The Mountain Line Accident

The Mountain Line was a rail line built by the Akron & Cuyahoga Rapid Transit Co. in the late 1800s. This line originally ran from Front Street in Cuyahoga Falls across the Glen Bridge to Bettes Corners. It continued by private right of way to Furnace Street in Akron on to Main Street. In 1894 the Cuyahoga Rapid Transit Co. continued the line on to Barberton. In 1895 they took the line farther and ran it east to Kent. Also in 1895 the company created a shorter line that ran along side of Silver Lake and into Randolph.

Statements made by the city officials of Cuyahoga Falls, and the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Co.

In falling the car turned over end for end. Both trucks were detached from the floor frame when the car struck. The roof and sides were crushed by the impact like an egg- shell hit with a heavy hammer.

The city officials of the Falls went on to blame the accident onto the carelessness of the N.O.T. work train, who on the same afternoon dunned loads of cinders along the car line. They contended that the cinders were carried by the car wheels on to the bridge and therefore caused the front truck to leave the rail.F. I. Hardy, General Supt. of the N.O.T. had this to say, "I think it was a defect in the rolling stock and not from cinders being the trick." Publicity Manager Fenton of the N.O.T. said, "It was unreasonable to think that cinders caused the front truck to leave the track on a 12 ton car".
2d. D. Eckroad, chief engineer of the N.O.T. said, "Either a broken flange or axle or a defect in the track would cause an accident of that nature."

June 11, 1918 was a warm, clear Tuesday. It had been a relatively uneventful day as well untill that afternoon. The 4:00 pm run on the Mountain Line from Akron to Cuyahoga Falls was a little late. Car number 350 was in control by motorman, Leroy Bessemer and conductor, O.D. Gilmore. Car #350 had made a stop on the east side of the Glen Bridge at Prospect Street to let two passengers off. It then moved on to the bridge at a slow speed. Halfway across the bridge, the front trucks and wheels ran off the rail and a section of the bridge's wooden floor broke away. The steel railing on the bridge gave way and car #350 went over the edge plunging 105 feet into the Cuyahoga River below. The crew from another car that was sitting idle across the bridge on the crossover at Front Street, which was the bridge's west end, saw first-hand, the accident take place. This car was the Akron-Kent-Revenna car. Immediately, the conductor on this idle car was lowered by a rope over the cliffside by people who heard the crash and came to see and help out however they could. This is that conductor's eyewitness account of what he saw:
"I was the first human being to witness the results of this terrible accident, up close. I was being lowered down to the wreck, I could only see two bodies. The up river currents of air made landing difficult on the rocks in the river bottom. As my main interest was to get aid to the injured, I located the bodies as fast as possible, and had the people on the bridge pull them up, The only person I believed was alive, and made a determined effort to save, was Luizzi Pellogione, an Italian lad, who had been thrown clear of the wreckage into deep water., His feeble efforts was to no avail as he drowned before I could get help to him. By this time, men had reached the scene from other places and I was extremely glad to turn this gruesome job over to them."

Once the railroad authorities arrived, and the rescuing conductor on the rope was pulled back up, he was taken into custody by the N.O.T. officials. He was held in a downtown Akron office for 36-hours so, as the officials put it, "he couldn't talk to anyone."
Motorman Leroy Bessemer was brought up and proclaimed deceased as was Henry VanLoosen, a machinist. They were put into the "dead wagon". But someone took notice of a slight movement by Bessemer and quickly called one of the doctors over to check him. The doctor did a close examination and discovered both Bessemer and VanLoosen were alive...bearly! Both men had broken legs and fractured skulls. But as it turned out, both men recovered and lived normal lives for many more years. They both spent several months in the hospital. In total, four people died and two were badly injured.
For three hours after the accident, a crowd of men including the Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department worked frantically trying to get to the bottom of the pile of wreakage looking for more victims possibly in the water. No one that was not on the rail car could know how many were actually riding it at the time of the accident. So rescuers had no idea how many victims they were looking for. When the car fell from the bridge, it fell end over end and landed up-side-down in a shallow part of the river that was loaded with rocks. The wooden body of the car splintered on impact and was instantly crushed by the weight of the steel undercarriage and the trucks and wheels. As one report stated, "the roof and sides were crushed by the impact like an eggshell by a hammer." Rescuers cut three large holes into the upturned floor of the car to try to get to the trapped victims.

The four dead were identified as C.C. Haye, a resident from Cuyahoga Falls, Every Pryor, a Cuyahoga Falls businessman, O.D. Gilmore, a trolley conductor and Luzzi Pellegione, a young resident of Akron. (This was the youth that drowned discribed by the conductor who went down on the rope). The two injured was Leroy Bessemer, the motorman who sustained a scalp wound and a broken leg and Henry VanLoosen, a machinist from Cuyahoga Falls who had a possible skull fracture.
For many, many years after the accident, when the water in the area of the river was low, people could see bits and pieces of the wreakage below the bridge between the water and the rocks.

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Description of the N. O. T. & L. Car #350

Statements made by the city officials of Cuyahoga Falls, and the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Co.

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