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The Ashtabula Disaster

Chapter 32: Transcribers’ Notes
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About This Book

The narrative reconstructs a catastrophic railroad bridge collapse and its aftermath from the vantage of a local, eyewitness chronicler. It combines a close account of the bridge, stormy night, crash, fire, rescue and morgue scenes with portraits of survivors, bereaved visitors, and scenes of public agitation. The text recounts searches for relics, allegations of robbery, legal and engineering debates over iron bridge safety, and the coroner's inquiry and legislative attention that followed. Interwoven are personal anecdotes of kindness, memorial services, and religious reflection offered as consolation, together with practical calls for improved inspection, safeguards, and train-stopping measures.

Transcribers’ Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; heavy use of commas has been retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

With the exception of the Frontispiece, all uncaptioned illustrations are decorative tailpieces.

Page vi: “Westenhouse was printed that way.”

Page 134: Quotation marks added to surround the paragraph beginning “In the coming down”.

Page 143: Closing quotation mark added to the paragraph ending “upon the suffering.”

Page 151: The closing quotation mark in paragraph ending “the Lord knoweth them that are his.” appears to represent the close of a quotation within a quotation.

Page 170: Extraneous closing quotation mark deleted following “she wore a heavy, plain, gold ring.”