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| ID # 1,046 |
By riding this Illinois Central 4-6-0 or Ten-wheeler type to his death at Vaughan, Mississippi, in the dark early morning of April 30, 1900, John Luther Jones, nicknamed "Casey," became a folksong hero and his name was added to our language as a term meaning locomotive engineer or railroad man. An early version of the Casey Jones song has the "brave engineer" making his "trip to the Promised Land" on a "six-eight wheeler," a type which never existed. Casey's fast passenger train rammed the caboose of a freight train moving slowly into a siding. The battered locomotive, originally the 382, was rebuilt and renumbered successively 212, 2012 and 5012. She had other fatal accidents, was branded a hoodoo, and finally went to the scrap pile in 1935. Casey's last home in Jackson, Tennessee, is now a railroad museum. Among the exhibits there is this Ten-wheeler, renumbered to simulate his famous, but doomed engine.
CASEY JONES MUSEUM
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