Raynors HCA 2018-03
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 3/15/2018
A set of three mounted albumen photographs showing the aftermath of the train wreck, each 5-3/4” x 3-3/4” with notations on the reverse. The images show the derailed train and the men helping to clear the wreckage. Notations are "Wreck of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show near Lexington N.C. Oct. 29, 1901".... plus, “wreck of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on the Southern RR near Lexington NC, Oct. 29th, 1901.” ... plus, . “Wreck of BBWW Show near Lexington NC, Oct. 28th, 1901. Cody’s show had played to 12,000 in Charlotte and was hurtling through the night to Danville, Va., and the season’s finale. In Lexington, the engineer of a southbound freight ordered to a siding assumed that the three-unit show train was one unit, and pulled back onto the main line. It was approximately 3:20 a.m., some four miles west of Lexington, when the south-bound’s engineer, Frank Lynch, spotted the headlight of the show train’s (second) section punching a hole in the night. Lynch and his fireman jumped from their train into a swamp. Bud Rollins, engineer on the show train, and his fireman, also jumped before the inevitable crash. The railroad cars, largely wood, splintered into lethal shivers, impaling horses and cattle and buffalo. Fires broke out, and the cries of man and animal lifted in a pagan cacophony. Oscar Sink of Salisbury, a retired railroad man sent by Southern Railway to help clear the wreckage, says the engines seemed to have tried to devour each other. One had run through the other, then they reared off the tracks like two ancient beasts in a death duel. Cody’s horse was mangled, thrown from its car and found dead in the tender car. He also lost a pair of stallions given him by the Queen of England. Reportedly, he wept when he discovered them. In all, 110 horses, including such stalwart performers as “Old Pap” and “Old Eagle” were killed or had to be shot.
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