| I don't think there's a person
over 40 years of age who hasn't heard the song that starts, "Come
all you rounders if you want to hear, the song told of a brave
engineer...."
That's the story of
Casey Jones, the Illinois Central locomotive engineer, killed on
April 30, 1900, when his train collided from the rear with another
IC train which had not yet cleared the railroad siding. The
"Reader's Digest" version of the story is Casey was running late on
the southbound mainline of the IC in Vaughn, Mississippi, where he
was to "saw" the mainline with another train.
The term "saw" meant one
train would partially pull into a passing siding, allowing another
train to pull by on the mainline, then reverse the situation to get
back on the mainline. There is an excellent illustration of
this move on the Train Web Site at this link if you're having a hard time
visualizing the situation.
Instead of clearing the meeting of two
other trains at Vaughn, Casey overran a track warning device and
crashed into the rear of the first train at high speed. His
heroism was staying with his train as it plowed into the wreck,
allowing him to apply the brakes until the last second, although it
cost him his life.
For a detailed description of the
incident, check out these web pages:
The scene at Vaughn
in 1999 had not changed that much from the actual
wreck photographs taken in 1900. In the figure below,
you're looking north at the wreck scene. A corresponding
picture appears at this link. Casey's locomotive
came to a halt in the ditch to the right side of the tracks along
near the lower right corner of this picture.
(This picture along with
one from my Crossroads of
Blues page will soon be published in a book on scenes from
American folklore by Chris
Epting.)
There's not a whole lot to show you in
Vaughn. The Casey Jones Museum is not very big, but it has a
one huge piece of history there--the broken bell from Casey's
engine.
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