NEWS FLASH!!

Hanging Too Good.

Some scoundrel Monday tried to wreck the cars on the Hamilton railroad, and only the having to run an extra train to the Shiloh Oil Mills to carry cotton seed prevented a horrible and harrowing disaster.

It was not determined until after one o'clock to send this train so the dastardly deed was done in order that the train going to Hamilton leaving here at 5:30 should be wrecked.

The extra left the Princeville depot at 3 o'clock and ran off the track at the Y switch, the one next to the Lloyd farm where there is a deep ravine, the deepest on the road. At this point it is the custom of the engineer when carrying freight only to Shiloh to switch his engine on the Y, let the cars pass and then push them to the station.

When he reached the point he was therefore going slowly and to this is due the reason why the entire train was not thrown down the tressel [sic].

The switch target showed that the way was opened and the engineer ran along until he forced his engine off the track. Examination showed that the switch had been uncoupled so that the flanges of the engine and the car wheels would not switch the next rails.

It was a bad run off, for eleven hours elapsed before the train was on the track again. To take the passengers down another engine and cars had to be telegraphed for one from Hamilton.

[Tarboro Southerner, 1888. This story was published in The Connector, newsletter of the Tar River Connections Genealogical Society in the Spring 2000 issue.]