(erielack) Erie Diner 939

[Mike <MOEL_@_paonline.com>]

Bob wrote..." I have only
fragmentary memory of a derailment in Ohio (?) in the
late fifties (?) caused by collision at a crossing
with a truck carrying eggs.  I seem to recall that
there was one fatality, a immigrant woman, who was in
the diner.  Can anybody substantiate this?"

This is from a newspaper account of the accident, which actually
happened after the merger on 2-09-61.  The train is not identified, but
-From a schedule it looks like it was the westbound Lake Cities (E-5).
This was a bad day for E-L, the passenger train was delayed and detoured
because of a freight derailment at Meadville. It was running two hours
behind schedule through Ohio.  At a highway crossing in Galion the train
hit an "egg" truck.  Four cars of the nine car train derailed and 80
people were injured, with one fatality.

She was one of a group of Dutch immigrants that had left Indonesia under
the sponsorship of the World Council of Churches a year earlier and was
traveling with her family to California.  The woman was in the coach
just ahead of the diner and apparently was thrown in the accident
through the window, landing between the two sets of tracks.  Bottled gas
used for cooking in the diner exploded and she was badly burned.

The ICC report could tell us the number of the diner.  All nine Erie
diners were still listed in the Official Register (5 EL/4 Erie) in
3-64.  The following year there were six listed (5 EL/1 Erie).  The
Register showed #946 as the last one lettered Erie.

Mike O.

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