, on a frigid, starless night in March 1910, more than a hundred souls aboard Great Northern Railway's Spokane Local No. 25, a passenger train, and Fast Mail Train No. 27, slept tightly bundled in their cars. They'd been stuck near Wellington in King County, Washington, for almost a week - waiting as railroad crews attempted to clear the tracks of snow, which had been accumulating at a record pace. Each time they tried, their enormous rotary plows either broke down, ran out of fuel or got stuck, forcing crews to try digging out from the five-to-eight-foot snow drifts by hand while passengers hunkered down and waited for the blizzard to pass.
But it didn't pass. The snow just kept on coming. High above them loomed the peak of Windy Mountain, and below them, the Tye Creek ravine. On the last day of February, the snow turned to rain. Lightning and thunder erupted across the Cascade Mountains, and one fateful lightning strike touched off the deadliest avalanche in United States history.

Пікірлер: 11

@qualitycontrol3634 5 ай бұрын

I'm obsessed with train travel, okay maybe not "obsessed", but I really love train travel......I really enjoyed this video. Thank you very much. Great upload, very informative

@rockymountainjazzfan1822 4 ай бұрын

What most people don't know about avalanches (commonly called "snowslides" in much of the U.S. West) is that it is the air concussion that occurs immediately ahead of the avalanche that causes much of the damage and destruction. I lived in or near avalanche country for a number of years and have witnessed some big slides firsthand. In the old days, a common way to look for victims or survivors buried in avalanches was to take the handle off of one end of a two-man long manual logger's saw and use the long saw blade to probe the avalanche, with the hope that the saw's teeth might snag and bring up some scraps of clothing or flesh of the victims. Macabre business to be sure, but some survivors were located and rescued using this rather crude method.

@stephaniebanks3745 5 ай бұрын

Thank you for a great video, very informative 🎩👌

@user-bi2iq3zt9m 5 ай бұрын

I was raised in the western cascades,I went to school in skykomish where they cut in the helper which was the old ,A n B streemliner units ,the 4 units where cut into the middle of usally 2,3 mile trains ,and it through the cascade tunnel to Merritt or sometimes all the way to Wenatchee ,I knew 2 engineers then, but I hiked up to to the old tunnel in 1971,when I was 12,it didn't have all those trail hiking land marks etc,and I went to the shed,in fact there were sheds all throughout the old route which was actually a higher route than the new built route which eventually connected back to the original,and also. I hoppec a couple times ,through the tunnel to once Merritt and back,and to Wenatchee and back and once I came up from Idaho and cought a freight from Wenatchee to skykomish because it's bad hitchhiking from Wenatchee to the west side,and ya alot of people still hopped around on the trains ,alot of people heading to the east to that big concert Woodstock plus the regulars dreges which also featured the FTRA which were all boozing and raising hell throughout the states, the freight train riders of America ,I got drunk with alot of those caractors and the regs would be back around and tell story's about there trips and meyam etc there were some pretty heavy people,like that all throughout the western cascades,and I met people heading to Woodstock,there are people lost up there in those hills that got frieket out and would jump off the train because when your way up there past the tunnel the train starts rocking Back and forth like your about to fall off the tracks,the train would be doing about 25 or so rpm...in some places, and ya it gets smokey in the tunnel ,ya have to bring jug of water and extra shirts or something to mask up, back then alot of the empty boxcars were always open, now days you hardly see any boxcars like that on modern frieights ,but ya I knew 2 helper engineers Wayne Williams which was our neighbor and roy Austin which his son was my best friend then,Jerry Austin,this was in skykomish,but about wellington wreck,old rumers had it that they couldn't retrieve some people and they are still somewhere up there,but they had Talley anyways ALL people ,and also supposably they didn't find a mailcar shipment of the currency and gold,don't know how much,but I'll bet someone did SEE? ya but that old rumer did have people go trapsing around and trying to figure THAT and as for the town itself ,some of it was wiped,but that too was speculation but most likely fact ,like same goes for people...and not to mention old freight riders throughout time of the history,ya alot of trippy stuff that went on back in the day to now days that sociatv don't know or ever will about the rail riders trampin around .....😮......! Ya so it's pretty cool, Wayne gave me old pictures of derailments in the cascades through out the days of g.n including the toga ridge derailment, funny thing,I don't know what ever happened to those pictures ,there were less than 10 I remember, and s couple other memberabia, I was about 11 12 ,anyways I think my stepdads freind stole the stuff, but I just don't remember.........😮 Ya I remember though when all the railroads merged, and I remember when the brand new green Burlington northern engines and cars came out ,alot just painted over and also new ,the Burlington route engines were gray,and great northern were blue and the old ones orange like the new engines of bnsf today, probably a selute to the couse if ya know what I mean , I use to like the colors of the others too like northern Pacific black yellow ,and s.p.& s. Spokane Portland Seattle ,western Pacific red ,etc all w see were pulling together till it all became GREEN b.n.by about the late 70,s ya pretty cool.......

@LesAtlas 5 ай бұрын

I'm an old guy who used to live in Wisconsin. When I was nineteen I had no money but wanted to see the West. So back in the early 1970's, just a few years after Woodstock, I hopped the high line freight route with a friend. He used to work for Milwaukee Road, so he know more than me. We hitchhiked to St Paul and hopped the highball west. Leaving west out of Minnesota on a flat car under the summer sky is the way to travel. When we got to Minot, North Dakota we were about to get humped. My Milwaukee Road friend correctly said we had better get our asses off. We then ended up on another long run to Havre, Montana. It stopped there and we checked out the local nightlife. We went into a bar and had a few beers. Suddenly a well-dressed couple walked in and screamed something at the bartender. He argued back and the couple started throwing balls from the pool table at him. They both had incredibly strong arms and the balls were smashing glass bottles and the mirror behind the bar. The bartender ducked down and retained his good health. My Milwaukee Road friend and I decided that was our cue to leave. A well dressed couple entered and 2 dirty kids, looking like hell from 3 days on a freight train, exited the bar. That was a normal happening in Havre, I guess. We found an old school bus to sleep in. Next morning we caught a hotshot west. That took us to Wenatchee, Washington after a really scenic ride. The train stopped there and we heard that the next hotshot was in a few hours. We hung out in the Amtrak waiting room, since it was close by and had a candy machine for some much-needed nourishment. An old railroad guy was sitting there with an engineer's hat and he said that it was never the same since steam trains went away. That's some true wisdom. (For those of you who are too young to understand, the locomotives used to all run on steam power, but got replaced by diesel and electric in the 1950s.) Anyways back to the issues about Wellington, and the comments above: As we were about to catch out in Wenatchee we were told to bring a jug of water and extra shirts to mask up. We wondered: Why would we need that stuff? After a while in the westbound direction we ended up in a tunnel. It went on forever and ever. It was smokey and pitch black, except for the locomotive's Mars light. After a while we started to cough. And then we could hardly breathe. We put the shirts over the front of our faces. Then we made the shirts wet and put them over our faces to block the smoke. Still couldn't breathe. Gosh, didn't they believe in tunnel ventilation back then? We didn't die but, close second, we ended up in Everett, Washington. So we hopped another freight to downtown Seattle. As we came into downtown, all dirty and looking like hell, a couple of friendly young women spotted us and picked us up. Dress for success. More than 50 years later, I'm still in Seattle, but I satisfy my wanderlust in my RV instead of a freight. Oh, I took my daughter back to Milwaukee on the Amtrak Empire Builder, but that took a different route than that old BN Stevens Pass/Wellington route. I still see some homeless folks down around the area of the Everett hobo jungle, and it reminds me of the good people I met when I first went West, more than fifty years ago.

@wmb5240 2 ай бұрын

Wow.. great history, sad, been in the cascades & seen the massive snow.

@colvinator1611 5 ай бұрын

Could they have backed the carriages into the tunnel with the loco disconnected outside ?

@billiepeterson1914 5 ай бұрын

What a great documentary! I appreciate your delivery and thank you for your sharing of information in such a thoughtful, insightful, and interesting way.