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The worst day on Walkerton's rails is carried in a federal report. On 7 February 1952, at 1:55 in the afternoon, a Baltimore & Ohio track motor-car — No. 1143, a four-wheel car of 8 to 15 horsepower and 1,045 pounds, pushing two trailers with six maintenance-of-way men — was struck at the B&O–New York Central crossing in Walkerton by NYC Extra 2800 West: engine 2800, 65 cars and a caboose, running 39 miles an hour, eight minutes out of North Liberty. Two men were killed and two injured. The Interstate Commerce Commission's Report No. 3450, issued 26 March 1952, lays the cause on the B&O's failure to provide adequate protection for track motor-car movements, and its description of the plant is itself a survey of the crossing the town knew: the three-story brick interlocking tower, 50 by 15 feet, in the northeast angle; the station shared by both carriers in the southeast angle; the tracks crossing at 55 degrees 55 minutes; Walkerton 71.1 miles west of Garrett on the B&O's Garrett–Pine Junction line, 19.64 miles west of South Bend on the Central's. The report does not name the dead, and no source consulted names them either; the settler for their names is the Independent's issues of that February week.
The press record adds one earlier name. Gabriel Furlong, fifteen years old, of Union Mills, was killed at Walkerton in the spring of 1898 attempting to climb into a box car — thrown under the wheels and, in the Chesterton Tribune's phrase of 30 April 1898, "cut in two." Those two entries are the wreck record at the size the sources reached support: a named boy in 1898, and two unnamed section men in 1952, on the diamond where the town's two steam roads crossed. No other named, dated wreck on the three lines at Walkerton was found in the archives searched; the FRA accident-record hits the search returned for the town's name belonged to Gary, and are not used.
Sources: Interstate Commerce Commission, Report No. 3450 (26 March 1952), accident at Walkerton, Indiana, 7 February 1952 (Bureau of Transport Economics and Statistics / ROSAP copy, read first-hand November 2026); Chesterton Tribune, 30 April 1898, Gabriel Furlong death notice (INGenWeb Porter County transcription, read November 2026).