Postcards Document Early Train Wreck

"Plane crashes are today’s headlines, but train wrecks were the major newsmakers 100 years ago," writes reporter Matt Surtel on New York's Daily News website.

According to Matt, local resident Mark Milcarek came across four old postcards that documented a train wreck that happened more than a hundred years ago.

"The resulting impact was horrific. It left locomotives, train cars and wreckage strewn over the countryside. Photographs taken the next morning were quickly made into postcards," pens Matt.

Mark, who found the images online, is quoted as saying, "I just came across them and because they had a date and some information with them, they were something you could trace.”

After buying the postcards, Mark began researching the accident looking through old newspapers and learned that the wreck occurred in early January 1907 after a northbound Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh coal train lost its air brakes heading north in the town of Gainesville.

Ken Wilson writes on his Postards [sic] - A Brief History of Postcards & Postcard Collecting website, "The use of postcards exploded in the early 1900s. They were the "e-mail" of their day.Cards included advertising, artwork, and documentation of current events, and places."

To read the entire train wreck postcards article and see additional pictures, click here.