It doesn’t take long for anyone perusing the history of Hurleyville to discover that February has not always been a particularly good month for the hamlet.

For one thing, the most tragic hotel fire in the annals of Sullivan County took place at Shindler’s Prairie House in Hurleyville in February of 1926. Twelve people perished in that blaze, which had a long-lasting impact on the hotel industry and the laws that govern it.

And it was in February of 1901 that two trains collided not far from the Hurleyville train station, resulting in a disastrous fire that killed one passenger and injured dozens of others. Two train cars were completely destroyed in that incident, as were 600 pieces of mail.

And one of the worst accidents in Sullivan County railroad history occurred just a few hundred yards from the hamlet’s Main Street late in the afternoon of February 13, 1907. That’s the day the boiler exploded on an O&W passenger train just before it reached the Hurleyville station, instantly killing two railroad men and severely injuring the train’s engineer, who would die a few days later. Twelve passengers were hurt when the train careened off the tracks.

It wasn’t just the death toll that made the incident one of the O&W’s worst ever, but the gruesome nature of the explosion. The force of the blast sent pieces of the train and the bodies of the dead crew members hurtling through the air, some landing hundreds of feet from the scene. The engine’s bell was not found until nearly a month after the explosion. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, the engine was drawing the No. 3 train, “one of the finest on the road” and was doing about 40 miles per hour when “suddenly there was a terrible roar and the sound of ripping and tearing of iron. The train of cars rammed the wreck and four of them left the rails. When the steam cleared, there was nothing but scrap iron left of the locomotive.”

The train had originated in Weehawken, N.J. around noon that day, heading for the mountains with about 50 passengers. It had pulled out of Middletown about 3 p.m. and had just emerged from the rock cut known as the Smith Hill Cut when the explosion occurred. The train was within sight of the Hurleyville station at the time, and some accounts of the day noted that passengers waiting for the train had seen it approaching in the distance and then watched in horror as it was engulfed in smoke and steam.

Writing in his epic 1970 book, “To the Mountains by Rail,” former Sullivan County Historian Manville B. Wakefield described the engine as being “literally torn apart in an explosion that, by word of mouth and photographic coverage, ultimately achieved legendary proportions. The explosion of the boiler tore the ground beneath the engine as if a heavy charge of explosives had been set off, driving the rails apart for a distance of a hundred feet. The force of the blast also threw the baggage car and smoker down the embankment and the remaining cars from the rails with the parlor car blocking the southbound tracks.”

There was some speculation at the time that dynamite had caused the explosion, and stories circulated that either intentionally or by accident the dynamite had been mixed in with the coal that was being used to feed the boiler. The railroad eventually debunked that theory and suggested instead that the water lines feeding the boiler had frozen, causing the boiler to run low on water and to overheat. That overheating then thawed the lines, allowing cold water into the boiler and causing the explosion.

Some railroad experts have in turn called that scenario extremely unlikely, pointing out that an explosion resulting from such an occurrence would have looked a lot different than what actually occurred. No official determination has ever been made as to the cause of the explosion and subsequent wreck. To further add to the speculation, one newspaper reported after the incident that just the night before, the train’s fireman, Martin Mullen, who was believed to have been killed instantly in the explosion, had been involved in an altercation with “some Italians” who vowed “to get him.” Perhaps by planting dynamite in the train’s stockpile of coal?

The body of the train’s engineer, William Gadwood of Walton, NY, was discovered more than 100 feet from the wreck. Gadwood was alive but severely injured when found, his skull fractured in several places, and he died shortly afterward. Mullen’s mangled body - he was believed to have been killed instantly in the explosion - was found 100 feet in the opposite direction. A third man, later identified as O&W employee J.D. Vulquette, was also killed in the explosion. Vulquette, it was learned, was not actually working at the time, but had recently been assigned to the run, that assignment to take effect shortly, and had hitched a ride on the train to acquaint himself with the territory. It turned out to be an ill-fated decision.

A wreck-related decision that turned out much better for the decider involved noted Hurleyville photographer L.G. Laidlaw, who was on the scene shortly after the explosion. As Wakefield writes in “To the Mountains by Rail,” officials from the O&W “approached Laidlaw while shooting the wreck and offered him $50.00 for the negatives—an offer which he shrewdly refused. The orders for pictures came in at such a fast rate that the long hours in the darkroom all but ruined the photographer’s eyesight.” Several of Laidlaw’s photos of the wreck can still be found in circulation, nearly 120 years later.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at jconway52@hotmail.com.