Rail Victims Moved 10 Miles in 100 Years

Looking toward Frostburg from the Brush Tunnel near Corriganville.

A popular spot with 21^st-century ghost hunters is the Brush Tunnel, on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad near Corriganville, just west of the Great Allegheny Passage parking lot on Cash Valley Road.

Built in 1912 to accommodate parallel tracks as part of the Western Maryland’s Cumberland-to-Pittsburgh extension, the Brush Tunnel likely had its share of the miseries and fatalities common to all old-time tunnel projects.

But oral tradition sometimes associates the Brush Tunnel haunting with a pedestrian disaster after construction was over, when tourists stepped out of the path of one train only to be hit by another train going in the opposite direction.

While she neither names the tunnel nor mentions a haunting, Betty Van Newkirk briefly summarizes the fatality in a 1995 article: 

When trains began to travel through the tunnels, around the huge horseshoe curve below Frostburg, and down the long grade toward Cumberland, local people enjoyed watching them … They took Sunday afternoon walks with their visiting relatives to marvel at the new developments. One such party, in August of 1912, stepped carefully away from the tracks to see a westbound train pass by, but failed to hear the train coming out of the tunnel eastbound. Four of the six in the group were killed. (72-73)

This mass fatality was national news at the time, after a detailed first-day account was published on the front page of The Washington Post. The contemporary coverage, however, locates the disaster a mile west of Frostburg, whereas the Brush Tunnel is 9 miles east. Moreover, the contemporary coverage never mentions a tunnel at all.

Here’s the Post account, from which all the shorter, nationwide accounts seem to derive:

Train Kills 3 Women

Dashes Into Homeward Bound Outing Party.

2 Hurt, 1 Probably Fatally

John Dixon, Only Male Member of Sextet, Makes Heroic but Vain Effort to Save One – Pedestrian Drags Girl from Track, but Pilot of Locomotive Hits Her and She Probably Will Die.

Special to The Washington Post.

Cumberland, Md., Aug. 18. [1912] – Three women were killed and two injured, one probably fatally, this afternoon when Baltimore and Ohio passenger train No. 14, due in Cumberland at 6 p.m., struck an outing party of six on the Western Maryland Railway extension, 1 mile west of Frostburg station.

The dead:

·         Mrs. Carrie Schneider, aged 27, wife of Oscar Schneider, of Orlando, Fla., who was visiting her sister, Mrs. Morris Wetmore, of Frostburg.

·         Miss Jennie Schneider, aged 22.

·         Miss Bessie Williams, aged 32.

The injured are Miss Edna Raley, aged 30, probably fatally, and Miss Minnie Schneider, aged 30.

John Dixon, a machinist, of Baltimore, who was with the party, escaped uninjured. He heroically grabbed Miss Bessie Williams, but was too late to save her.

Returning Home from Jaunt.

The young people had been on an afternoon jaunt. They were walking toward Frostburg, and had their backs to the train, which was approaching around a curve. A freight train had just passed on the west-bound track.

Engineer Frank Cunningham saw the danger and blew his whistle, but he was speeding about 30 miles an hour, and his train was on them before he could slow down to any extent.

Olin Skidmore, who was walking along the tracks with a child in his arms, realized the danger to the party, ahead, and rushing forward succeeded in pulling Miss Raley from the track. The pilot of the locomotive hit her, however, and her skull is fractured and she is injured internally. Drs. J. Marshall Price and Timothy Griffith, who accompanied the young women to Western Maryland Hospital, at Cumberland, said they had little hopes of her recovery.

The train was stopped and the bodies of the dead were gathered up and taken to Frostburg station. Mrs. Schneider was doubled up under the train and cut to pieces. Almost the entire train passed over her.

Since the Baltimore and Ohio has been using the Western Maryland to detour its trains, made necessary by the collapse of the Sand Pat tunnel, it has been a favorite diversion of Frostburg people to walk along the tracks and watch the through trains pass along the picturesque grade.

Victim Home on a Visit.

Mrs. Schneider, a daughter-in-law of Henry Schneider, shoe merchant, of Union street, was a home-coming week visitor. Her husband is expected from Florida tomorrow. Miss Jennie Schneider lived at home with her father, Henry Schneider. The dead women are sisters-in-law, and Miss Minnie Schneider, who is injured, is a sister of the dead girl. She is a clerk in her father’s store.

Miss Bessie Williams was a daughter of Mrs. Helen Williams and the late Thomas J. Williams. Miss Raley is a cashier in a five-and-ten-cent store. All the victims belong to well-known families.

Mrs. Schneider was a sister of Mrs. Gunter, wife of William R. Gunter, proprietor of the Hotel Gladstone, Frostburg, and a daughter of the late Fred Wehner, one of the wealthiest residents of Frostburg.

On the same day, a Pennsylvania newspaper reported on the plight of a Palymra man, C.F. Schneider, who was rushing to Cumberland upon hearing the dire news of the deaths of his sister Jennie and sister-in-law Carrie, as well as the “probably fatal injury” of his sister Minnie. If both Edna Raley and Minnie Schneider died of their injuries, that would bring the death toll to five of the six, not the four that Van Newkirk related much later. Perhaps one of the two women recovered, though it’s hard to imagine how a pedestrian could survive even a glancing blow from a speeding locomotive.

Whatever the death toll, if this horrific accident happened on the Western Maryland Railway one mile west of the Frostburg station, that locates it – then and now – about halfway between the Frostburg Depot and the Borden Tunnel, which is 2.5 miles west of town, on the uphill grade toward Connellsville, Pennsylvania. Today the railroad tracks don’t extend that far; instead, the fatal spot must now be part of a scenic, peaceful walking/running/biking path along the old railbed, the Great Allegheny Passage.

This helps explain why sightseers would be drawn to the spot in 1912. The Borden Tunnel had opened only the year before; the brand-new, two-track, 957-foot tunnel was a spectacular novelty in walking distance from downtown Frostburg. In contrast, the Brush Tunnel, also completed in 1911, was 9 miles from Frostburg, 6.5 miles from Cumberland.

Of course visitors to Frostburg would stroll to the Borden Tunnel on Sunday afternoons, especially Frostburg natives who moved away before the tunnel was completed. Carrie Schneider might well have wanted to see this engineering marvel that had come to her hometown. If so, her curiosity, alas, proved fatal.

Through the years, oral tradition easily could move a terrible fatality from happening just below a tunnel to happening at the mouth of a tunnel, since tunnels unnerve many people already and seem to be more “logical” places for disasters to happen. After the Borden Tunnel closed to rail traffic, subsequent oral tradition simply could have moved the fatality to the next tunnel down the line: the Brush Tunnel.

Moreover, today’s Brush Tunnel is very popular with sightseers because of its proximity to Van Newkirk’s “huge horseshoe curve.” Helmstetter’s Curve is a prime photo opportunity for rail excursions between Cumberland and Frostburg. It’s logical, if inaccurate, to associate a tourist disaster then with a spot where tourists gather today.

The 1912 newspapers make clear, however, that if mangled picnickers still haunt any stretch of the old railbed, it’s the pleasant ascent west of Frostburg, and not the Brush Tunnel – however spooky and tourist-friendly it may appear.

Sources:

Great Allegheny Passage. “Borden Tunnel.” https://gaptrail.org/amenities/borden-tunnel/. Accessed 14 Oct. 1912.

---. “Brush Tunnel.” https://gaptrail.org/amenities/brush-tunnel/. Accessed 14 Oct. 1912.

“Sister Was Killed on the Railroad.” The (Lebanon, Pa.) Daily News, 19 Aug. 1912, Page 3. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021 via Newspapers.com.

“Train Kills 3 Women.” The Washington Post, 19 Aug. 1912, Page 1. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021 via Newspapers.com.

Van Newkirk, Betty. “Tunnel Visions.” Journal of the Alleghenies 31 (1995). 69-74.