The Story of the Real Casey Jones

Nearly everyone has heard of the Ballad of Casey Jones but a lot of people don't realize that "Casey" Jones was a real person named John Luther Jones who stood 6 feet 4 ½ inches and had dark hair, gray eyes, an infectious charm, a sense of humor, a loving wife and the respect of those who worked with him. Casey was a crack locomotive engineer who appeared to be that most fortunate of creatures -- a healthy, happy young person who really loved his job and possessed an inherent genius for performing it well. His childhood home of Cayce (pronounced Cay-see), Kentucky had blessed him with the nickname of "Casey" Jones that would go down in history and make him famous. Casey was recognized by his peers as being one of the best in the business (despite a teensy tendency to travel a tad fast) and had a special way of blowing the locomotive's whistle ... a signature long-drawn-out note beginning softly, then rising and dying away to almost a whisper ... a signal so distinctive that when people living along the Illinois Central right of way heard it go by in the night, they would say "There goes Casey Jones."

Casey Goes Down in History

Casey was driving the Illinois Central's crack "Cannonball" train on the Memphis-Canton (Mississippi) run on the night of April 29th. He and his fireman, Sim Webb, arrived in Memphis at around 10 p.m. That should have been the end of their day - a chance to go home and get some rest - but as they were checking in at the office and preparing to leave, Casey heard somebody say: "Joe Lewis has just been taken with cramps and can't take his train out tonight." Casey volunteered to "double back and pull Lewis' old No. 638." It was a good natured offer but a fatal mistake.

At 11:00 p.m., Jones and Webb started another trip back to Canton. At 4:00 a.m. as they approached the little town of Vaughan, Mississippi, they noticed a freight train on the siding. There were in fact two trains parked there, "sawing by" (jockeying for track space in an effort to clear the main track for No. 638.) Casey had dealt with situations like this before at this very place and did not anticipate a problem but he did not know that an air hose had broken on one of the freights and slowed the "sawing by" process down. Too late on this dark morning did Casey and Sim notice freight cars lumbering over the track ahead. There was no way to stop in time to avoid disaster.

"Jump, Sim, and save yourself!" Casey told his fireman, who used the last seconds before the crash to dive out the window while Casey remained at his post, desperately applying the brakes and employing one last blast of the whistle to warn those ahead of the impending crash as he rode No. 638 into a nightmare of crashing, splintering wood.

Thanks in no small part to this heroic effort, Casey Jones was the only person who died that night and so it is sad that in the ensuing investigation he was assigned sole responsibility for the accident despite the testimony of Sim Webb that no warnings had been posted along the track. Whether this was true or not (a hotly contested point), in all probability the real culprit was engineer fatigue.

Because of the combination of monotony coupled with the need for unblinking vigilance, no locomotive engineer should ever have to work two consecutive shifts or be allowed to volunteer for an extra one especially late at night. To do so is a serious compromise of public safety which endangers not only the engineer but everyone else who may be impacted by his possibly impaired alertness and judgment. Casey Jones was trying to help but was probably more tired than he realized and the inherent greyhound part of his nature may have risen to the fore as he tried to get this extra trip out of the way. Whether warning signals had been in place or not, he was probably traveling too fast to stop in time. John Luther Jones was a wonderful young person who loved his job, but on April 30th, 1900, it might have been better for Casey and everyone else if he and his fireman had been home catching up on their sleep.

Sources:

The True Story of Casey Jones, Roots of the Grateful Dead
Casey Jones Accident Report, Roots of the Grateful Dead
Casey Jones, Encyclopaedia Brittanica
Casey Jones, Wikipedia