Area railroad jobs were dangerous, deadly for workers

In this April 1936 photo taken at the C&A shops on Bloomington�s west side, a 200-ton crane lifts a steam locomotive in preparation for scheduled maintenance or repairs. Railroad workers, whether riding the rails or back in the shops, faced dangerous working conditions. (Pantagraph file photo)

Saturday, September 1, 2007 10:02 PM CDT

By Bill Kemp
Archivist/Librarian McLean County Museum of History

BLOOMINGTON — On Feb. 25, 1921, “death came fantastic with horror” when a storage tank explosion tossed Harold Downey’s whirling, lifeless body 200 feet into the air. A Chicago & Alton Railroad boilermaker, Downey’s fatal accident reminds us of the untold number of railroad workers who lost their lives toiling in one of the more vital and dangerous industries in U.S. history.

On that Friday afternoon, Downey, who worked at the C&A shops on Bloomington’s west side, was sent to repair a leaking gasoline storage tank. When he entered through a manhole at the top, his lighted torch ignited the escaping fumes. “His body was propelled upwards with a force, the intensity of which can only be imagined,” the Pantagraph reported.

Although the number of local railroad workers killed on the job is unknown, the McLean County Museum of History holds a collection of newspaper clippings detailing almost 100 such fatalities dating from the mid-1850s through the 1940s.

Bloomington’s first two railroads — the Illinois Central and what would become the C&A — first reached Bloomington in 1853. Though this steam-and-steel revolution promised wealth and opportunity, it was also unforgiving.

For example, on Jan. 12, 1910, C&A brakeman A.K. Hoover was killed in Bloomington while connecting a brake line between two cars. “The head had been severed from the body, and the wheels had crossed over his chest, cutting him in two again,” read one newspaper account.

On Sept. 7, 1920, the boiler of a northbound C&A freight locomotive exploded just south of Shirley, killing engineer Thomas Griffin, fireman W.L. Robbins and brakeman H.C. Miller. “With a thunderous roar, heard three miles distant,” noted the Pantagraph, “the fifty-ton mass of metal hurtled several hundred feet into the air, making several revolutions and then falling sideways across the tracks ahead of the train.”

Griffin’s lifeless body was found atop the embankment. Robbins, badly scalded and buried under debris, lived for five hours before passing away at Brokaw Hospital. Miller died on the way to the hospital.

The C&A shops, where the boilermaker Downey died, was the hub of rail activity in the Bloomington area. The complex of buildings and railyard was a city unto itself, as carpenters, machinists, electricians, painters, laborers and other skilled and unskilled workers rebuilt locomotives and repaired and manufactured rail cars.

Up through the 1940s, the C&A was the largest employer in Bloomington. Thus, it’s not surprising that the many railroad deaths occurred in and near there.

For instance, 17-year-old Joseph Orr, a C&A “caller,” was killed on July 8, 1912. Orr had left the roundhouse office to call an engineer for switch engine service when he ran into a string of cinder cars obscured by coal dust. His leg was amputated, and he died five days later.

On March 21, 1943, engineer Ray E. Fleming was killed when a freight locomotive sideswiped his yard engine. His body, burned by escaping steam, was found buried in the cab’s twisted wreckage.

Fleming was 40 years old, having worked for the C&A since the age 13 or 14. He died a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and like many of his co-workers, attended St. Patrick’s Church on Bloomington’s west side.

Plenty of men also died building the railroads that crisscrossed Central Illinois. In Funks Grove Cemetery, there’s a six-foot Celtic cross marking the mass grave of more than 50 Irish rail workers who died during the construction of the Alton and Sangamon (later the C&A) Railroad from Springfield to Bloomington.

A marker below the cross reads, in part: “Known but to God, they rest here in individual anonymity — far from the old home of their hearts — yet forever short of the new homes of their hopes.”