At 3:23 a.m., the double-engined streamliner, Red Arrow, bellowed out of a black Allegheny Mountain tunnel and began a long downgrade run for the famed Bennington Curve.* She was an hour late. Conductor J. A. McCormick felt the speedup as he walked through the lounge car toward a Pullman up ahead. Suddenly he stopped: "I sensed something—I don't know what—telling me to wait a bit."
He waited less than a minute. Driving into the curve ten miles west of Altoona, Pa., the lead locomotive of the crack Pennsylvania sleeper lost its footing. With...
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