#TrainWreck December 6
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Throughout December 2024, several of us are taking part in the 30-Day PPT Coach4aday Challenge. PPT is an acronym for People Places or Things. Each day we share our insights, thoughts, or memories about a person (living or dead), a place (we have visited or learned about) or a thing that intrigues us. Today I am going to write about the deadliest TRAIN WRECK in NC History.
In 1943 the deadliest train wreck in the State of North Carolina occurred in Robeson County.
People, Places, & Things 30-Day Challenge Guidelines
Like previous challenges there are no hard and fast rules to participate. There are a few suggested guidelines
- Each day in December 2024 write about a Person, Place or Thing-PPT
- Share at least one fact, memory, or quality about your subject choice.
- If so inclined use the hash tag #Coach4adayChallenge on social media platforms
December 6th-Train Wreck
On December 16, 1943 seventy-two people, including 52 servicemen bound for home for the holidays, lost their lives in the train wreck that occurred near the N.C. 211 overhead bridge on the rail line between Buie and Rennert in Robeson County. Almost as many people, 70, were hurt.
The accident happened about 35 minutes after three cars of the southbound Tamiami West Coast Champion derailed after running across a split rail. This was shortly after the train had passed through Rennert. A dining car and two Pullman sleepers were left tilting, with the first of the derailed cars leaning over the tracks at an angle of about 45 degrees.
Once repair efforts began on the Tamiami West, the conductor sent the fireman down the track to flag oncoming trains. As he walked along the track, he slipped in the snow and fell, damaging his fusee, or colored flare, so that it wouldn’t work.
Efforts to stop a northbound Tamiami East Coast Champion train failed. As that diesel-hauled train passed the railwayman, the crew was unaware of the danger that lay ahead. The East Coast Champion plowed into its southbound cousin at a speed in excess of 85 mph, hurling hundreds of men, women and children into the wreckage. Both trains carried from 16 to 18 cars apiece and a heavy load of passengers in both sleeping cars and coaches.
What really brings this wreck close to home is many of the injured were brought to a location one block from my home.
Lumberton’s Baker Sanatorium shown above, the closest hospital to the crash, was quickly overrun with the injured. Horace Baker, who was a medical school student at Duke University, came home to help his father, hospital director H.M. Baker.
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