Taylor County GaArchives History .....Train Water Tank Explosion 1908
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Virginia Crilley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000642 February 16, 2020, 4:37 am

 On an early spring morning in 1908, Central of Georgia Railroad engine No. 1055 on
a run from Columbus to Macon, pulled into a siding in the little town of Reynolds,
Georgia to allow the early morning passenger train from Macon to proceed to
Columbus. Leaving its train load of freight off the main line, the detached engine
chugged up to the tank to take on water while waiting for No. 4, the passenger train
to pass. No. 4 was due around 4:00AM. There was a young telegraph operator on duty
at the station.

The station agent, Mr. Eugene E. Hodges and his wife Frances , affectionally known
as “Miss Fannie,” were in bed in their home a block away. Mrs. Hodges was expecting
her ninth child within a few weeks.

Mr. Hodges lay awake listening to the procedure of an engine taking water in its
boiler - the pulling of the chain by the fireman to let the spout down from the tank
and the opening of the heavy metal door on the tank of the engine. All of a sudden
he sat up and listened. He awakened his wife and told her that the locomotive boiler
was going to explode. Before he could get dressed there came the loudest noise that
had ever been heard up to that time. The engineer had put cold water into a too-hot
boiler.

Mr. Hodges ran to the station and found the engineers body with his head blown off.
The fireman, blown against a support under the cotton loading platform, was in a
dying condition. The telegraph operator was alive but unconscious on the floor. Only
the wheels of the engine remained on the track. The engine had been blown into the
street a block away.

By that time the whole town was awake and most of them were at the station. Mr.
Hodges was busy on the telegraph key to inform the dispatcher of the tragedy.

In the meantime, Mrs. Hodges, realizing that the 4:00 passenger train was almost due
and there would be no lights on the freight to warn the engineer of the passenger
train, had risen from bed and awakened her twelve year old son Paul. She took him by
one hand - and with a lighted lamp in the other, calmly walked from her home to the
railroad crossing east of the railroad station. No 4 was announcing its arrival,
coming nearer and nearer through the Flint River swamp with its whistle blowing. As
the headlight approached, Mrs. Hodges ran down the track , waved her lamp and
stopped the train.

A search was begun for the engineer’s head by the men of the town. A heavy rain
deterred the townspeople in their search. Mr. J. N. Bryan’s store started leaking
through the skylight and some men were sent up to make repairs. On the roof of the
store, they found the missing head of the engineer. Mr. Hodges boarded the next
train for Macon, carrying the head in a box. He arrived in time for the funeral.

In due time, “Miss Fannie’s” baby was born. It was a little girl, properly named
Frances for her brave and courageous mother.

By Frances Hodges Pruitt

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