Engineer's Avoidance of Train Wreckage
Published October 11, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
A twelve-year-old boy named John Kay placed a heavy cross tie on the switch of the Hot Springs Road to derail a dummy train. The engineer, seeing the obstruction in the glare of the headlight, stopped the train just in time, averting a disaster.
In Their Own Words
“John Kay, a twelve - year old boy living near the soap works, on the line of the Hot Springs Road, near Salt Lake City, was arrested on November 1, for an attempt to wreck one of the Hot Springs’ dummy trains. The boy had taken a heavy cross tie and fastened it at the switch, east of the Hot Springs lake, in such a manner that the train would be thrown from the track. The engineer, however, caught sight of the obstruction in the glare of the headlight, and stopped the train in time to avert an accident. — Millennial Star 54:48”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 28 November 1892 (Vol. 54, No. 48). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1892-11-28_54_48 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high)
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