IowaWatch (https://www.iowawatch.org/tag/railroad-stories/)
The Justice Department announced a 22-count indictment Thursday against a Nebraska railroad services company and its owners related to an April 2015 explosion that killed two workers and seriously injured a third.
When Nixon “Nick” Denton died in January 1878, his friends in Manchester, Iowa, reminded people of a story Nick liked to tell about an encounter he had with a man who became president of the United States. Nick had been involved in the building of the Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) through Iowa in the 1850s. He had been hired by the company to survey land, and he was superintendent of construction of the lines. He had a sterling reputation, and a newspaper described him as “one of the noblest looking men in the state.”
Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays. Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, newspaper editor, and public television project manager.
When a passenger train crashed near Knoxville, Iowa, on Monday, May 24, 1909, J.M. Harrison, a detective with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, was baffled. Some clues led him to believe it was caused by a band of robbers who intended to steal valuables from passengers. Yet no robbery had taken place. It was an unsolved mystery for several days. But by Thursday Harrison and Knoxville’s deputy sheriff had two little rascals in custody.