Image ID: AAPU

Printed label affixed to original prints: WRECK ON MANASSAS GAP RAILROAD, Caused by Rebels tearing up the track.

Abdill, Civil War Railroads, pp82-83: When the Manassas Gap Railroad to Piedmont, Virginia, was being repaired in October of 1864, guerrillas wrecked a train and cost the lives of Supt. M. J. McCrickett and four other Military Railroad men. McCrickett, a veteran of the U.A. Military Railroad service, was riding one of the engines double-heading a train over the road. Guerrillas had removed all the spikes from a section of rail, but left the rail in place in the track so that nothing appeared wrong to the sharp eyes of the engineers; as the two woodburners thundered up, the raiders jerked the rail out of the track by means of a length of telegraph wire leading to it from their place of concealment in a brushy thicket. Both engines hurtled down a steep embankment, killing McCrickett and the four crewman.

Etched onto negative: Loco [illegible] thrown down Bank. 112.