Dozens were killed or injured in 1903 train crash
The Daily Progress staff reports Jul 7, 2017

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Details of a deadly train wreck in Nelson County filled the July 8, 1903 edition of The Daily Progress.

”Train No. 35 over the Southern Railroad, known as the United States fast mail, which left this city yesterday afternoon at 2:35 o’clock, twenty-five minutes late, ran into an open switch at Rockfish, twenty miles south of the Union Station at 3 o’clock and collided with freight train No. 68. Twenty-two persons are known to be killed and ten injured. The freight train had just been shifted from the main track to the siding, and the failure to close the switch led to the terrible result chronicled above.

“The engines were driven from the track on opposite sides. The first passenger coach, a second class car, was telescoped on the combination baggage and express car, the latter coach plunging up from the track and into the passenger coach and grinding along the full length of the passenger coach at about the height of the seats, crushing the lives out of most of those in the car.

“There was but one physician on the train. This was Dr. William A. Lambeth of the University of Virginia.”

Lambeth Stadium at UVa was named in his honor 10 years later.

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