While doing some newspaper research I got sidetracked into investigating a unfamiliar passenger wreck on the Central Division. The wreck took place July 29, 1906 on a curve south of Antlers (two miles north of Kosoma), Indian Territory. The cause was a spike which had been laid on or driven between two rails (depends on which version you read). Will Skelton, fireman, was killed instantly. The engineer, John Harlan was thought to be fatally injured but survived. The train was "carrying 200 excursionists" so the results could easily have been much worse. Ben Jordan was tried for murder, escaped with a hung jury and when retried was given 10 years in Federal Prison for train wrecking. There's a lot more to the story I won't go into here. What I found especially interesting was information in an article which was attributed to a "fireman Ballard" who had passed through the area around 15 minutes earlier on a freight engine. "The wrecked engine has a record of seven killings. Mike Popp was handling the same engine down Winding Stair mountain when he struck a cow and was killed and railroad men say five other men had been killed while driving the engine before that. A rather peculiar feature connected with that engine is the fact that Engineer Jim Gates has twice saved his life by not taking his run. He was due to make that trip when Mike Popp was killed and he was to have been on the run Sunday morning but Engineer Harlan when out in his stead." Unfortunately the engine number wasn't given in any of the accounts that I read. Does anyone have any information about an "unlucky" engine killing so many men in what must have been a number of separate accidents. One account stated that the engine had just returned to service from the Popp accident when the latest misfortune overtook it.
Just an update. The engine in question was 487 per newspaper accounts of the Nov 1, 1905 Popp accident. I understand that this would make it a former KCFS&M 4-6-0 built in 1893. (feel free to correct if this is wrong) It's earlier number was somewhere between 111 and 114 (most likely guess 111). Those newspaper accounts considered it to be a total loss but it was obviously rebuilt instead.
