Robert James Russell

I’m busy putting the finishing touches on a few short stories I started a while back, all of which I’m lumping together as “Westerns” even though they may not be Westerns in the traditional sense (I suppose Victorians would be more appropriate?).  Anyway, one of my very favorites, “Dark Horse,” is about the Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster that happened in northeastern Ohio on December 29, 1876.  At the time, it was one of the worst train disasters that had ever occurred in America, and resulted in more rigorous standards for bridge engineering.  My story focuses more on the people on the train, rather than the disaster itself, but I love writing the details of landscape, as I’ve mentioned before, so took advantage of the grim scene.  Anyway, figured I’d post one of my favorite bits, from the actual crash.

Hope you enjoy. More to come soon.

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At 7:28 PM Dan MacGuire heard a crack as the Socrates crossed the Ashatabula Bridge one thousand feet east of the Ashatabula station, more than two hours delayed from the intended schedule. He uttered “Goddamn” to himself as three I beams of the southern portion of the upper chord of the bridge buckled under the weight in a continuous lapse of time, the trailing engine Columbia sinking with the bowed structure in spectacular fashion. He was shaken from place then ran to the throttle and ratcheted it in a large fulcrummed pull in hopes the engine would clear the west abutment. As the lead engine passed safely over the span the deck of the bridge shifted heavy and leaned to the south causing the engine to derail. Dan coughed and wheezed and cursed and ran to the window and looked out to see the first express car slide down the west abutment and to the bottom of the ravine some distance below, tugging and pulling the Columbia with it until the meticulous and rigid tenets of physics caused the engine to land upside down on top of it, crushing the car like tin.

The second express car and subsequent two baggage cars followed and fell to the south side of the bridge as the rest of the wood from the bridge deck collapsed in on itself and cascaded down in a shower of splinters and bolted pieces. The first two passenger coaches likewise smashed into the ravine in crooked and jarred ways, the sound like drummed thunder while the smoking car crashed into both, decimating any trace of its purpose from that moment onward and killing all inside.

The drawing-room car and sleepers managed to land to the side of the bridge, spared from tumbling the length of the chasm but still bent and destroyed and spread among the white and ice. Car repairer Tim Sullivan gathered himself to his feet and launched himself from the train heaving a heavy-iron lantern above his head and shouting wildly for the station manager and repeating “No. 5 is off the bridge!” as the Socrates likewise whistled for attention. The crash attracted the attention of a throng of men and women at the station and like moths to light they crept forth in the night toward small fires that rose up in various increments of the wreck while telegraph operator John. P. Manning returned to his post, anxious to alert the authorities of what had transpired.

What follows is the abandoned opener to another Western short story I wrote a while back that I’m just now putting the finishing touches on.  I discovered, during my Sepia Phase (for lack of a better description) that I really enjoy writing about landscapes.  There’s just something melodic about it.  Anyway, I came across this and thought it might be good to share.

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Clairmont sat nestled between peaks of the Mogollon Mountains that rose like green-mossed tortoise shells from the earth, humped in sloping arcs and generous inclines into rounded peaks thick with Sycamore and ash and cottonwood. It was a small town that originated as a mining camp but fell short of this ambition with a scarcity of rich veins in the vicinity. It now survived only as a supply center for itinerant prospectors bound for Glenwood or Cooney, sating its meager population with the lucrative draw of retail to the color-mongers. Scattered patches of range-land moated the settlement, filled with course grasses and dicotted forbs and mesquite with its narrow and bipinnated leaves drinking from some deep watertable, their wooded formations and needled thorns like some abysmal blanket on the land. The scrubland brushed back into dense clusters of Ponderosa that lied at the base of the rocky bluffs with its redbrown  knotted bark that tanged like vanilla if caught just right on the wind, encapsulated in what would later be known as the Gila Wilderness.