A high-speed train traveling from St. Louis to Dallas struck a herd of cattle near Eufaula, Oklahoma, killing 23 animals in a collision that miraculously avoided a complete derailment.
Here is the original newspaper article.
Engine Slaughters Cattle
MUSKOGEE, OK. December 28, 1909. — A pot shot is a term applied to a hunter firing into a bunch of birds huddled on the ground, and it is not considered sportsmanlike, but that is what the fast mail on the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, from St. Louis to Dallas, took the other day when a bunch of cattle were huddled on a crossing near Eufaula and 23 head of the cattle were killed.
The train kept right on.
The fast mail runs at 60 miles an hour through Oklahoma. It was running at that rate when it came to a crossing on the Scott farm four miles north of Eufaula the other day when it struck the bunch of cattle.
There were 500 head of cattle in a pasture and they had broken out and were huddled up at the railroad crossing. The engineer could not see them until too close to stop, and he took chances of plowing through them.
All that passengers knew of the accident at the time was a sudden jar of the train, but it did not stop. The cow-catcher was demolished and the engine was spattered with blood from headlight to tender. The train ran for three miles and was then forced to stop and dislodge some of the carcasses from the trucks of the engine and tender, and tear away certain parts of the broken cow-catcher which were dragging.
It was found later that the engine had killed 23 of the cattle, and it is considered a miracle that the train was not completely wrecked.
Source: The Daily Ardmoreite. (Ardmore, Okla.), 29 Dec. 1909.
