Milk Train Wreck

Collyer) lists the vessel as built in 1867. Somehow, since he not only owned her but wrote the book, his date is more believable. The "family record" in this case was a reply to the when-was-she-built question asked in very late years of Mrs. Harris (Martha Hyer Millard) Reynolds of Poughkeepsie, the original Little Martha.

The model is a carpenter's model built in 1940 by Samuel Van Aken, Athens, New York. Because of an accident, the model was re-rigged in 1963 by Ransom Hughes, Nyack model builder. Mr. Hughes is noted for his model of the sailing frigate U.S.S. Lexington which took 15 years to construct and is now at the Mystic (Connecticut) Seaport.

MILK TRAIN WRECK

by William A. Benton, 2nd.

Christmas Eve., I think in 1901, the "Rutland Milk" train came down about eleven P.M., as usual, at a speed of sixty miles an hour, with fifteen cars loaded with milk for New York City, some bottled in crates and some in forty quart cans.

When it hit the big iron bridge, just North of the present State School crossing, (The same old bridge that is there today) the East end of the North abutment collapsed. The engine and two cars got across, the engine stayed on the track, the two cars on their sides on the West side of the enbankment.

The South end of the bridge did not go down but the North end went off to the East and down into the river. The water was about five feet deep at the time.

The wooden cars went down against the side of the bridge and off to the West into the river, one after the other, till the last car next the caboose stood on end in the mess, holding up the end of the caboose. Some of the train crew were in the engine and the rest in the caboose. There were no injuries more than bruises and a sprained ankle. The cars that went into the river were unrecognizable except for the one holding up the caboose.

Christmas day everybody and his brother were getting milk from the three reasonably intact cars. I of course had a finger in the pie, and helped Henry Smith to get quite a lot. Carrie invited me to eat Christmas dinner with them, which I did and managed to see something of the Bassett girl, if I remember correctly.

The repair crews soon ran us out of the wreck and put rails on a slant under the bridge, greased them, hitched immense tackles to the bridge and to a big ash tree on the N. W. side, with engines on both sides of the wreck to pull at the same time. They broke the tackles without moving the bridge an inch.

They gave that up and drove piles around the mess on the West side and the trains ran over them for a long time before repairs were completed. In the following Summer when the water was low the piles were cut off in the river. When the water is down I think they still show.

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