train

On this date in 1931, an F3 tornado collided with the Empire Builder passenger train, the pride of the Great Northern Railway. The train had just left Fargo, heading east on a hot afternoon. The engineer and several passengers saw a small funnel cloud to the southwest. The funnel bobbed up and down; then the top of a haystack blew apart. Seconds later, the train shook and the windows blew out in several cars.

Twenty-four people were injured and one man died in a train derailment on this date in 1887 near Sterling, in Dakota Territory. The passenger train was…