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80-RE4
Top Member
USA
5700 Posts |
 Posted - 02/22/2007 : 2:48:36 PM
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The Crossing: Chapter 27;
Thursday, February 22 at 10:00 AM
Blog Comments Under Picture
On Dec. 14, 1961, a Union Pacific train headed from Chicago to Denver struck a school bus at a railroad crossing five miles outside Greeley, killing 20 children. It was the worst highway accident in Colorado history
Source:http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/rockytalklive/archives/2007/02/test_1.html
Blog Comments
I was there at the accident on Dec. 14,1961. In just 20 plus days we were selling out, So a lot of changes was going to have take place I am 70 now. I had heard the siren from Kersey water tower as I was getting my pickup out of the garage, we live a mile north and west of Kersey, I saw flashing red lghts going west on the south side of Kersey, so I made a choice to see where it was going. It was to the accident., when I arrived their were few poeple and cars on the south side of the tracks. When I walk up to the accident site, I still can not tell you the feeling that went over me. The Train was up the track to the west. I walk the tracks to where part of the bus was, some one asked for help, as one student was still missing. so I did as asked, looking in the weeds, it was not long, they said they found the student. I asked how many students in the bus this person should be around 50. I walked slow back east to where the bus was at look inside the best one could at that point I said to myself, what I am doing here. So I walked to my pickup which was parked about 200 yards down the road. I drove home I thought I had some problems before I left home mine had all disapeared, as August 28, 1950 my mother found my sister dead accident on the farm, I knew what that did to our family. God always is their for us, so I have never forgot the day Dec. 14, 1961. I am glad that RMN did this story. To hear from so many that came out the accident, moved forward in their lives. So strong in the Power of God and his ways. I always felt sorry for the bus driver, because that was one tough crossing, How 45 years changes things as I google the area I believe most of the tracks are removed. But that is another story.
God Bless you all, Prayers are for Robert.
Posted by Dennis on February 8, 2007 05:12 PM
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I have seen a couple post that say they can't access the picture or videos, if you don't have adobe flash player installed that is the problem here is a link to get it installed
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/
Hope this helps if not email me and I might be able to help you find the problem
farmsweetie1958@yahoo.com
Posted by Linda (Close) on February 8, 2007 04:09 PM
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I wanted to comment about what some have said about the driver getting off the bus. I am a kindergarten teacher at a private school. I have to drive a small bus of children when we go on a field trip. We are not allowed to leave children on the bus - whether the bus is running or not. Even if the engine if off - if we (the drivers) are not on the bus, the children are not on the bus. I do not know what rules a public school bus driver would have. As we are in Littleton, and drive in the metro ares, we have not had much opportunity to drive over railroad tracks - but this story has certainly made me think about what I would do in such a situation.
Posted by Denise on February 8, 2007 02:28 PM
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Edited by - 80-RE4 on 02/22/2007 2:51:03 PM
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Kodie
Top Member
United States
2028 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2007 : 7:22:49 PM
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| Is this the same railroad where people say the spirits help push cars over the track so they don't get stuck. That's a sad story. |
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Thomas Ford 85-16
Top Member
USA
4177 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2007 : 11:51:57 AM
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Thanks for posting this, AmTran. I had no idea about this accident before hand. I'm not sure where the crossing IC Dave mentioned is, but I've heard of that one before.
I did a Google search and came across the chapters that the Rocky Mountain News put together for this. 20-30 chapters, the first five of which detail the events leading up the accident. The later ones follow the court trip, and the lives of the people invovled and how they were changed because of this accident. There are photos, too, which are hard to look at but really stick a face to the story. It was a difficult thing to read.
http://cfapp2.rockymountainnews.com/crossing/
Make sure you switch, at the bottom, to Chapters 1-6 if you want to start from the begginning. For some reason, in that link, it starts you at Chapters 25-30. Be patient with the Flash animation. |
Mike's Bus Yard - http://buses.zwebpages.com - Since 1999
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Edited by - Thomas Ford 85-16 on 02/24/2007 11:53:36 AM |
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80-RE4
Top Member
USA
5700 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2007 : 08:26:43 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Thomas Ford 85-16
Thanks for posting this, AmTran. I had no idea about this accident before hand. I'm not sure where the crossing IC Dave mentioned is, but I've heard of that one before.
I did a Google search and came across the chapters that the Rocky Mountain News put together for this. 20-30 chapters, the first five of which detail the events leading up the accident. The later ones follow the court trip, and the lives of the people invovled and how they were changed because of this accident. There are photos, too, which are hard to look at but really stick a face to the story. It was a difficult thing to read.
http://cfapp2.rockymountainnews.com/crossing/
Make sure you switch, at the bottom, to Chapters 1-6 if you want to start from the begginning. For some reason, in that link, it starts you at Chapters 25-30. Be patient with the Flash animation.
Thank you ThomasFord85-16 for following up on the link. It's strange that such a story can have such an impact on many of us even though it happened way before all of us were born.
Look how different those buses were and look at all of the lives that the crash changed and to this day, those people are able to keep the memories of those lost in that train/bus crash still alive.
I didn't realize there were so many chapters, I am going to take some time to go through the chapters. Maybe it can be used by some people to remind us of just how important it is to ALWAYS perform a proper RR procedure.
Make sure the tracks are clear.
Make sure there are no other Com. Vehicles crossing the other side of the tracks when the bus crosses.
Make sure the bus can clear the other side NO MATTER WHAT.
IF THERE IS TRAFFIC AND YOU CAN'T CLEAR THE OTHER SIDE
DO NOT GO NO MATTER WHAT. WAIT AT THE TRACKS EVEN IF IT MEANS WAITING FOR AN HOUR.
Pay attention to the road. Get off the cell phones. You'd be surprised how distracted they are.
Trains have the RIGHT OF WAY ALWAYS. Buses DO NOT. Trains DO. Buses MUST Give trains the right away. Trains are the rulers of the road and we must yeild to them and if motorist behind us get upset with us for stopping, they'll get over it.
CHAPTER 2 OF 33
By Kevin Vaughan
Photos by Chris Schneider
At 6:41 on the icy Thursday morning of Dec. 14, 1961, a Union Pacific streamliner lurched away from the station in Sterling, one hour and 41 minutes behind schedule.
An unusually heavy volume of Christmas mail had delayed the train at a number of stops. Now it was starting the last leg of the overnight Chicago-to-Denver run, with 173 passengers aboard.
Engineer Herbert F. Sommers, in his OshKosh overalls and wire-framed glasses, opened up the throttle in the cab of the lead locomotive. Fireman Melvin C. Swanson sat across from him.
The three diesel locomotives growled, and soon the 16-car train clipped along at close to 80 mph.
Ninety miles away in the small Weld County farming community of Auburn, Duane Harms faced the same bitterly cold morning.
The 23-year-old school bus driver, a slender man with reddish-blond hair and freckles, had tried college, but struggled.
Now he had a job with School District No. 6, driving a bus in the morning and afternoon along a latticework of straight gravel roads.
During the day, he worked as an elementary school janitor.
He and his wife of 2 1/2 years, Judy, had a 3-week-old baby, Lynda, who had been born the day after Thanksgiving.
Judy was a student at the state college in Greeley, working toward a teaching degree. She and Duane lived next to the old Auburn school in an 800-square-foot home originally built for the teacher.
Five miles southeast of Greeley, the Auburn area had no general store, no post office.
Simple frame houses stood along its straight, bumpy roads. Sugar beets, corn, alfalfa and pinto beans grew in its vast, flat fields.
The families who lived there were first-, second- and third-generation immigrants — German-Russian, Swedish, Mexican — with names like Alles, Geisick, Munson, Brown, Rangel and Ford.
They drove into Greeley, or to Platteville or Gilcrest, to worship. They went to Catholic, Baptist and Congregational churches.
For three generations, children had taken their lessons in the Auburn school's classrooms, played ball out by the backstop.
But the school was closed, and now, for the first time, the farm kids of Auburn rode a bus into Greeley.
Harms had arisen at 5:30 a.m. At 7 a.m., he closed his front door behind him as he headed out to the 60-seat school bus parked in the yard.
He started the engine of bus No. 2, then hurried back inside while it idled. This was his morning ritual on cold days — he wanted the children to find warm seats waiting for them, and he knew he'd be arm-wrestling the stick shift if he didn't get the engine going.
The Union Pacific
Seventy miles away, the train cut across the lonely landscape of northeast Colorado — past the no-stoplight towns of Atwood, Merino and Hillrose as the tracks paralleled the South Platte River.
Union Pacific streamliners ferried passengers in relative luxury, rocketing through the night across rural America. They had impressive-sounding names. The City of Los Angeles. The City of Portland. The City of Denver.
Sommers, the engineer, had been married for 39 years and had no children. He'd started with the railroad in October 1918, a month before the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. By 1941 he'd been promoted to engineer.
As the fall of 1961 approached — just as Duane Harms was beginning to drive a school bus — Sommers had grabbed a coveted slot on the City of Denver, one of the regular trains that moved passengers across the West in the days before air travel was commonplace.
Sommers, based in Denver, would leave the city in the afternoon and run the eastbound train as far as Sterling, 125 miles away.
There, he'd climb down from the engine and head off the clock while another engineer took the next leg of the overnight trip.
Early the next morning, Sommers would take over the returning City of Denver and run it over the last stretch back into Union Station.
On this day, the train reached Fort Morgan, 40 miles from Greeley, around 7:30 a.m. The sun had cracked the eastern horizon 15 minutes earlier.
About the same time, Harms said goodbye to Judy and Lynda, stepped into the bus and started the defroster.
The windshield was clear, but the 6-degree weather had iced over the windows along the sides and back.
Harms found three children waiting for him in the first two rows behind his seat.
Normally, he would pick up Vicky, Gary and Johnny Munson near the end of his run. But their father, Raymond, didn't want them to wait out in the cold, so he dropped them off at the bus.
Vicky, 6, was a first-grader. Gary, 8, and Johnny, 9, were third-graders.
Harms put the bus in gear, pulled out and turned right to head north.
A couple hundred yards away, he stopped, grabbed the big chrome lever to his right and yanked open the folding door. Cindy Dorn, an 11-year-old sixth-grader who rode the bus each day with two of her cousins, hopped on and took a seat farther back in the bus.
On any other day it wouldn't matter where a child sat. But this day would be different. This day, it would be a matter of survival.
Hitching a ride
Down the road, 13-year-old Roger Reps stood at the end of his driveway.
He could see the school bus in the distance.
Normally he waited with his brother, Jimmy, but the 15-year-old was sick.
Just then, a neighbor pulled up and offered Roger a ride to town. The boy didn't know what to do.
"C'mon," the man said, and Roger opened the door and got in.
A little farther up the road, Harms passed by the home of another girl who was staying home sick.
Then he pulled up in front of the home of Eldon and Genevieve Yetter.
Harms usually picked up three passengers at this stop — the Yetter girls, Colleen, 13, and LaDean, 6; and their cousin, Jerry Hembry, 16, who lived with the family and was a sophomore at Greeley High School.
But Colleen and LaDean were moving slowly. They'd been out late the night before at a Christmas program rehearsal at their church.
LaDean's hair needed to be combed. Colleen wasn't ready, either.
Jerry was.
He pulled on his jacket and sprinted down the long driveway to catch the bus.
Though he usually sat about four rows back, he plopped down into the front seat, just behind the door, a deck of cards in his jacket pocket to help pass the time.
Harms pulled away.
At the next stop, along U.S. 34, Harms picked up the three Freeman children — Melody, 8, Joy, 10, and their brother, Smith, 7 — and Sherry Mitchell. Sherry, 6, had wanted to go to the hospital to see her dad, who had been injured by a steer at the meatpacking plant where he worked. But her mother decided Sherry should go to school and carried her to the bus as tears streamed down the girl's face.
Holiday time
At the next corner, Harms stopped for 8-year-old Randy Geisick, who clutched some wrapping paper as he took a seat up front.
He and his classmates had made Christmas gifts for their parents, and he was going to wrap his at school.
A little ways down the road, Harms picked up Alan and Debbie Stromberger. Alan, 10, took a seat in the second or third row. Debbie, 7, headed toward the back and sat down to pull on her galoshes.
Along this stretch of road, Harms missed more regulars — sisters who got a ride into town with their parents.
At the next intersection, Harms stopped for 13-year-old Cheryl Brown.
In her wallet was a Confederate $5 bill she'd found in the wall of her home.
Harms turned right and headed back west toward his starting place.
Before he got there, he stopped for the Alles girls.
Nancy Alles, 11, lived on the south side of the road, on a farm where her father had grown up. Her cousin, Linda Alles, 10, lived on the north side.
Both girls were cousins to Cindy Dorn, the first passenger Harms had picked up.
Nancy Alles sat next to Cheryl Brown in the fourth row. Cheryl pulled out her social studies papers to study for a test.
Linda Alles, carrying her brother's wrestling medal for show-and-tell at school, took her normal seat near the back of the bus.
After pulling away from the Alles homes, Harms drove back past the old Auburn school.
He'd driven a touch over four miles, cutting a giant square across the countryside.
He took a left and headed down the road about a half mile, where he stopped at the farm of Ed and Betty Heimbuck for their two girls, Pam, 9, and Kathy, 12.
Just after they got on the bus, Harms pulled up to a set of railroad tracks and stopped.
It was about 7:45 a.m.
The City of Denver streamliner raced along, less than 20 miles — and 15 minutes — away.
NEXT: A typical morning
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Edited by - 80-RE4 on 02/25/2007 08:27:57 AM |
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IC
Top Member
USA
3413 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2007 : 8:08:20 PM
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Fascinating reading, amtran.....many thanks for posting this.
I'm about halfway through it, I'll finish it tomorrow.
edited to add: a lot of the kids killed were about my age and the parents were about my parents' ages..... |
Edited by - IC on 02/26/2007 8:10:24 PM |
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80-RE4
Top Member
USA
5700 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2007 : 8:26:39 PM
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| Your welcome. The events that took place that day changed the lives of so many, even though 1961 was so long ago, I bet people still remember it like it was yesterday. At least they are still being remembered. |
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Thomas Ford 85-16
Top Member
USA
4177 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 6:49:38 PM
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| This important piece of history is no longer on the web. Appears that newspaper went out of business. Really, really sad. |
Mike's Bus Yard - http://buses.zwebpages.com - Since 1999
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History: The Crossing: Ch. 27 (12-14-1961) RR X
