Word: caldarelli
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...train pulled off the main line and onto a siding about five miles south of the little cattle town of Springer, N. Mex., to let the Santa Fe's Los Angeles-bound streamliner, the Chief, roar past. As the mail train slid to a stop, Fireman Pete Camilo Caldarelli, 44, climbed down out of the locomotive and walked through the chill desert air to a switch up ahead. The job he had to do was one he had done many times in the past: stand by until the streamliner had passed, then set the switch to let his train...
...Chief's lights came sweeping out of the darkness, the mail train whistled on the siding, and Caldarelli suddenly raced across the track, opened two locks and threw the switch. The streamliner, instead of rushing past at 40 to 45 m.p.h. on the main line, roared into the open switch, onto the siding, and plowed head on into the mail train. One Pullman car, flung into the air by the force of the crash, dropped atop a dormitory car in which the Chief's dining-car employees were asleep; the next Pullman rammed into the crushed dormitory...
...clean-up crews struggled with the tangled wreckage, Caldarelli went before a coroner's jury. Why had he rushed over to throw the switch the wrong way? Dazedly, Caldarelli could only say: "It suddenly occurred to me that there must be something wrong with the switch. I don't know what made me think that." The jury returned a noncommittal verdict of accidental death...
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