Engine of Train Plowed into Mass of
Earth off Track – Damage to One Coach
Dunkirk, Jan. 9 – While an incoming passenger train on the Erie railroad was running along near Cattaraugus yesterday morning, the engineer saw something across the track which he took to be a big snowdrift. When the engine went plowing into the mass it proved to be a large accumulation of earth, a near by embankment having sloughed off and covered the track for a distance of 50 feet or more.
When the first shock came the engineer applied the brakes and quickly brought the train to a stop. The steps were torn off a corner of one coach, but that was the only damage done. Several railroad laborers who were aboard the train were left at the scene of the landslide to clear the mass of earth from the tracks.
Source: Salamanca Press. Salamanca, NY. January 9, 1913. Courtesy of the Gowanda Historical Society