Kate Shelley: The Girl Who Saved a Train

July 6, 1881: The storm was killing people. For a week, the Des Moines river had been cresting, ready to burst. This storm had pushed it over the edge, raising it six inches within an hour, with no signs of stopping. The entire day, 15-year-old Kate Shelley had watched from her nearby homestead, seeing bridge after collapsed bridge float by. Late that night, when she heard a shriek of metal in the distance, she knew exactly what had happened: another bridge had given out, this time taking with it a train sent to test for structural integrity.

She knew that test engine was a mere precursor to a passenger train, and that the four men plunged into the icy river below would be nothing compared to the 200 travelers to soon follow.

She knew this because her father had worked for the railway, until he’d met his end in the same river. A river that, months later, also claimed the life of Kate’s brother.

Kate donned a jacket and ran to stop the oncoming train. To do so, she would have to climb across disintegrating shards of bridge. She would have to ford the river that had already killed two of her loved ones.

She would have nothing but flashes of lightning to guide her.

But she would prevail.

Kate Shelley lived in poverty. The oldest of four surviving children, she lived with her widowed mother and helped hold their remote farmland household together. Her father Michael, a section boss at the Chicago & North Western Railway, had died in a train accident when Kate was 13. He was followed shortly thereafter by his oldest son, Mike Jr, who drowned in the Honey Creek river.

Kate was acutely aware of how bad the storm was getting well before the train fell in. Throughout the day, she’d been freeing animals from the family’s rapidly-flooding barn, including some baby pigs stuck in a pile of hay. Soon after she got them all out, the barn had given way and floated downriver. As she worked, she’d been seeing the remnants of bridges float by — in all, eleven of the Des Moines Valley’s 21 bridges would wash out that day.

When the train bridge collapsed a hair before eleven, she ran to the scene. There she came face to face with the two surviving train passengers, who’d grabbed hold of a nearby tree, and were stuck in the river below. The two knew Kate from interactions with her late father, and they urged her to run ahead to Moingona — to stop the passenger train that would be leaving in an hour.

She climbed up to the crumbling tracks — 25 feet above water during normal times — and began slowly making her way across. Her lantern shattered soon after she started, and so her only light was from the occasional flash of lightning. Her dress continually got caught on the railroad spikes. The jagged wood cut her hands. A dislodged tree nearly rammed into her. For 670 miserable feet, she slowly eked her way forward.

When she finally made it to Moingona, weakly warning them that the bridge was out, she was dismissed out of hand. The first agent who saw her waved her away, saying “this girl is crazy.” Thankfully, though, another railway agent soon recognized her and stopped the train. With the passengers safe, Kate then led a team to rescue the two men trapped in a tree. With the day saved, she collapsed, and was confined to bed for three months.

Thereafter, rewards came rapidly and in great numbers. The railway rewarded her immediately with a half-barrel of flour and a load of coal — prized possessions for a family in such dire straits as the Shelleys — but that was only the beginning. Over the next several years, she received a gold watch, a college scholarship, plenty of cash (one newspaper raised funds to pay off the Shelley household mortgage) and a number of ballads and marriage proposals. An award was established in her name to celebrate women in the railroad industry. Her story became used to teach kids in nearby schools to read. A train, a bridge, and a trainman’s lodge were named after her.

Her greatest honor, though, was a lifetime job with the railway. They appointed her railroad station agent at Moingona, and set up a stop right outside of her house. She was allowed to ride free of charge for the rest of her life.

“Hers is a deed bound for legend — a story to be told until the last order fades and the last rail rusts.”

As recently as 1956 — 42 years after her death — the railway industry still celebrated her, chipping in to decorate her grave with a bronze plaque. It read:

“Hers is a deed bound for legend — a story to be told until the last order fades and the last rail rusts.”

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Art Notes

This depicts the water level as being somewhat higher than it actually was. The track was elevated, and she’d had to climb up to it — her greater danger was falling. I wanted to show the danger was imminent, so I made the water level a bit higher.
The collapsed section of the bridge was probably closer to the other end of the bridge, but I wanted it in the picture, so hey.
I was going to try and fit in the trapped men in the tree (and the crashed locomotive) in the background, but I liked how the water was looking so much, I kept it as-is.