Fierce winds and torrents of rain beat into Kate’s face. The railroad bridge swayed dizzily as the 15-year-old crawled on hands and knees across it. Between wide gaps in the structure of the bridge, she could see the flood waters slamming into the rocks far below her. Soaked to the skin, shivering with terror and exhaustion, hands torn and bleeding, she inched herself across.

“I must save the passenger train,” was the only thought in her mind as she forced herself to go on.

A short time earlier on that night in July, 1991, Kate Shelley had been safe in the family cabin on the banks of Honey Creek. Standing by the window, she had watched the storm which had battered the cabin for hours. Her mother had moved quietly through the shadows, going from bed to bed, and comforting Kate’s younger sisters.

All at once, an explosive crash had shattered the night. Kate had looked fearfully at her mother. Just moments before they had heard the rumble of the freight train as it passed their cabin. The terrible crash could only mean that the old bridge over Honey Creek had gone down as a freight crossed it. Kate’s own father had been killed in a train wreck. Help had not reached him in time. Now Kate knew that it was up to her to save the survivors from the wrecked freight.

“You can’t go out into a storm like this,” her mother had cried as Kate picked up a lantern and pulled open the door. “You’ll be killed.”

“People need me, Mother,” Kate had answered as she raced out into the tempest.

The night had been so dark and the storm so wild that Kate’s lantern hadn’t been of much use. Still, its tiny light had been comforting as she headed towards the creek. She found that mild Honey Creek had been swollen by flood waters into a raging river. As she had watched in fright, a giant oak tree on the bank had been torn up by the roots and hurtled downstream as if it were a toy. On and on it had tumbled, a part of the mass of debris rushing down to meet the Des Moines River.

Reaching the place where the bridge had gone down, Kate saw in the bright flashes of lightening that pieces of the bridge and train were scattered about the river bed.

“Where is the crew?” she wondered frantically. “Were they all killed?” Then she heard the faint cries of a man. Kate had turned her lantern towards the sound and peered over the steep bank. She had been just barely able to make out the form of the train’s engineer clinging to a tree far below.