On the 13th day of October 2005 at 11:45 pm my friend and I left my house for Harmon North Dakota to see the wreck site. This trip would be 54 years, 8 months, and 29 days after the wreck and the first time I had ever been there! It was a 392 mile trip with one stop in Glendive to gas up. We did stop on the side of the road to take a short snooze near Mandan.
I have Degenerative Arthritis of the Lumbar Spine and I take morphine to try to control the pain. It is hard for me to ride in a car for any length of time and on this 8 hour long trip the pain became so bad that it made me sick. The trip itself was about 6 hours but we added in a couple of hours to get out of the car and stretch our legs and get gas. Still the pain got bad enough to make me sick.
The 14th was a cold windy day as we drove north on highway 1806 to the wreck site. When we got there I found that there was a new road over the tracks within 200 feet of the wreck site. That made it real easy for me to get to the wreck site.
In this first picture, 54 years, 8 months, and 29 days after the wreck, I am looking north in the direction that Extra 1837 West was moving.
The picture below shows the area 54 years, 8 months, and 29 days after the wreck!
Andy Mork's Account of the Harmon wreck:
The Harmon Train Wreck of January 15, 1951
On that memorable afternoon...
My two friends, Don Shaw and Bevan Shaw, and I were cutting ash trees on my land, the southwest corner of the NE ¼ of Sec 17, Township 140, Range 81. We were miles east of the then Northern Pacific Railroad tracks. The day was beautifully clear with no wind- a great North Dakota winter day. As we worked, Bevan remarked that we could hear sounds for miles around. He stopped and noticed that we could hear a train coming from the south and another from the north. This was not unusual since the trains often met at Harmon with the empty train going on the side track there to allow the loaded train, usually the southbound, to continue south.
We continued working, but suddenly stopped when we noticed the trains were not stopping! We waited for the inevitable crash which was loud and long since the momentum of the heavily loaded southbound caused it to continue running into the cars and the locomotive and its coal tender for what seemed a long time.
We hurried over to the wreck site and, in visiting with the train crew and the section men there, learned the details of the wreck.
The north bound train, which was to go into siding at Harmon, was slowing down as they approached the siding switch. They suddenly noticed that the southbound train was not slowing and that a crash was inevitable. They, the engineer (Art Hammerel), fireman (Andy Ehlis) and head brakeman (Akie Koch), set the brakes, tied the whistle on and jumped off and fled their locomotive, which was almost stopped. When the crash occurred, their train, the north bound train, was completed stopped.
The southbound train, with engineer Joe Wirtz and fireman Bill Rogers, had received orders at Sanger to meet the northbound train at Harmon and allow it to go into the siding. However, the engineer, who reportedly habitually used alcohol, failed to obey the stop and meet order. The section men were at the Harmon station ¾ mile north of the wreck site as the southbound train went by. They were aware of the stop order and could see that a crash would happen if the train was not stopped. They tried to flag the train down, only to have a “hi fellows” wave back from the engineer, as the locomotive went by. However, the conductor in the caboose of the south bound saw and realized the danger and set the train brakes from the caboose. The engineer, finally seeing the north bound train and perhaps hearing its whistle, also dynamited the breaks and jumped out of this window at the last moment. The fireman, Bill Rogers, who was on his first senior run, apparently did not have enough time to get out of the locomotive and, as his body showed when they removed him, was killed immediately by the hot, high pressure steam from the broken pipes. The whistle of the northbound train continued to blow the rest of the day until the steam was exhausted; a mournful sound reminding us that a death of a young man had happened.
At the site, the section foreman, Braaten, expressed his intense anger saying the wreck was entirely unnecessary, if the engineer had only obeyed his stop order or even if he had obeyed his frantic waving.
Another wreck happened at the same site about a year earlier when a northbound work train loaded with gravel ran into the tear of another northbound which had stopped to enter the side track. Apparently, the south train assumed the north train was already in siding and couldn’t stop when they first saw the other train. The conductor and brakeman of the north train had fled the caboose so there were no injuries, although, the caboose and several cars and their contents were destroyed.
The siding at Harmon has been discontinued and a farm road crosses tile track near the wreck site. The trains now are radio controlled, which will hopefully prevent any future accidents. This branch rail line, now the Burlington Northern, serves several coal mines, power plants, a gasification plant, and a 100 car wheat loading elevator, and therefore, continues very busy.
10-10-05
Andy Mork
3362 22nd Ave
Mandan, ND 58554
701-663-3840
Andy and I on the track at the wreck site:
