Excerpted from an article originally appearing in the Southwest Daily Times
Five men were injured when the Gold Ball, a crack fast freight train of the Rock Island railway, crashed through the flood torn bridge across the Cimarron River near Arkalon, piling up the huge engine and 12 freight and tank cars in the river's swollen waters, early the morning of August 18, 1938. The huge engine, the largest on the lines, crashed through the bridge at 3:17 that morning. The time was determined by the time Carl Powell's watch stopped.
Four of the injured men were members of the train crew, only the conductor was uninjured. The fifth, Gene Simpson, an 18-year-old Cheney Kansas, transient, was the hero of the wreck as he lay in a bed in Epworth hospital, a patch on the point on his chin covering a laceration, ''too stiff and sore to move much.'' Simpson dragged Carl M. Powell, Pratt, fireman on the train, from the wreckage of the engine in the river, then from a sinking tank car on the remaining part of the bridge.
The injured and their injuries, were: Walter Walker, Pratt, engineer, bruises and cuts, shock, injured ankle; Carl M. Powell, Pratt, fireman, most severely injured, chest, head, wrist and knee injuries, shock and water in lungs; E. E. Holder, Pratt, brakeman, scalp laceration, bruises and cuts, shock; C.H. Inman, Pratt, brakeman, back injury, bruises and shock; Gene Simpson, Cheney, transient, bruises and lacerations.
Walker, Powell and Holder were riding in the train cab when it crashed. Inman was in the caboose, and was thrown forward by the sudden stop. Simpson and two companions were in an open boxcar, near the front of the train. There was no way to know the number of transients, but some thought there was as many as 20. Two transients lost their lives in the crash.
"Everything looked all right," Walker said. "We couldn't tell that there was anything wrong with the bridge. The automatic blocking lights were green, as the rails had not been severed to break the connection." (On the automatic blocking system a broken rail, a section of the track out, or anything of that nature breaks a circuit and turns on a red light behind the point to warm oncoming trains.)
''The river was high, and it must have washed out or weakened the pilings under the bridge. The track and road bed were still there, and you couldn't tell anything was wrong with it. I had just released the air, after coming down the hill, then just as we ran onto the bridge the track gave way. One second the track was in front of us and the next second there was nothing.
"As the engine plunged into the river, my sensation was more of crashing, snapping timbers and piles than of falling. I certainly thought it was my final run. Then there was water all around me, I seemed to find an opening and floated to the surface and crawled out onto the wreckage that was above water. I must have come through a window of the cab. The cab was completely under water, I believe."
Simpson and his buddy were on their way to Alma, Colorado, and from his hospital bed Simpson gave this account: "I guess I was asleep before the crash. My partners Lee Mellis of Fredonia, and another man and I were riding in an open boxcar near the front of the train. I woke up and saw Lee standing in the door of the car, then there was a terrible crash and bumping and the car seemed to fall away. I must have been unconscious for a minute, because the next thing I remember I was under water with boards and timbers knocking me around. I don't know how far under water. I came up and couldn't see anything of the boxcar we had been riding in. I don't know whether it was smashed to kindling or whether it sank.
''The brakeman and the engineer were standing on some of the wreckage and said the fireman was caught down there, so we went down and pulled him out. We pulled him up onto one of the tank cars that had piled in on top, and the brakeman and the engineer went to get a rope to help pull him up onto the tank.
''While they were gone the oil tank started to settle and roll, and I helped the fireman off the tank and onto the bridge. We both sat down to rest. I didn't realize I'd been hurt until I started to get up a little later. I was so stiff and sore I couldn't move."
The wreck took place at the east end of the Arkalon bridge across the Cimarron river. The east end of the bridge, over the principal channel was washed away the spring before by high water. This wreck occurred at the same section of the bridge.
Two cars washed down the river about a half mile. One boxcar, about fifty yards downstream had sunk so deep that only about a foot of the top of the car showed. The river was high and running swiftly, but not as high as at other flood stages in past years.