All too common in the first decades of railway service in Wellington County were deaths resulting from trains striking pedestrians on the track.
Those fatalities occurred at the rate of three or four per year. What is most surprising is that almost all involved people living near the railway, and even some railway employees.
Railway lines were attractive to people on foot. Often they offered short cuts over the alternate route over roads. As well, they were dry and mud free, though the walking was not always the easiest due to the cross ties being higher than the ballast between them. That could make a stroll on a rail line on a dark night very treacherous.
Still, it is very surprising that trains could sneak up on a pedestrian. Steam locomotives produced a great deal of noise, even when the whistle and bell were silent. No doubt, some of the people struck by a train had hearing impediments. Far more numerous were men a little the worse for liquor. More than one imbiber decided to stretch out on the track for an ill-advised brief nap.
The Wellington Grey and Bruce line, built from Guelph to Elora, Fergus, and on to Drayton and Palmerston, suffered two such fatalities in its first months of operation. One was a section man, struck from behind while walking from Elora to his residence in Pilkington Township in the fall of 1870. The other was in December of that year. A labourer was struck by a coasting carload of ballast near the Alma station, which was not yet in service. Inquests in both cases placed the blame on excessive drinking.
All these deaths were both senseless and tragic. Yet they did not seem to act as warnings, because similar incidents occurred again and again. They were also stressful to railway crews, as might be expected. Firemen and locomotive engineers always kept an eagle eye on the track ahead, fearful that they might run down a pedestrian.
One of the names on the list of railway fatalities is that of William Maitland. He was a middle-aged bachelor, living at Ponsonby, where he worked as a blacksmith in the carriage factory operated by his brother, John. Though not a trace of the building is evident today, it was a significant business in its day, producing carriages and wagons, and doing repairs to farm equipment for farmers in Pilkington and Nichol Townships.
On the morning of June 6, 1890, William Maitland spoke briefly to his brother about 8am. He told John that he was on his way to the farm of a family friend, John Laidlaw, who farmed in the northwest quarter of Guelph Township, in the area still known as the West End. Laidlaw had scheduled a barn raising, and William planned to join the crew.
It was a substantial walk from Ponsonby to the Laidlaw farm, some eight miles or so. But at a steady pace, William should have been there well before noon. At about 3:50pm engineer Fred Heselwood, piloting southbound train Number 7, noticed a man walking on the track ahead as he passed the big railway-operated gravel pit at Marden. He had slowed his train, having instructions to pass a freight train stopped there in a siding.
Heselwood noticed the man on the track when he was about 25 yards ahead of his train. He yanked at the whistle cord to warn the pedestrian. He had slowed his train from its running speed of about 40 miles per hour to less than half that as it passed the freight train in the siding. Initially his whistle blasts produced no response from the man on the tracks.
Perhaps he had assumed that the whistle was for a level crossing far behind him, or a signal to the parked freight train. Panicked at the prospect of hitting the man, Heselwood put his locomotive into reverse.
By then Maitland had moved to the side of the track, but was still in the path of the train. Applying his brakes, Heselwood had slowed to eight or 10 miles per hour. The locomotive struck Maitland and tossed him to one side of the track. The crew members in the coaches knew something was amiss when Heselwood stopped so suddenly. The conductor spotted Maitland in the ditch before the train shuddered to a stop.
Heselwood was uncertain whether he had struck the man. He got off the locomotive and found a hat on the front of the locomotive, but no other evidence. He then ran to the rear of the train. The man was in the ditch, perhaps 150 feet behind the train. The conductor, brakeman, and several passengers were already beside the man.
Maitland was alive, but severely injured. One leg was almost severed, and he had various cuts and bruises over his body. Crew members hastened to get him on the train.
The train was scheduled out of Elora at 3:20pm, and was listed to arrive at the Junction station, west of Edinburgh Road, at 3:55, and at the downtown passenger station at 4:15pm. Even though he was 10 minutes late and further delayed by striking the man, Heselwood got his train to the downtown station on schedule. The train crew took Maitland to the City Hotel, located very near the station on McDonnell Street. (The CIAG Insurance building is now on the site.) They believed he was too seriously injured for a jolting carriage ride to one of the hospitals.
A couple of doctors were in attendance in a few minutes. They bandaged the leg as best they could and stopped the bleeding. The doctors did their best to stabilize their patient, but he succumbed to his injuries about 5pm. Death resulted from a combination of blood loss through the badly mangled leg, shock, and various undetermined internal injuries.
The Guelph coroner, Dr. Keating, called an inquest for the following morning. The first witness called was the deceased’s brother, John Maitland. He testified that William was sober and seemed healthy the previous morning before he set off for the barn raising at the Laidlaw farm, and that he carried no liquor when he left Ponsonby.
Engineer Fred Heselwood explained his actions in trying to warn Laidlaw when he spotted the man on the track, and his frantic efforts to bring the train to a stop. When he ran up to the injured man, he told the coroner, he reached down and pulled a partially-consumed bottle of whiskey from Maitland’s pocket. “Gentlemen, this is the cause of it,” he told his fellow crew members.
Members of the crew found an old door, which they used as a stretcher. Heselwood backed the train, and they loaded the injured man onto the train, he testified.
Fireman Charley Lang corroborated Heselwood’s evidence. In answer to a question from the jury, both men said that Maitland appeared to be sober.
That was the extent of the evidence. The jury returned with a verdict in a few minutes. They found that Maitland’s death was accidental, and that no blame could be attached to the railway or to the crew of the passenger train.
The jury could not decide whether alcohol was a factor, and no one asked whether Maitland had a hearing problem. And other questions went unanswered. Maitland should have passed the gravel pit four or five hours earlier. What had he been doing during that interval? Where had the bottle of whiskey come from? Had Maitland suffered a sudden illness, perhaps a mild stroke or heart attack?
Like other deaths on the tracks, this one seems entirely avoidable.
And like many of the other cases, it leaves several unanswered and unanswerable questions.