Patterson No. 2 Mine Disaster
July 30, 1915
9 Killed

An outside haulage accident occurred at the Patterson No. 2 Mine, near Elizabeth, PA., at 2:30 p.m. July 30, 1915, resulting in the death of eighteen men and injuried to seventeen.  A loaded trip of eighteen cars broke away after coming out of the drift mouth and ran down the 1000 foot incline finally plunging off the tipple, (over 40 feet high) and into a section gang of 27 railway laborers. Two coal company employees were killed on the tipple, and seven of the section men underneath.  The incline and tipple had just been partially completed and had only been in operation three days at the time the accident occurred.

On the outside a new single track incline has recently been completed down the hillside into Lovedale hollow where the new tipple has been erected.  This hollow where the slope-mouth to the tipple approach is about one thousand feet in length and the average grade 16 to 17 per cent.

The tipple structure, which is 40 feet above the tracks, is built at an angle to the right from the tipple approach.  It was this curve in the track which caused the runaway trip to leap from the tipple instead of crashig directly through the partially constructed tipplehouse.

About 2;30 p.m. a loaded trip of 18 cars had just come out of the slope mouth, when suddenly the attachment broke between the last car and the haulage rope, and the entire trip started down the incline rapidly gaining momentum as it went.  The safety switch located above the tipple approach apparently failed to derail any portion of the flying trip, which swept the full length of the tipple approach and then plunged off the tipple slightly beyond the point of curvature in the track.

Four men were working on the tipple, two of whom managed to escape with slight injuries, but the Superintendent and a workman were both caught and crushed to death near the dump, where the run away trip sideswiped the structural steel frame work causing these two men to be caught in the wreckage.  Twenty-seven section men were working on the ballasting of the tracks at a point in line with the approaching trip, but at least 100 feet distant (Horizontally) from the place where the trip leaped from the tipple.

The rushing trip, weighting at least 48 tons, leaped this entire distance,and caught many of the section men as it fell.  Seven men were killed, some of them completely buried under the falling cars and coal.  The debris from this wrecked trip, on the evening of the accident, covered a space about 50 feet long by 20 feet wide, the trip having apparently remained almost intact until it struck the ground.  Some of the tipplemen, on the railway cars above the tipple shouted a warning to the section men, but the plunging trip struck among them just as they started to run away.

A break in the clevis to which the trip was coupled had apparently permitted the loaded trip to get away.  A piece about 4 inches long had been broken from the eye of the clevis, thus permitting the coupling to slip out and freeing the trip.  The clevis had been made from 1 1/2 inch iron and was strongly socketed to the 1 1/2 inch cable.  At the point where the fracture occurred there was apparently an inner defect in the welding, the outside rim, however, appearing smooth and substantial; so that, it would have been difficult to have detected this defect by inspection.
(U.S. Bureau of Mines Report.)

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