Gilbert H. Iiams (1910)

IIAMS

Posted By: Kent Transier
Date: 11/8/2023 at 18:04:40

Transcriber’s note: This was a very lengthy article, giving comprehensive details of the train wreck and information on all who died. Information not pertinent to the deceased has been omitted. Per the 1885 Iowa State Census, the deceased was born in Madison County.
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The Champion
Norton, Kansas
Thursday, September 29, 1910
Page 1, Columns 1-6

Rock Island Passenger No. 27 Wrecked

15 KILLED

Hospital Record of Injured 20 Many Hurt but not Reporting

The west-bound Rock Island passenger No. 27, carrying eight cars under charge of Conductor S. B. Hubbard of Denver, was ditched fourteen miles west of Norton on Friday morning about 2 o’clock killing 15, among them killing one woman and a little girl.

The Dead.

The names of the dead and their home address as gleaned by personal effects or telegrams from relatives, are:

Gilbert H. Iiams, Fullerton, Neb.

A heavy rain had been reported west of Dresden in some places flooding the rails, and slow time therefore ordered from the dispatcher’s office; but no report came from the locality of the disaster farther east.

The stretch of track under consideration is comparatively straight and on the level with the Prairie Dog river north of it running parallel to the track. That location is the focus of several valleys draining the big divides between the Prairie Dog and Solomon rivers sixteen miles south. The rainfall then in progress and falling for some time before, needed not to be a cloudburst, as reported, to inundate the valley. The probable two inches of precipitation were sufficient.

The funneling of the drainage had not washed out any of the track, hence the engineer came on unwarned of the actual condition of the road bed. It was plastic from the pilfering floods on both sides of that eight foot fill, and when the mogul engine at high speed on, meeting just a slight curve, the momentum of inertia carried the rails off the road bed in its line of motion—and the wreck was accomplished in the twinkling of an eye.

The engine plunged northward of the track, coming to a full stop at the base of the fill, but still upon its wheels. The tender was diagonally bumped by the mail and express coach entirely over the engine, while the coach itself was impelled in a tangent to the south, lighting upright but plunged against the cut made by the fill.

The smoker was completely telescoped by the first chair car.

All in the smoker met instant death expect four, Bracken who took the news to Dellvale, and Iams who died in this city a few hours after, with Sloop and Mueller, who died on the Pullman improvised as an ambulance.

The most harrowing spectacle was furnished by Iams. He was fastened to the floor of the smoker by the chair car over him. Not till the wrecker arrived could his cry for help receive any answering relief, when the car was taken off its one live victim. Dr. Cole deserves praise for crawling to Iams and while unable to reach more than his arm to the nearest point of Iams body, the doctor administered a hypodermic of morphia that numbed the torture. At that moment a chicken, strayed from the express car, crouched close by and began to cackle. Iams remarked: “Well, there is something else alive too.”

Iams was taken to the home of Bob Holmes in this city where he died that evening.

Link to Gravestone Photo
 

Madison Obituaries maintained by Linda Griffith Smith.
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