Body
C. D. Hobson of Downs, a veteran Missouri Pacific engineer, was crushed to death beneath his engine when the Lenora Branch passenger train ran into a herd of cattle on a curve a few miles west of Kirwin. The train was about three miles west of Kirwin when the engine crashed into the herd just as it came out of a small cut on a curve. In some way, one of the cows was pushed beneath the locomotive, causing it to jump the track and turn over into the ditch. Engineer Hobson was caught beneath the locomotive, only his head and chest projecting from the wreck. He was killed instantly, and the body was somewhat scalded by steam and hot water. The fireman, L.V. Harshey of Atchison, who was substituting on his first run on the Lenora Branch, was thrown clear of the wreck. The muscles of his arms and side were pulled loose, and he received some internal injuries. However, his condition is not believed to be critical. Mr. Hobson’s body rested beneath the weight of the 75-ton engine, and the light wrecker from Downs could not lift the wrecked locomotive. The section men finally managed to dig the body out after several hours before the heavy wreck had arrived from Atchison. Harold Hobson, son of the deceased, was working as a brakeman on the eastbound freight train. The trains passed in the Kirwin yards, and father and son waved at one another. Young Hobson’s train was still in the yards at Kirwin when the fact of the accident became known, and he rushed out to the wreck in an automobile and remained to direct the operations necessary to release the body of his father. The last fatal accident to an engine crew on the branch occurred about thirty years ago near Big Bend, also on the Lenora Branch. An engineer by the name of Wheeler and his fireman by the name of Gray were killed in that wreck. The Hobsons are known to most of the people of the Stockton community as both have been on the Stockton Branch run numerous times for many years.