A Miss Wayne, who was traveling from Pittsburg to Altoona, had a wonderful escape. She was caught in the swirl and almost all of her clothing torn from her person, and she was providentially thrown by the angry waters clear of the rushing flood.
Miss Wayne said that while she lay more dead than alive on the river bank, she saw the Hungarians rifle the bodies of dead passengers and cut off their fingers for the purpose of obtaining the rings on the hands of the corpses. Miss Wayne was provided with a suit of men’s clothing and rode into Altoona thus arrayed.
Miss Maloney, of Woodbury, N. J., a passenger on the parlor car, started to leave the car, and then, fearing to venture out into the flood, returned to the inside of the car. When the water subsided the crew rushed to the car, expecting to find Miss Maloney dead, but the water had not gone high enough to drown her and she was all right, though greatly frightened.
She displayed a rare amount of forethought in the face of danger, having tied securely around her waist a piece of her clothing on which her name was written in indelible ink. She fully expected that she would be drowned, and did this in order that her body, if found, might be identified.
When the water was still high Conductor Barr made an attempt to get back to his car from the hill, but after wading up to his arm-pits in the water he was forced to return to safe ground.
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD’S LAST TRAIN.
The last train to which the Susquehanna River permitted the use of the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Harrisburg and Lancaster rolled into Broad Street Station, at Philadelphia, at 9:35 p. m. on Saturday, June 1. It was a nondescript train. The last car was a vestibule Pullman which had never stopped at so many way stations before in its aristocratic life, and which had been cut off the stalled Chicago limited at Harrisburg to be taken back to New York. The rest of the train had started from Harrisburg at 3:40 as the day express and at Lancaster had been changed into the York and Columbia “tub.”
No train’s name ever fitted it better. The tub had swam through seven miles of water on its way, water differing in depth from three inches to three feet.
The seven miles of water covered the track between Harrisburg and Highspire. When the newspaper train touched with the morning dailies and to some extent with the men who make them, dashed drippingly into Harrisburg at half-past 7 in the morning it had only encountered three-fourths of a mile of water.
No reports of a great increase in the Susquehanna’s output had reached beleaguered Harrisburg during the day, and the express started out with two engines, 1095 and 1105, towing it and a fair chance of reaching Philadelphia on time. The original three-quarters of a mile of overflow—caused by the back water of Paxton creek—was passed without incident.