A rewrite of a news story from Bismarck Tribune dated Tuesday January 16, 1951.
This story is not much different from the Mandan Daily Pioneer story.  Only the opening paragraph is different.  The picture caption has the wrong spelling of my Dad's name.  Temperature that day in Bismarck North Dakota was 28 degrees.

Railman Dies in Crash

2 NP Trains Hit Head-on Near Mandan


A student Fireman was killed, and a veteran engineer scaled and bruised when a Northern Pacific coal train smashed head on into another freight on a branch-line curve north of Mandan late Monday.

B. B. Rogers of Glendive Mont., student fireman on the moving train was killed.  The engineer, Joe Wirtz of Mandan, scaled by steam and “suffering terribly from shock,” his wife said, was confined to his home.

The crash occurred a mile south of the village of Harmon, N. D., or about 12 miles north of Mandan.  The locomotives were wrecked and about 15 cars were derailed.

Art Hammerel of Mandan, engineer on a locomotive that was pulling a train of empty coal cars northward, said his and the southbound coal train were to have met and passed at a switch at Harmon.

When his train was about 40 car lengths from the switch into which he was to have driven his engine, he said, he saw the other train swing around a curve.

When the other locomotive showed no indication of stopping, Hammerel said, he ground his train to a halt, and both he and his fireman, Andy Ehlis of Mandan, jumped from their engine and ran into a field.

They were about 200 feet from the track, Hammerel said, when the southbound locomotive crashed into their engine.  A second before the crash, Hammerel added, they saw Engineer Wirtz dive from his cab to the ground.

Mrs. Wirtz said the in addition to suffering from burns and shock, her husband suffered severe bruises.

Hammerel said Rogers appeared to be dead in the cab of his engine immediately after the collision.  Railroaders said this was Rogers’ first run in this area, and that they were not acquainted with him.  His body was removed to a funeral home here.

Wirtz and Hammerel, friends of long standing, had been engineers on the branch line for several years.

Some of the derailed cars were a mess of twisted wreckage.  The engines remained on the tracks but part of both tenders was derailed.

The front parts  of the engines didn’t appear too badly damaged but the cab of the southbound freight, in which Rogers was riding, was badly smashed.

The accident occurred a short distance from where two trains met in a rear end collision about a year ago.

A wrecker was dispatched to the scene last night to begin the task of pulling the wreckage apart.  One NP official said he hoped the track could be cleared by some time Wednesday.