A story and photograph from the Carlisle Sentinel, 13 March 1972, about the freight train and coal train collision that occurred at Herndon, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
Photo Caption: Firemen Battle Blaze After Train Crash.
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Trains Hit Head-On At Herndon; 4 Killed
Herndon, Pennsylvania (UPI) — A coal train left a siding too soon Sunday and collided head-on with a freight train. Thirty-four cars telescoped into the engines and burst into flames killing four Penn Central crewmen.
A railroad spokesman said the 104-car coal train failed to heed a signal to stop on the siding until the 100-car freight, which had the right of way, passed.
Thirty-four freight and coal cars hurtled into the engines and burst into flames, trapping the engineers and brakemen of the two Penn Central trains beneath a pile of rubble nearly 500 feet long and 40 feet high.
Eleven other cars left the tracks and spilled into the back yards of houses along the tracks in this small eastern Pennsylvania community.
Nearly 200 firemen worked through the night to control a blaze fed by 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel and a carload of chemical fertilizer.
The bodies of Engineer H. C. Billig, 59, of Camp HIll, Pennsylvania, and brakeman Emil L. Serhan, 44, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, were recovered from the wreckage of the freight train.
A third body was recovered but was not immediately identified. Authorities believed it probably was engineer Robert M. Otto, 48, of Williamsport, or brakeman W. P. Kennedy, 42 of Nesbitt, Pennsylvania, who were in the locomotive of the coal train.
Two crewmen on the caboose of the coal train and a conductor on the freight train were not injured.
Cloyd Zeigler, whose home is about 50 feet from the tracks used by 20 trains a day, said, “We heard a terrific crash tat woke us up. I looked out my back window and everything was in flames.”
All 600 residents of Herndon mobilized in Northumberland County to aid firemen and work crews. They turned their two churches into canteens and rest centers.
Police said the crash could be heard two miles away. But two elderly women whose small home bordered the track slept through the crash.
Relatives, who said the women were hard of hearing, evacuated them from the home when the fire broke out. Coal from one of the derailed cars had spilled onto their back porch.
This is about the biggest thing that’s happened here since the store burned down in 1914 – one elderly woman said.
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From Newspapers.com.
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