Herbert Harwood gave the following account in his book Blue Ridge Trolley. "It was late afternoon on a raw, icy January day - the middle of a nasty cold wave which had already caused deaths and damage in Frederick County.The time was something after 6:00 pm and it was already dark. Inside the brick station at Mt. Lena at the West base of South Mountain, a handful of passengers huddled, waiting for the last car of the day into Hagerstown. Coming over the mountain towards them was car No. 35, a steel combine inherited four years earlier form the CG&W. From inside their shelter they heard the familiar click-clicking of approaching wheels on the track - then blinked in disbelief. Seemingly they had been passed up by a ghost train. The clicking sound went right on past them - but there was no car! And in a sense this was exactly what happened, for the car was a tangle of wreckage halfway up the mountain with a corpse inside.
Car 35 had left Frederick for Hagerstown at 5:10 that afternoon, in the charge of motorman Clyde Wachtel. By the time it passed Myersville, Wachtel was alone in the car except for G. Victor Fraley, a PE Employee deadheading to work in Hagerstown after spending the weekend at his home near Thurmont. The prolonged raw cold left the rails icy, and Wachtel handled his controller and brakes gingerly as the car crossed the crest of South Mountain and started down the other side. Within seconds he realized he had no control - the car was sliding along on its own, picking up speed down the long steep tangent. As the runaway neared a curve Wachtel jumped clear, but Fraley unaccountably stayed inside, apparently trying to retreive his suitcase. The car hit the curve and it's body pitched off the tracks, smashed through the little shelter station of Reese, and rolled down the hillside. Both trucks freakishly remained on the rails and continued rolling down the mountainside for over two miles, passing Mt. Lena station and finally coming to a stop where the road bed dipped and leveled out. Fraley was killed instantly and the car so badly demolished that it was scrapped on the spot."