Edwardsville, Kansas, USA — 30 July 1878
Unknown light rushes down the train tracks
Mr. Timmons, “one of the most substantial farmers and reliable men in Wyancotte county,” reports that “the section men on the K. P. road, on my farm, seeing the storm coming up very fast, got their hand-car on the track and started full speed for Edwardsville. They had run but a little ways when the entire crowd, at the same time, saw coming around the curve of Edwardsville what they supposed to be a locomotive at full speed. “They jumped down and took their car off the track as fast as possible when they saw it was not a locomotive. Whatever it was came down the track giving off a volume of dense smoke with occasional flashes resembling a head light in the centre of smoke. It came three-fourths of a mile from where they first saw it, then turned off the track at a pile of cordwood, went round it once, then went off in a southwesterly direction, through a thick wood. The section men came running to my house evidently much frightened and bewildered by what they saw.” Note: globular lightning may have produced this effect, as the ball of plasma could have been guided by the train tracks until it grounded itself. The duration of the phenomenon, however, makes it most unusual.
Source: Atchison Globe (Kansas), 7 August 1878. 498. Case: W449