As a steam engine pulling a caboose puffed along at 35 miles per hour, engineer William H. Auyer of Watertown saw in the distance a two-seat horse-drawn surrey approaching a graded railroad crossing west of Evans Mills.

Perhaps 700 feet away from the crossing, he gave four blasts from the engine's whistle, two long and two short. But the whistle's shrieks were only whispers in the wind that prevailed that morning.

Frederick E. Zimmer, taking his wife, Lucy, and three of their children to Sunday services at Evans Mills Presbyterian Church, did not hear and did not see.

Two men working out in a field began shouting, waving their arms and running toward the surrey.

The riders all looked, wondering what the two men wanted. And then ...

"Oh papa, there's a train," 10-year-old Ada Zimmer cried.

Mr. Zimmer tried to stop the horses and back them off the track. That proving futile, he attempted to hurry them over the track.

Engineer Auyer, 33, shut off the steam at once and "applied the air" in what he knew was a hopeless attempt to avoid tragedy.

"Then we all saw the engine of the train coming right onto us," said one of the two survivors, 14-year-old Howard Zimmer.

At approximately 10:35 a.m. on June 9, 1912, light engine No. 1998 crashed into the carriage, sending splintered wood flying in all directions. Fred Zimmer, 49, was thrown 8 to 10 feet in the air, coming down on the cowcatcher of the engine.

Lucy, 47, was immediately swept up by the cowcatcher. Howard, Ada and big sister Ruth, 19, were catapulted into a ditch.

One horse was dead and one ran down the tracks while the short train squealed to a stop some 15 car lengths past the crossing.

Resting on the bloodied cowcatcher were the dead Lucy Zimmer and her husband, who was barely clinging to life.

In the ditch, "I picked myself up and looked around," Howard later told a Watertown Times reporter. "I saw my sister, Ada, injured, and then went to where I found Ruth. She was dead."

The train crew loaded the dead and the injured into the caboose, and reversed to where their ill-fated mission had begun, Watertown.

At 1:30 that afternoon, Fred Zimmer died at "City Hospital," the House of the Good Samaritan.

Howard and Ada had minor injuries, and they were taken in by their uncle and aunt, Hiram and Fredericka Doane, 934 Academy St. Meanwhile, notifications went out to three older Zimmer siblings, Grace, Lee Howard and L. Roy, who in a couple days was set to receive his diploma from St. Lawrence Agricultural School, Canton.

To Roy would fall the responsibility of continuing operation of the prosperous family farm with its herd of Holstein cattle and a recently erected barn. The Zimmers, having moved from Omar, had started the farm about 10 years earlier.

The crossing, about a quarter-mile from the Zimmer farm, was "very bad," the Times reported.

"In going from the home to the crossing it is necessary to go down a steep hill, but just before reaching the track there is a rise," a reporter observed. "On the left side is a moderately steep embankment which partially obscures the view up the track from the road. Once on the crossing, it is almost impossible to go faster than a walk, as there is a steep sandy hill on the other side."

At an inquest, Howard Zimmer testified the embankment blocked their view.

"We couldn't see the train. I didn't hear the train blow for the crossing."

He insisted that his father had always been very cautious in approaching the crossing.

The train crew was on its way to Dekalb Junction to pick up a string of freight cars. The conductor, George McBride of Watertown, said the railroad had six weeks earlier ordered that heavy freight trains were not to exceed 30 mph, but that restriction did not apply to light trains.

The coroner, Dr. Herbert L. Smith, found no criminal negligence against the railroad company.

Howard Zimmer took up his father's trade, becoming a career farmer. He lived to be 65, dying in June 1965. No record is found for Ada, who was not listed among Howard's survivors.

Mr. Auyer continued to work on the railroad until August 1921. He died of heart disease 11 months later, at the age of 42. He was a Watertown city councilman at the time.

"There's many a man been killed by the R.R."

So goes a line in the lyrics for an old railroaders' folk song.

The Times echoed the thought while reporting the Zimmer tragedy.

"More lives are crushed out beneath the wheels of trains each year than are lost at sea," an article said.

Indeed, fatalities involving trains and streetcars were quite common. Reports of coroners to the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors listed 305 fatalities between 1883 and 1954. About a third of those occurred within a 10-year span, from 1904 through 1913. The worst years were 1905, 1909, 1910 and 1912, with 14 deaths each year.

Railroad workers were often the victims. In a span of 30 years, 1883 to 1913, records indicate that 23 percent of those killed in rail accidents in Jefferson County were employees of the industry.

Among them was a north country pioneer in railroading. John Sutton of Antwerp "helped build the railroad" and continued in that line of work up to his dying day, Sept. 13, 1890, coroner DeWitt C. Rodenhurst reported. In his 70s, Mr. Sutton was a track walker at night, with lantern in hand.

As the westbound White Mountain Express approached Antwerp's rail yard at about 5 in the morning, Mr. Sutton's lantern was sitting on a side of the track.

"He, in all probability, heard the whistle for the crossing, which he was near, and tried to get his lantern," Dr. Rodenhurst wrote. He "was killed while trying to do so."

Runaway cars at Carthage killed 27-year-old Maitland D. Hurlburt, a conductor with the New York Central Railroad, on the evening of Sept. 3, 1910. While he stood on the tracks talking with a co-worker, four freight cars broke free from a train that was being shifted and went rolling down the rails. By the time the men realized the cars were upon them, Mr. Hurlburt had no chance for escape. The other guy was luckier.

Before the air brake became standard equipment on rail cars, the job of brakeman was the most dangerous in the industry. As the train moved along, one of the brakeman's responsibilities was to balance on the roof of a car, set the car's brake, then jump to the next car, and the next and the next, setting each brake as he progressed. Any number of things could happen, like on June 20, 1887, when Thomas Doyle, 24, Ogdensburg, was struck by a cross beam as his freight train passed under a railroad bridge at Sterlingville. John Hukey, 25, Lowville, fell from the top of the car to the tracks on May 25, 1896, at Felts Mills. Seven months later, on Dec. 17, Henry Delong, Hammond, was coupling cars in the train yard at Philadelphia, when he caught a foot between a rail and planking and was run over.

Pedestrians were often victims of their own carelessness. Some were deaf and didn't look behind them as they hiked down the tracks. And there were those who were out for a free ride and missed their step while mounting or dismounting a freight car. There was also the occasional case of a poor person trying to collect spilled coal along the tracks in the train yard, only to be in the way when suddenly a train moved. One such incident involved a child.

And then, there were drunks. One out of every 10 people killed on railroad tracks were drunk.

But on many occasions, as in the Zimmer tragedy, death occurred when a vehicle crossing tracks proved no match for tons of steel coming at them. We now take a glance at some of those events, forgotten today but painfully sad in the era when the railroad played a key role in the economy of the nation and the north country.

At about 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16, 1893, on a railroad bridge over the east branch of the Black River at Sewall's Island in Watertown, Mary Evitt, an 18-year-old domestic, was walking home with George B. Frame, 43. They tried running after seeing a passenger train coming, but she fell. Mr. Frame tried to pull her, and both were hit by the train, which was going faster than allowed by City Ordinance, the coroner determined. At each end of the bridge were signs prohibiting pedestrian traffic.

Between 9 and 10 a.m. Friday, May 4, 1894, at a crossing in Glen Park on the Cape Vincent branch of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad, a passenger train struck Hugh McCormick, 74, and his grandson, John McCormick, 2, near the family home. Four-year-old Annie McCormick witnessed the accident and ran home crying to her father, John McCormick, "The cars have just run over Grandpa and Johnnie!" Why it happened was undetermined.

Shortly before 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 18, 1905, in Philadelphia, Charles H. Cross, his wife, Mary Ann, both in their 60s, their daughter, Bertha Welch of Chicago, and her son, Donald, 2, riding in a two-seat spring wagon drawn by one horse, were killed on a grade crossing on Sand Street by a westbound train. The horse had become fractious and ran in front of the train.

At 3:40 p.m. Thursday, June 30, 1910, at Evans Mills station, a crowd of horrified bystanders watched a freight train hit a small milk wagon occupied by Etta Albertson and two children, William, 5, and Helen, 2. Etta and Helen were killed.

The coroner determined the train crew was "running under and within their orders," but demanded that the railroad company maintain a flagman at the crossing.

Mrs. Albertson, who had been shopping in the village, had started to drive from the Central House near the station and, failing to heed the train's jangling bell, crossed the tracks en route to her farm two miles away. The family had moved to the area from Deer River in the spring, and it was believed she was unacquainted with the signal and its meaning. The boy had a broken leg and bad scalp wound.

About 5:15 p.m. Saturday, April 12, 1913, at Arch and Court streets in Watertown, Car 5 of the Black River Traction Co. struck Catherine Green and Elizabeth Finch, both 5. The girls had been playing in front of Empire Flats, and somebody gave them money to buy candy. Hand in hand, they started crossing the street to go to Sam Roy's grocery store and ran onto the tracks. Car 5, with 10 passengers aboard, "swept down upon them," the Times reported.

At 1:45 p.m. Monday, June 19, 1916, at Strough's Crossing near LaFargeville, Mrs. Martin Fults, and three children, Sylvia, 7, Nina, 4, and Leona, 3 months, were riding in a closed carriage driven by a hired man, Charles Babcock, and they didn't hear or see a passenger train approaching.

Leona and Nina were killed instantly. Two doctors from Milwaukee, who were passengers on the train, attended to Mrs. Fults while the train delivered her to Clayton, then she was driven to Watertown, dying on the way. Mr. Babcock, with only a shoulder separation, was also driven to Watertown. Sylvia was uninjured.

"I heard the train whistle and heard the train coming and told the rest of them, but they didn't pay any attention," she said.

Shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday, July 5, 1923, at the crossing near Garland City, just northwest of Watertown, Gertrude Bullis Demarse, 35, and her father-in-law, Joseph Demarse, 65, who was driving, were returning home from work at New York Air Brake, when their Ford Roadster was struck broadside by the Cape Vincent-Watertown local train. It was unknown if they failed to see the approaching train or tried to beat it.

A boy, 13, said the car merely rolled up the slight incline approaching the track. The accident was about 200 feet from their home, and since the train was several minutes behind schedule, perhaps Mr. Demarse assumed nothing was coming. Their son/husband, Rollie Demarse, was a chauffeur and on his way home from Albany. Gertrude had two children, ages 13 and 3.

At about 6:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 28, 1925, at the Railroad Street crossing in Mannsville, Irma Kellar was killed and her husband, Charles A., critically injured when their light Ford truck was hit by a speeding southbound freight train. They were returning from their pasture with a load of milk. Mrs. Kellar was driving and waited for a northbound train to pass, then proceeded, unaware another train was coming. Mr. Kellar died about 12 hours later.

At 11 a.m. Monday, July 5, 1926, at the same crossing, Eugene Cornwell, a farmer, was driving his Ford touring car to a holiday celebration at Southwick Beach, when the vehicle was struck by a train.

About 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 9, 1928, at the same crossing, Dayton Wyman, 39, his wife, Alta Larkin Wyman, 31, and their 10-week-old daughter, Marietta, of Sackets Harbor, were all killed after their Maxwell coupe crossed the track from the east, going into the path of a light engine bound for Watertown.

At 2:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1, 1953, at a Herrings rail crossing between Munns Corners and Fargo, on the military highway, Dr. Irl H. Blaisdell, 42, and wife Frances R., 47, Syracuse, were killed when their 1951 Packard was struck by a freight train. They were following another eastbound auto and apparently did not see the three-car diesel-powered train approaching the grade crossing.

Parents of three, ages 6 to 12, they were en route to their summer home at Lake Bonaparte and were due the next day to pick up their sons at a boys camp at Beaver River.

Research into county coroner reports by Lyme town historian Julia E. Gosier fueled our research, conducted by Times librarians Lisa Carr and Ben Robbins. Timothy J. Abel, director of the Jefferson County Historical Society, assisted with photo reproduction. The office of city historian and clerk Donna M. Dutton also rendered assistance.