June 20, 1884: Cows! Cows! Cows! Speeding Train Stops in Time

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

June 20, 1884: As an empty train was returning to Boyertown after discharging the last of its passengers in Barto and coming around the curve on the Shaner farm, the engineer noticed a large number of cows on the track a short distance from the high bridge at North Reading Avenue. They commenced to run in all directions, some tumbling over the embankment, while two of them ran into the trestle, falling through the sills on the track.

The engineer gave the signal and succeeded in getting the train stopped within a few feet of where the cows lay. A large crowd of people soon gathered at the spot. When planks and ropes were brought into service, the cows were pulled back through the sills. They nonchalantly walked away, not seeming to be much hurt. Had the engineer not succeeded in stopping the train, it would have been thrown from the trestle and probably resulted in the loss of life, especially of the cows.

There was another close encounter with a cow at the same trestle a year later when on of Philip Nester’s cows escaped from him and ran on to the bridge and became entangled in the sills. An excited crowd soon gathered, and “after much chinning and a little labor,” they succeeded in extricating “brindle” from her dangerous position, just before a Pottstown train came roading along. It was a very narrow escape for “her cowship.”

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