It's nothing to be nostalgic about, but seventy years ago yesterday was the day that 22 New York Central cars derailed in Elyria, as noted in the headline above from the
Lorain Journal of April 27, 1955.
As the article noted, "A 70 mile an hour, 125 car freight train ripped apart the New York Central's four main tracks in Elyria today. The derailment sent cars flying and snarled the rails. All New York-Chicago rail traffic was blocked or rerouted for 12 hours after the 6 a. m. accident at the Abbe Road crossing.
"No one was injured when 22 of the 125 cars derailed, overturned and spun crazily across the fours tracks. But a crossing watchman in a shack on a 15 foot tower was terrified when a 150,000 pound gondola filled with steel rails skidded towards him, halting only five feet from the base of his tower.
"The train was headed from Toledo to Cleveland's Collinwood yards. It was made up of closed freight cars, tank cars and gondola cars filled with lumber and steel."
Here's the page with the continuation of the front page story.
Note the pages also include the ongoing saga of the Dr. Sam Sheppard case, an item for Don Hilton about Probate Judge Harold Ewing, and the suicide attempt by famed actress
Susan Hayward.
Oh, and an Ohio Edison ad with old pal Reddy.
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I've got to admit, I'm always impressed by the fact that in the old days, a big news event like the NYC derailment could happen in the morning of a given day, and people could read about it in the Journal that night. Incredible. That was the beauty of an evening newspaper with a full staff of reporters, photographers, artists and editors, all working with a tight deadline. Having a news office in the larger, neighboring cities also helped cover stories no matter where they took place.
Newspapers also issued several editions. (This one is marked "Final.") So news that occurred early in the morning could be covered more intensively as the day went on. The Journal impressively has an aerial photo of the derailment. This would have had to be taken by the paper's photographer (or provided to the paper), the film developed, the image plated, the paper printed and then distributed by the end of the day. I worked for a PM newspaper and our first edition was on the streets around noon.
ReplyDeleteNear where I grew up was a very small town with an afternoon paper without much in the way of resources. We used to joke it's motto was, "Yesterday's news, today!"
DeleteThanks for the Ewing article, Dan. In mentions JJ Smythe. He was appointed to the common pleas bench from April to November of 1956 by Gov. Lausche when Judge D.A. Cook (Ggranpa of the present LoCo Judge Cook) unexpectedly retired earlier in that year. Smythe was also a left-handed first baseman in the short-lived Mountain States League in 1912.
ReplyDeleteI found the polio shot article interesting. Probably no parents opting out of that one. By the time I was ready for it, it was administered by drops on sugar cubes. All of us wanted more than one dose.
The train wreck article reminds me of an old joke:
A railroad inspector enters a switch house to find an old man reading a magazine and a youngster sleeping on a cot.
The inspector says to the old man, "What would you do if the 5:30 freight came down the track at 70 miles-per-hour, and the 5:45 passenger came up the track at 65 miles-per-hour?"
The old man points at the kid and says, "I'd wake up Jimmy."
The inspector: "And what would Jimmy do?"
The old man: "Nothin' - but Jimmy aint never seen a train wreck that big, before."
I wanted a sugar cube, but we got the vaccine in a little cup; I was bummed out.
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