Huge original antique print from an 1880s illustrated journal. It depicts a very dramatic scene as a barrow-gauge passenger railroad train fights its way through an oil spill and lights it on fire. It was the Bradford, Bordell & Kinzua (BB&K) in Smethport near Bradford Pennsylvania. Many people were killed.
It started when a 250-barrel tank leased by the Anchor Oil Company leaked and ran down a hill upon and along the railroad track. It was night and the oil was concealed by the snow. The engineer came so suddenly upon the oil, if indeed he noticed it in quantities to excite alarm, that he could not stop. The gas immediately caught from the fire in the boiler and the flames spread along the oily pathway with the rapidity of lightning, so that the train ran through a fiery pathway for several hundred feet, splashing the burning oil upon the cars.
This print will come with a Certificate of Authenticity.