Digital Tradition Mirror

The Wreck Between New Hope and Gethsemane

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

The Wreck Between New Hope and Gethsemane
(Karl Davis, Harty Taylor and Dock Hopkins)

Once two trains with mighty power
Running sixty miles an hour,
'Twas a fearful speed between midnight and day,
Stergin must have been asleep,
Passed the point he had to meet,
And it caused an awful wreck along the way.

cho: Dark was the night,
     Men worked with all their might,
     In that wreck about two o' clock or three,
     'Twas a morning in November
     Long to be remembered,
     That wreck between New Hope and Gethsemane.

Stergin the engineer was brave
Saw his train he could not save
Saw a headlight round the curve like lightning flash;
Another train was heading on
He soon saw that he was gone
And they came together with an awful crash.

When the morning light it came
All around the burning train
Many friends and many loved ones gathered there
Fast beneah that burning train
They saw their friends they could not save
So they turned away almost in sad despair.

Many lives of men were lost
And most fearful was the cost
THat the L and N Company did sustain,
'Twas the darkest hour that night
People gathered to that fright
But they could not save them from that burning train.

Copyright M.M. Cole Publishing 1936
From Scalded to Death by the Steam, Lyle
note: The wreck happened November, 1903 in Kentucky
RG
Apr98

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!