When a refrigerator car coupled to the tender jumped the tracks, it smashed into the bridge, resulting in this wreck at Steamboat Rock, Iowa. The wagon road that crosses the Iowa River is clearly
shown in the background. The end of the underframe of the cul- prit derailed refrigerator car is shown in the right foreground of the photo, providing an otherwise unseen detail for modeling.
Front of the layout vignettes: No. 25
American railway accidents: Pt. I Bad days at Steamboat Rock Derailments are costly to railroads and the people involved/David Lambert
I
n the period prior to and including World War I, that is, roughly the first two decades of the last centu-
ry, the railroad industry was the sec- ond largest in the United States. Only agriculture was larger. Consequently, the public’s interest in the railroads was at an all-time high. The public was both fascinated by the speed, power and “romance” of the rails and repulsed by its symbolic concen- tration of economic power. Anything having to do with the railroads–both good and adverse–was of the greatest interest to the American public. As we’ve seen in the Front-of-the-
Layout Vignette series, local photogra- phers were irresistibly drawn to track-
74
side. If the view at trackside included a train wreck, all the better for the pub- lic’s prurient interest in railroading. Postcards of railroad accidents–large and small, inconsequential and cata- strophic–were very common. This leads us to a small town on the Iowa Central (and later Minneapolis & St. Louis) in Iowa: Steamboat Rock. Steamboat Rock was the scene of not one but three con- sequential wrecks. What’s more, they occurred within a twelve-year span. Steamboat Rock, Iowa, is located at milepost 93.5 south of Albert Lea, Min- nesota, on the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad. This makes the town 212.5 miles south of St. Paul on the railroad’s so-called Eastern Division. The Eastern
Division of the M&StL is the old Iowa Central Railroad, absorbed officially January 1, 1912. Steamboat Rock was located down in the Iowa River valley, north of Eldora, Iowa. There was a sig- nificant ascending grade (1.5%) out of town in both directions. The northeast- ern (St. Paul) slope of the valley con- tains a series of rather significant–and sight impairing–curves. In fact, helper service in both directions out of Steam- boat Rock operated in the first decade of the 20th century. An indication of the difficulty of operating this piece of rail- road is its age: it was the first length of track laid by the Eldora Railroad & Coal Company (an Iowa Central prede- cessor) in 1868.
JULY 2012
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