>Sam was insisting that Bill Holden drive the train himself, [even though] there was plenty of room for the real engineer to be aboard and not be seen. Holden, with his daredevil instincts and love of speed, opened the old locomotive’s throttle full bore to send the train flying down the track. Oates was in his position on the flatcar attached to the front of the locomotive. He later recalled, “And suddenly I’m saying to myself, ‘Oh-oh, something’s wrong!,’ because the brakes are on and we’re sliding and the sparks are flying. And up ahead is this flatcar parked on the tracks … I saw it approaching, and it was like slow motion. These two flatcars hit like dominoes.
>Gordon Dawson was on the scene and watched as the flatcars smashed into each other, sending the generator flying. Dawson, like others on the set, immediately feared that the locomotive’s boiler would explode, so he took off running. He was young and fast, outrunning fleeing actors and crew members who scampered up a hill toward safety. Suddenly he noticed someone speeding past him. It was Oates, who had run down the flatcar, vaulted himself onto the trestle, leaped to the ravine below, then raced up the hill. Oates, who had suffered through near-death experiences in the marines and at other times in his life, was shouting, “I beat it again! I beat it again!”104 But the boiler never blew, no one was injured, and filming proceeded.’