Mr. and Mrs. Carl Johnson, who lived on the William F. Flock farm, one and one-half miles north of McCue's corners, up to a few days ago were instantly killed when Northwestern passenger train No. 13 hit their small coach as they had just driven on a grade crossing at Bluffs signal tower a few miles east of Fulton Sunday afternoon about 2 o'clock.
The train was brought to a stop more than on half miles west of where the accident occurred after having carried the wreckage of the automobile partly on the pilot and rolled it over and over on the rails until the motor car was merely a mass o ftwisted and jammed metal and wood. The body of Mrs. Johnson was unrecognizable. Mr. Johnson's body was recognized by Whieside county officers as it lay in a morgue at Clinton.
No one except the engine men of the train saw the accident, but a few minutes after it occurred many motorists began to assemble at the scene, which was about 50 yards north of route 6. The nearest to an eye witnes was Catherine Harman, a young girl, living with her parents in a farm house facing the railroad and possibly 100 yards distant.
We were upstairs in the front room and as the train passed I looked as it went west and saw an automobile tire thrown from in front of the engine as it reached the bridge quite a piece west of the road." the little girl said. "We had not even seen an automobile traveling on the road." The signal man in the tower at Bluffs told a Gazette reporter he had not seen an auto anywhere on the road before the approach of the train.
