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Full text of "Notes on railroad accidents;"

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 



GIFT OF* 



Received ^^7 > ifytf 

i 



Accession No. & 3 3 tf - Cla&sNc. 



NOTES 



ON 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 



BY 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. 

AUTHOR OF "RAILROADS: THEIR ORIGIN AND PROBLEMS.' 




NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

l82 FIFTH AVENUE 
1879 



COPYRIGHT 

1879 

By G. P. PUTNAM>S SONS 
67) 35 



By the same Author. 



Railroads and Railroad Questions. i2mo, cloth, $i 25. 
The volume treats of " The Genesis of the Railroad System," "Ac- 
cidents," and the " Present Railroad Problem." The author has 
made himself the acknowledged authority on this group of subjects. 
If his book goes only to those who are interested in the ownership, 
the use, or the administration of railroads, it is sure of a large cir- 
cle of readers. 

"A most interesting and important work." Railway World. 

"Characterized by broad, progressive, liberal ideas." Railway 
Review. 

" The entire conclusions are of great value." N.Y. Journal of 
Commerce. 



PREFACE. - 

This volume makes no pretence whatever of being 
either an exhaustive or a scientific study of the subject to 
which it relates. It is, on the contrary, merely what its 
title signifies, a collection of notes on railroad accidents. 
In the course of ten years service as one of the railroad 
commissioners of Massachusetts, I was called upon officially 
to investigate two very serious disasters, that at Revere 
in 1871, and that at Wollaston in 1878, besides many 
others less memorable. In connection with these official 
duties I got together by degrees a considerable body of 
information, which I was obliged to extract as best I 
could from newspapers and other contemporaneous 
sources. I have felt the utmost hesitation in publishing 
so crude and imperfect a performance, but finally decide 
to do so for the reason that, so far as I know, there is 
nothing relating to this subject in print in an accessible 
form, and it would, therefore, seem that these notes may 
have a temporary value. 

During my term of public service, also, there have been 
four appliances, either introduced into use or now strug- 
gling for American recognition, my sense of the value of 



VI PREFACE. 

which, in connection with the railroad system, to both 
the traveling and general public, I could not easily over- 
state. These appliances are the MILLER PLATFORM and 
BUFFER, the WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE, and the INTER- 
LOCKING and ELECTRIC SIGNAL SYSTEMS. To bring 
these into more general use through reports on railroad 
accidents as they occurred was one great aim with me 
thoughout my official life. I am now not without hopes 
that the printing of this volume may tend to still further 
familiarize the public with these inventions, and thus 
hasten their more general adoption. 

C. F. A. JR. 
Quincy^ October i, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I THE DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON . . 3 

II THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS . 12 

III THE WOLLASTON ACCIDENT . . . 2O 

IV ACCIDENTS. AND CONSERVATISM . . 27 
V TELESCOPING AND THE MILLER PLATFORM 43 

VI THE VERSAILLES ACCIDENT ... 58 

VII TELEGRAPHIC COLLISIONS ... 66 

VIII OIL-TANK ACCIDENTS . . . .72 

IX DRAW-BRIDGE DISASTERS ... 82 

X THE NORWALK ACCIDENT ... 89 

XI BRIDGE ACCIDENTS 98 

XII THE PROTECTION OF BRIDGES . . .Ill 

XIII CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS . .117 

XIV THE REVERE CATASTROPHE . . .125 
XV REAR-END COLLISIONS . . . .144 



iv 



CONTENTS. 



XVI NOVEL APPLIANCES 153 

XVII THE AUTOMATIC ELECTRIC BLOCK SYSTEM 159 

XVIII INTERLOCKING 182 

XIX THE WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE . . . 199 

XX THE BATTLE OF THE BRAKES . . . 2l6 

XXI THE RAILROAD JOURNEY RESULTING IN 

DEATH 230 

XXII THE RAILROAD DEATH-RATE . . . . 241 

XXIII AMERICAN AS COMPARED WITH FOREIGN 

RAILROAD ACCIDENTS . . . 250 




NOTES 



O N 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 



IT is a melancholy fact that there are few things 
of which either nature or man is, as a rule, more 
lavish than human life; provided always that the 
methods used in extinguishing it are customary and 
not unduly obtrusive on the sight and nerves. As 
a necessary consequence of this wastefulness, it fol- 
lows also that the results which ordinarily flow 
from the extinguishment of the individual life are 
pitiably small. Any person curious to satisfy him- 
self as to the truth of either or both of these propo- 
sitions can do so easily enough by visiting those 
frequent haunts in which poverty and typhoid lurk 
in company ; or yet more easily by a careful study 
of the weekly bills of mortality of any great city. 
Indeed, compared with the massive battalions daily 
sacrificed in the perpetual conflict which mankind 
seems forever doomed to wage against intemperance, 
bad sewerage and worse ventilation, the victims of 
regular warfare by sea and land count as but single 
spies. The worst of it is, too, that if the blood of the 
martyrs thus profusely spilled is at all the seed of 



2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the church, it is a seed terribly slow of germination. 
Each step in the slow progress is a Golgotha. 

In the case of railroad disasters, however, a striking 
exception is afforded to this rule. The victims of 
these, at least, do not lose their lives'without great 
and immediate compensating benefits to mankind. 
After each new " horror," as it is called, the whole 
world travels with an appreciable increase of safety. 
Both by public opinion and the courts of" law the 
companies are held to a most rigid responsibility. 
The causes which led to the disaster are anxiously 
investigated by ingenious men, new appliances are 
invented, new precautions are imposed, a greater 
and more watchful care is inculcated. And hence 
it has resulted that each year, and in obvious con- 
sequence of each fresh catastrophe, travel by rail has 
become safer and safer, until it has been said, and 
with no inconsiderable degree of truth too, that the 
very safest place into which a man can put himself 
is the inside of a first-class railroad carriage on a 
train in full motion. 

The study of railroad accidents is, therefore, the 
furthest possible from being a useless one, and a 
record of them is hardly less instructive than inter- 
esting. If carried too far it is apt, as matter for 
light reading, to become somewhat monotonous ; 
though, none the less, about these, as about every- 
thing else, there is an almost endless variety. Even in 
the forms of sudden death on the rail, nature seems 
to take a grim delight in an infinitude of surprises. 



SEPTEMBER 15, 1830. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON. 

WITH a true dramatic propriety, the ghastly 
record, which has since grown so long, began with 
the opening of the first railroad, literally on the 
very morning which finally ushered the great 
system into existence as a successfully accom- 
plished fact, the eventful i$th of September, 1830, 
the day upon which the Manchester & Liverpool 
railroad was formally opened. That opening was 
a great affair. A brilliant party, consisting of the 
directors of the new enterprise and their invited 
guests, was to pass over the road from Liverpool 
to Manchester, dine at the latter place ' and re- 
turn to Liverpool in the afternoon. Their num- 
ber was large and they filled eight trains of car- 
riages, drawn by as many locomotives. The Duke 
of Wellington, then prime minister, was the most 
prominent personage there, and he with his party 
occupied the state car, which was drawn by the lo- 



4 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

comotive Northumbrian, upon which George Ste- 
phenson himself that day officiated as engineer. 
The road was laid with double tracks, and the eight 
trains proceeded in two parallel columns, running 
side by side and then again passing or falling 
behind each other. The Duke's train gaily led the 
race, while in a car of one of the succeeding trains 
was Mr. William Huskisson, then a member of Par- 
liament for Liverpool and eminent among the more 
prominent public men of the day as a financier and 
economist. He had been very active in promoting 
the construction of the Manchester & Liverpool 
road, and now that it was completed he had exert- 
ed himself greatly to make its opening a success 
worthy an enterprise the far-reaching consequences 
of which he was among the few to appreciate. All 
the trains had started promptly from Liverpool, and 
had proceeded through a continued ovation until at 
eleven o'clock they had reached Parkside, seventeen 
miles upon their journey, where it had been arrang- 
ed that the locomotives were to replenish their sup- 
plies of water. As soon as the trains had stopped, 
disregarding every caution against their so doing, 
the excited and joyous passengers left their car- 
riages and mingled together, eagerly congratulating 
one another upon the unalloyed success of the oc- 
casion. Mr. Huskisson, though in poor health and 
somewhat lame, was one of the most excited of the 
throng, and among the first to thus expose himself. 
Presently he caught the eye of the Duke of Welling- 



THE DUKE AND MR. HUSKISSON. 5 

ton, standing at the door of his carriage. Now it so 
happened that for some time previous a coolness had 
existed between the two public men, the Duke hav- 
ing as premier, with the military curtness for which 
he was famed, dismissed Mr. Huskisson from the 
cabinet of which he had been a member, without, as 
was generally considered, any sufficient cause, and 
in much the same way that he might have sent to 
the right-about some member of his staff whose 
performance of his duty was not satisfactory to him. 
There had in fact been a most noticeable absence 
of courtesy in that ministerial crisis. The two now 
met face to face for the first time since the breach 
between them had taken place, and the Duke's man- 
ner evinced a disposition to be conciliatory, which 
was by no means usual with that austere soldier. 
Mr. Huskisson at once responded to the overture, 
and, going up to the door of the state carriage, he 
and his former chief shook hands and then entered 
into conversation. As they were talking, the Duke 
seated in his car and Mr. Huskisson standing be- 
tween the tracks, the Rocket locomotive the same 
famous Rocket which a year previous had won the 
five hundred pounds prize, and by so doing estab- 
lished forever the feasibility of rapid steam locomo- 
tion came along upon the other track to take its 
, place at the watering station. It came up slowly 
and so silently that its approach was hardly noticed ; 
until, suddenly, an alarm was given, and, as every 
one immediately ran to resume his place, some com- 



P RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

motion naturally ensued. In addition to being 
lame, Mr. Huskisson seemed also under these cir- 
cumstances to be quite agitated, and, instead of 
quietly standing against the side of the carnage and 
allowing the Rocket to pass, he nervously tried to 
get around the open carriage door, which was swing- 
ing out across the space between the two tracks in 
such a way that the approaching locomotive struck 
it, flinging it back and at the same time throwing 
Mr. Huskisson down. He fell on his face in the 
open space between the tracks, but with his left leg 
over the inner of the two rails upon which the 
Rocket was moving, so that one of its wheels ran 
obliquely up the limb to the thigh, crushing it 
shockingly. As if to render the distressing circum- 
stances of the catastrophe complete, it so happened 
that the unfortunate man had left his wife's side 
when he got out of his carriage, and now he had been 
flung down before her eyes as he sought to reenter 
it. He was immediately raised, but he knew that 
his hurt was mortal and his first exclamation was, 
" I have met my death ! " He was at once placed 
on one of the state carriages, to which the North- 
umbrian locomotive was attached, and in twenty-five 
minutes was carried to Eccles, a distance of seven- 
teen miles, where medical assistance was obtained. 
He was far beyond its reach, however, and upon 
the evening of the same day, before his companions 
of the morning had completed their journey, he was 
dead. Some time after this accident a great public 



BRO UGH AM A T LIVERPOOL. 7 

dinner was given at Liverpool in honor of the new 
enterprise. Brougham was then at the height of an 
unbounded popularity and just taking the fatal step 
of his life, which led him out of the House of Com- 
mons to the wool-sack and the Lords. Among the 
excursionists of the opening day he had on the 
i6th, occasion to write a brief note to Macvey 
Napier, editor of the Edingburgh Review, in which he 
thus alluded to the fatal accident which had marred 
its pleasure : " I have come to Liverpool only to 
see a tragedy. Poor Huskisson is dead, or must die 
before to-morrow. He has been killed by a steam 
carriage. The folly of seven hundred people going 
fifteen miles an hour, in six carriages, exceeds belief. 
But they have paid a dear price." He was one 
of the guests at the subsequent dinner, and made a 
speech in which there was one passage of such ex- 
quisite oratorical skill, that to read it is still a pleas- 
ure. In it he at once referred to the wonders of the 
system just inaugurated, and to the catastrophe 
which had saddened its opening observances. 
" When/' he said, " I saw the difficulties of space, 
as it were, overcome; when I beheld a kind of 
miracle exhibited before my astonished eyes ; when 
I saw the rocks excavated and the gigantic power 
of man penetrating through miles of the solid mass, 
and gaining a great, a lasting, an almost perennial 
conquest over the powers of nature by his skill and 
industry ; when I contemplated all this, was it pos- 
sible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded 



8 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

into my mind, not in praise of man's great success, 
not in admiration of the genius and perseverance 
he had displayed, or even of the courage he had 
shown in setting himself against the obstacles that 
matter afforded to his course no ! but the melan- 
choly reflection, that these prodigious efforts of the 
human race, so fruitful of praise but so much more 
fruitful of lasting blessings to mankind, have forced 
a tear from my eye by that unhappy casualty which 
deprived me of a friend and you of a represen- 
tative ! " 

Though wholly attributable to his own careless, 
ness, the death of so prominent a character as Mr. 
Huskisson, on such an occasion, could not but make 
a deep impression on the public mind. The fact 
that the dying man was carried seventeen miles in 
twenty-five minutes in search of rest and medical 
aid, served rather to stimulate the vague apprehen- 
sion which thereafter for a time associated itself with 
the new means of transportation, and converted it 
into a dangerous method of carriage which called 
for Ho inconsiderable display of nerve on the part of 
those using it. Indeed, as respects the safety of 
travel by rail there is an edifying similarity between 
the impressions which prevailed in England forty- 
five years ago and those which prevail in China now ; 
for, when as recently as 1875 ft was proposed to in- 
troduce railroads into the Celestial Empire, a vigor- 
ous native protest was fulminated against them, in 
which, among other things scarcely less astounding, 



THE PERIOD OF IMMUNITY. 9 

it was alleged that " in all countries where railroads 
exist they are considered a very dangerous mode of 
locomotion, and, beyond those who have very urgent 
business to transact, no one thinks of using them." 

On this subject, however, of the dangers incident 
to journeys by rail, a writer of nearly half a century 
back, who has left us one of the earliest descriptions 
of the Manchester & Liverpool road, thus reassured 
the public of those days, with a fresh quaintness of 
style which lends a present value to his words : 
" The occurrence of accidents is not so frequent as 
might be imagined, as the great weight of the car- 
riages " (they weighed about one-tenth part as much 
as those now in use in America) " prevents them 
from easily starting off the rails ; and so great is the 
momentum acquired by these heavy loads moving 
with such rapidity, that they easily pass over con- 
siderable obstacles. Even in those melancholy acci- 
dents where loss of life has been sustained, the 
bodies of the unfortunate sufferers, though run over 
by the wheels, have caused little irregularity in the 
motion, and the passengers in the carriages have not 
been sensible that any impediment has been encoun- 
tered on the road." 

Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson's death, 
during a period of over eleven years, railroads en- 
joyed a remarkable and most fortunate exemption 
from accidents. During all that time there did not 
occur a single disaster resulting in any considerable 
loss of life ; an immunity which seems to have been 



10 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

due to a variety of causes. Those early roads were, 
in the first place, remarkably well and thoroughly 
built, and were very cautiously operated under a 
light volume of traffic. The precautions then taken 
and the appliances in use would, it is true, strike the 
modern railroad superintendent as both primitive 
and comical ; for instance, they involved the running 
of independent pilot locomotives in advance of all 
night passenger trains. Through all the years be- 
tween 1830 and 1841, nevertheless, not a single really 
serious railroad disaster had to be recorded. This 
happy exemption was, however, quite as much due 
to good fortune as to anything else, as was well il- 
lustrated in the first accident at all serious in its 
character, which occurred, an accident in its every 
circumstance, except loss of life, almost an exact 
parallel to the famous Revere disaster which hap- 
pened nearly forty years later in Massachusetts. It 
chanced on the Manchester & Liverpool Railway on 
December 23, 1832. The second-class morning train 
had stopped at the Rainhill station to take in pas- 
sengers, when those upon it heard through the dense 
fog another train, which had left Manchester forty- 
five minutes later; coming towards them at a high 
rate of speed. When it first became visible it was 
but one hundred and fifty yards off, and a collision 
was inevitable. Those in charge of the stationary 
train, however, succeeded in getting it under a slight 
headway, and in so much diminished the shock of 
the collision ; but, notwithstanding, the last five car- 
riages were injured, the one at the end being totally 



LUCK. II 

demolished. Though quite a number of the passen- 
gers were cut and bruised, and several were severely 
hurt, one only, strange to say, was killed. 

Indeed, the luck for it was nothing else of those 
earlier times was truly amazing. Thus on this same 
Manchester & Liverpool road, as a first-class train 
on the morning of April 17, 1836, was moving at a 
speed of some thirty miles an hour, an axle broke 
under the first passenger coach, causing the whole 
train to leave the track and throwing it down the 
embankment, which at that point was twenty feet 
high. The cars were rolled over, and the passen- 
gers in them tumbled about topsy-turvey ; nor, as 
they were securely locked in, could they even ex- 
tricate themselves when at last the wreck of the 
train reached firm bearings. And yet no one was 
killed. Here the corporation was saved by one 
chance in a thousand, and its almost miraculous good 
fortune has since received numerous and terrible 
illustrations. Among these two are worthy of a 
more than passing mention. They happened one in 
America and one in England, though with some in- 
terval of time between them, and are curious as il- 
lustrating very forcibly the peculiar dangers to which 
those travelling by rail in the two countries are sub- 
jected under almost precisely similar circumstances. 
The American accident referred to was that popu- 
larly known on account of its exceptionally harrow- 
ing details as the "Angola horror," of December 18, 
1867, while the English accident was that which oc- 
curred at Shipton-on-Cherwell on December 24, 1874. 



12 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS. 

On the day of the Angola accident the eastern 
bound express train over the Lake Shore road, 
as it was then called, consisted of a locomotive, 
four baggage, express and mail cars, an emigrant 
and three first-class passenger coaches. It was 
timed to pass Angola, a small way station in the 
extreme western part of New York, at 1.30 P.M., 
without stopping ; but on the day in question it was 
two hours and forty-five minutes late, and was con- 
sequently running rapidly. A third of a mile east 
of the station there is a shallow stream, known as 
Big Sister creek, flowing in the bottom of a ravine 
the western side of which rises abruptly to the level 
of the track, while on the eastern side there is a 
gradual ascent of some forty or fifty rods. This 
ravine was spanned by a deck bridge of 160 feet in 
length, at the east end of which was an abutment 
of mason work some fifty feet long connecting with 



" THE ANGOLA HORROR" 13 

an embankment beyond. It subsequently appeared 
that the forward axle in the rear truck of the rear 
car was slightly bent. The defect was not percep- 
tible to the eye, but in turning round the space be- 
tween the flanges of the wheels of that axle varied 
by three-fourths of an inch. As long as the car was 
travelling on an unbroken track, or as long as the 
wheels did not strike any break in the track at their 
narrowest point, this slight bend in the axle was of 
no consequence. There was a frog in the track, 
however, at a distance of 600 feet east of the An- 
gola station, and it so happened that a wheel of the 
defective axle struck this frog in such a way as to 
make it jump the track. The rear car was instantly 
derailed. From the frog to the bridge was some 
1 200 feet. With the appliances then in use the 
train could not be stopped in this space, and the 
car was dragged along over the ties, swaying vio- 
lently from side to side. Just before the bridge 
was reached the car next to the last was also thrown 
from the track, and in this way, and still moving at 
considerable speed, the train went onto the bridge. 
It was nearly across when the last car toppled off 
and fell on the north side close to the abutment. 
The car next to the rear, more fortunate, was 
dragged some 270 feet further, so that when it 
broke loose it simply slid some thirty feet down 
the embankment. Though this car was badly 
wrecked, but a single person in it was killed. His 
death was a very singular one. Before the car 



14 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

separated from the train, its roof broke in two trans- 
versely ; through the fissure thus made this unfor- 
tunate passenger was partly flung, and it then in- 
stantly closed upon him. 

The other car had fallen fifty feet, and remained 
resting on its side against the abutment with one 
end inclined sharply downward. It was mid-winter 
and cold, and, as was the custom then, the car was 
heated by two iron stoves, placed one at each end, 
in which wood was burned. It was nearly full of 
passengers. Naturally they all sprang from their 
seats in terror and confusion as their car left the 
rails, so that when it fell from the bridge and vio- 
lently struck on one of its ends, they were precipi- 
tated in an inextricable mass upon one of the over- 
turned stoves, while the other fell upon them from 
above. A position more horrible could hardly be 
imagined. Few, if any, were probably killed out- 
right. Some probably were suffocated ; the great- 
est number were undoubtedly burned to death. Of 
those in that car three only escaped ; forty-one are 
supposed to have perished. 

This was a case of derailment aggravated by fire. 
It is safe to say that with the improved appliances 
since brought into use, it would be most unlikely to 
now occur under precisely the same circumstances 
on any well-equipped or carefully operated road. 
Derailments, of course, by broken axles or wheels 
are always possible, but the catastrophe at Angola 
was primarily due to the utter inability of those on 



THE STOVE PERIL. 1 5 

the train to stop it, or even greatly to check its speed 
within any reasonable distance. Before it finally 
stood still the locomotive was half a mile from the 
frog and 1,500 feet from the bridge. Thus, when the 
rear cars were off the track, the speed and distance 
they were dragged gave them a lateral and violently 
swinging motion, which led to the final result. 
Though under simila ^circumstances now this might 
not happen, there is no reason why, circumstances 
being varied a little, the country should not again 
during any winter day be shocked by another Angola 
sacrifice. Certainly, so far as the danger from fire is 
concerned, it is an alarming fact that it is hardly less 
in 1879 than it was in 1867. This accumulative 
horror is, too, one of the distinctive features of 
American railroad accidents. In other countries 
holocausts like those at Versailles in 1842 and at 
Abergele in 1868 have from time to time taken place. 
They are, however, occasioned in other ways, and, as 
their occurrence is not regularly challenged by the 
most risky possible of interior heating apparatus, 
are comparatively infrequent. The passenger coaches 
used on this side of the Atlantic, with their light 
wood-work heavily covered with paint and varnish, 
are at best but tinder-boxes. The presence in them 
of stoves, hardly fastened to the floor and filled with 
burning wood and coal, involves a degree of risk 
which no one would believe ever could willingly be 
incurred, but for the fact that it is. No invention 
yet appears to have wholly met the requirements of 



1 6 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the case. That they will be met, and the fearful 
possibility which now hangs over the head of every 
traveller by rail, that he may suddenly find himself 
doomed without possibility of escape to be roasted 
alive, will be at least greatly reduced hardly admits 
of question. 

Turning now from the American to the English 
accident, it is singular to note how under very similar 
circumstances much the same fatality resulted from 
wholly different causes. It happened on the day 
immediately preceding Christmas, and every train 
which at that holiday season leaves London is 
densely packed, for all England seems then to gather 
away from its cities to the country hearths. Ac- 
cordingly, the ten o'clock London express on the 
Great Western Railway, when it left Oxford that 
morning, was made up of no less than fifteen passen- 
ger carriages and baggage vans, drawn by two power- 
ful locomotives and containing nearly three hundred 
passengers. About seven miles north of Oxford, as 
the train, moving at a speed of some thirty to forty 
miles an hour, was rounding a gentle curve in the ap- 
proach to the bridge over the little river Cherwell, the 
tire of one of the wheels of the passenger coach next 
behind the locomotive broke, throwing it off the track. 
For a short distance it was dragged along in its 
place ; but almost immediately those in charge of 
the locomotives noticed that someting was wrong, 
and, most naturally and with the very best of in- 
tensions, .they instantly did the very worst thing 



SHIP TON-ON-CHER WELL. 1 7 

which under the circumstances it was in their power 
to do, they applied their brakes and reversed their 
engines ; their single thought was to stop the train. 
With the train equipped as it was, however, had 
these men, instead of crowding on their brakes and 
reversing their engines, simply shut off their steam 
and by a gentle application of the brakes checked 
the speed gradually and so as to avoid any strain on 
the couplings, the carriages would probably have held 
together and remained upon the road-bed. Instead 
of this, however, the sudden checking of the two 
ponderous locomotives converted them into an anvil, 
as it were, upon which the unfortunate leading car- 
riage already off the rails was crushed under the 
weight and impetus of those behind it. The train in- 
stantly zig-zagged in every direction under the press- 
ure, the couplings which connected it together snap- 
ping, and the carriages, after leaving the rails to the 
right and left and running down the embankment of 
about thirteen feet in height, came to a stand-still at 
last, several of them in the reverse order from that 
which they had held while in the train. The first 
carriage was run over and completely destroyed ; 
the five rear ones were left alone upon the road-bed, 
and of these two only were on the rails ; of the ten 
which went down the embankment, two were de- 
molished. In this disaster thirty-four passengers 
lost their lives, -and sixty-five others, besides four 
employes of the company, were injured. 

At the time it occurred the Shipton accident was 



1 8 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the subject of a good deal of discussion, and both the 
brake system and method of car construction in use 
on English roads were sharply criticised. It was 
argued, and apparently with much reason, that had 
the " locomotives and cars been equipped with the 
continuous train-brakes so generally in use in America, 
the action of the engine drivers would have checked 
at the same instant the speed of each particular car, 
and probably any serious accident would have been 
averted." Yet it required another disaster, not so 
fatal as that at Shipton-on-Cherwell but yet suffi- 
ciently so, to demonstrate that this was true only in 
a limited degree, to further illustrate and enforce 
the apparently obvious principle that, no matter 
how heavy the construction may be, or what train- 
brake is in use, to insure safety the proportion be- 
tween the resisting strength of car construction and 
the train-weight momentum to which it may be sub- 
jected must be carefully preserved. 

On this point of the resisting power of modern 
car construction, indeed, it seemed as if a result had 
been reached which did away with the danger of 
longitudinal crushing. Between 1873 and 1878 a 
series of accidents had occurred on the American 
roads of which little was heard at the time for the 
simple reason that they involved no loss of life, 
they belonged in the great category of possible 
disasters which might have happened, had they not 
been prevented. Trains going in opposite direct- 
ions and at full speed had come in collision 



MOMENTUM vs. RESISTING STRENGTH. 19 

while rounding curves ; trains had run into earth- 
slides, and had been suddenly stopped by derail- 
ment ; in every such case, however, the Westinghouse 
brake and the Miller car construction had, when in 
use, proved equal to the emergency and the passen- 
gers on the trains had escaped uninjured. The 
American mechanic had accordingly grown firm in 
his belief that, so far as any danger from the crush- 
ing of cars was concerned, unless indeed they were 
violently thrown down an embankment or precipita- 
ted into an abyss, the necessary resisting strength 
had been secured and the problem practically solved. 
That such was not the case in America in 1878 any 
more than in England in 1875, except within cer- 
trin somewhat narrow limits, was^ unexpectedly 
proven by a disaster which occurred at Wollaston 
near Boston, on the Old Colony road, upon the 
evening of October 8, 1878. 



20 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WOLLASTON ACCIDENT. 

A LARGE party of excursionists were returning from 
a rowing match on a special train consisting of two 
locomotives and twenty-one cars. There had been 
great delay in getting ready for the return, so that 
when it neared Wollaston the special was much be- 
hind the time assigned for it. Meanwhile a regular 
freight train had left Boston, going south and occu- 
pying the outward track. At Wollaston those in 
charge of this train had occasion to stop for the 
purpose of taking up some empty freight cars, which 
were standing on a siding at that place; and to 
reach this siding it was necessary for them to cross 
the inward track, temporarily disconnecting it. 
The freight train happened to be short-handed, 
and both its conductor and engineer supposed that 
the special had reached Boston before they had 
started out. Accordingly, in direct violation of the 
rules of the road and with a negligence which ad- 



RUNNING THE RISK. 21 

mitted of no excuse, they disconnected the inward 
track in both directions and proceeded to occupy 
it in the work of shunting, without sending out 
any signals or taking any precautions to protect 
themselves or any incoming train. It was after 
dark, and, though the switches were supplied with 
danger signals, these were obscured by the glare of 
the locomotive head-light. Under these circum- 
stances the special neared the spot. What ensued 
was a curious illustration of those narrow escapes 
through which, by means of improved appliances or 
by good luck, railroad accidents do not happen ; and 
an equally curious illustration of those trifling de- 
rangements which now and again bring them about. 
In this case there was no collision, though a freight- 
train was occupying the inward track in front of the 
special. There should have been no -derailment, 
though the track was broken at two points. There 
would have been no accident, had there been no at- 
tempt made to avert one. Seeing the head-light of 
the approaching special, while yet it was half a mile 
off, the engineer of the freight train realizing the 
danger had put on all steam, and succeeded, though 
by a very narrow margin, in getting his locomotive 
and all the cars attached to it off of the inward 
track and onto the outward, out of the way of the 
special. The inward track was thus clear, though 
broken at two points. The switches at those points 
were, however, of the safety pattern, and, if they were 
left alone and did their work, the special would 



22 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

simply leave the main track and pass into the 
siding, and there be stopped. Unfortunately the 
switches were not left alone. The conductor of the 
freight train had caught sight of the head-light of 
the approaching locomotive at about the same time 
as the engineer of that train. He seems at once to 
have realized the possible consequences of his reck- 
less neglect of precautions, and his one thought was 
to do something to avert the impending disaster. 
In a sort of dazed condition, he sprang from the 
freight car on which he was standing and ran to the 
lever of the siding switch, which he hastened to 
throw. He apparently did not have time enough 
within perhaps five seconds. Had he succeeded in 
throwing it, the train would have gone on to Boston, 
those upon it simply knowing from the jar they had 
received in passing over the first frog that a switch 
had been set wrong. Had he left it alone, the special 
would have passed into the siding and there been 
stopped. As it was, the locomotive of the special 
struck the castings of the switch just when it was 
half thrown at the second when it was set neither 
the one way nor the other and the wreck followed. 
It was literally the turning of a hand. 

As it approached the point where the disaster 
occurred the special train was running at a moderate 
rate of speed, not probably exceeding twenty miles 
an hour. The engineer of its leading locomotive also 
perceived his danger in time to signal it and to reverse 
his engine while yet 700 feet from the point where 



NOT THE A UTQMA TIC BRAKE. 2$ 

derailment took place. The train-brake was neces- 
sarily under the control of the engineer of the 
second locomotive, but the danger signal was im- 
mediately obeyed by him, his locomotive reversed 
and the brake applied. The train was, however, 
equipped with the ordinary Westinghouse, and not 
the improved automatic or self-acting brake of that 
name. That is, it depended for its efficiency on the 
perfectness of its parts, and, in case the connecting 
tubes were broken or the valves deranged, the brake- 
blocks did not close upon the wheels, as they do 
under the later improvements made by Westing- 
house in his patents, but at best remained only par- 
tially set, or in such positions as they were when 
the parts of the brake were broken. As is perfectly 
well understood, the original Westinghouse does 
not work quickly or effectively through more than a 
.certain number of cars. Twelve is generally re- 
garded as the limit of practical simultaneous action. 
The 700 feet of interval between the point where 
the brakes were applied and that where the accident 
occurred, a distance which, at the rate at which 
the train was moving, it could hardly have passed 
over in less than twenty-two seconds, should have 
afforded an ample space within which to stop the 
train. When the derailment took place, however, 
it was still moving at a considerable rate of speed. 
Both locomotives, the baggage car and six follow- 
ing passenger cars left the rails. The locomotives, 
after going a short distance, swung off to the left 



24 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

and toppled over, presenting an insuperable barrier 
to the direct movement of the cars following. 

Those cars were of the most approved form of 
American construction, but here, as at Shipton, the 
violent application of the train-brakes and reversal 
of the locomotives had greatly checked the speed 
of the forward part of the train, while the whole 
rear of it, comparatively free from brake pressure, 
was crowding heavily forward. Including its living 
freight, the entire weight of the train could not 
have been less than 500 tons. There was no slack 
between its parts ; no opportunity to give. It was 
a simple question of the resisting power of car 
construction. Had the train consisted of ten cars 
instead of twenty-two a recent experience of a not 
dissimilar accident on this very road affords sufficient 
evidence of how different the result would have 
been. On the occasion referred to, October 13, 
1876, a train consisting of two locomotives and 
fourteen cars, while rounding a curve before the 
Randolph station at a speed of thirty miles an hour 
came in sudden collision with the locomotive of a 
freight train which was occupying the track, and 
while doing so, in that case also as at Wollaston, 
had wholly neglected to protect it. So short was 
the notice of danger that the speed of the passenger 
train could not at the moment of collision have 
been less than twenty miles an hour. The freight 
train was at the moment fortunately backing, but 
none the less it was an impassable obstacle. The 



HAMMER AND ANVIL. 2$ 

three locomotives were entirely thrown from the 
track and more or less broken up, and three cars of 
the passenger train followed them, but the rest of it 
remained in line and on the rails, and was so entirely 
uninjured that it was not found necessary to with- 
draw one of the cars from service for even a single 
trip. Mot a passenger was hurt. This train con- 
sisted of fourteen cars : but at Wollaston, the four- 
teen forward cars were, after the head of the train 
was derailed, driven onward not only by their 
own momentum but also by the almost unchecked 
momentum of eight other cars behind them. The 
rear of the train did not leave the rails and was free- 
ly moving along them. By itself it must have 
weighed over 200 tons. The result was inevitable. 
Something had to yield ; and the six forward cars 
were accordingly either thrown wholly to the one 
side or the other, or crushed between the two loco- 
motives and the rear of the train. Two of them in 
fact were reduced into a mere mass of fragments. 
The disaster resulted in the death of 19 persons, 
while a much greater number were injured, more 
than 50 seriously. In this as in most other railroad 
disasters the surprising thing was that the list of 
casualties was not larger. Looking at the position 
of the two cars crushed into fragments it seemed al- 
most impossible that any person in them could have 
escaped alive. Indeed that they did so was largely 
due to the fact that the season for car-warming had 
not yet arrived, while, in some way impossible to 



26 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

explain, all four of the men in charge of the locomo- 
tives, though flung violently through the air into the 
trees and ditch at the side of the road were neither 
stunned nor seriously injured. They were conse- 
quently able, as soon as they could gather them- 
selves up, to take the measures necessary to ex- 
tinguish the fires in their locomotives which other- 
wise would speedly have spread to the ctibris of the 
train. Had they not done so nothing could have 
saved the large number of passengers confined in the 
shattered cars. 



OF THF, 



THE EMPHASIS OF DEATH. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ACCIDENTS AND CONSERVATISM. 

THE four accidents which have been referred to, 
including that of April 17, 1836, upon the Manchester 
& Liverpool road, belong to one class. Though they 
covered a period of forty-two years they were all 
due to the same cause, the sudden derailment of a 
portion of the train, and its subsequent destruction 
because of the insufficient control of those in charge 
of it over its momentum. In the three earlier cases 
the appliances in use were much the $ame, for be- 
tween 1836 and 1874 hardly any improvement as re- 
spects brakes had either forced its own way, or been 
forced by the government, into general acceptance 
in Great Britain. The Wollaston disaster, on the 
other hand, revealed a weak point in an improved 
appliance ; the old danger seemed, indeed, to take a 
sort of pleasure in baffling human ingenuity. The 
Shipton accident, however, while one of the most 
fatal which ever occurred was also one of the most 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

fruitful in results. This, and the accident of April 
17, 1836, upon the Manchester & Liverpool road 
were almost precisely similar, though no less than 
thirty-eight years intervened between them. In the 
case of the first, however, no one was killed and 
consequently it was wholly barren of results; for 
experience has shown that to bring about any con- 
siderable reform, railroad disasters have, as it were, 
to be emphasized by loss of life. This, however, 
implies nothing more than the assertion that those 
responsible for the management of railroads do not 
differ from other men, that they are apt, after some 
hair-breadth escape, to bless their fortunate stars for 
the present good rather than to take anxious heed 
for future dangers. 

At the time the Shipton accident occurred the 
success of the modern train-brake, which places the 
speed of each of the component parts of the train 
under the direct and instantaneous control of him 
who is in charge of the locomotive, had for years 
been conceded even by the least progressive of 
American jg : ^-oad managers. The want of such a 
brake and th*e absence of proper means of commu- 
nication between the parts of the train had directly 
and obviously caused the murderous destructiveness 
of the accident. Yet in the investigation which en- 
sued it appeared that the authorities of the Great 
Western Railway, being eminently " practical men," 
still entertained as respected the. train-brake " very 
grave doubts of the wisdom of adopting [it] at 



BRITISH CONSER VA TISM. 29 

all ; " while at the same time, as respected a means 
of communication between the parts of the train, it 
appeared that the associated general managers of 
the leading railways " did not think that any [such] 
means of communication was at all required, or 
likely to be useful or successful." 

Though quite incomprehensible, there is at the 
same time something superb in such an exhibition 
of stolid conservatism. It is British. It is, however, 
open to but one description of argument, the -ultima 
raltkvi railroad logic. So long as luck averted the 
loss of life in railroad disasters, no occasion would 
ever have been seen for disturbing time-honored 
precautions or antiquated appliances. Wriile, how 
ever, a disaster like that of December 24, 1874, 
might not convince, it did compel : in spite of pro- 
fessed " grave doubts," incredulity and conservatism 
vanished, silenced, at least, in presence of so frightful 
a row of corpses as on that morning made ghastly 
the banks of the Cherwell. The general, though 
painfully slow and reluctant, introduction of train- 
brakes upon the railways of Great Britain may be 
said to have dated from that event. 

In the matter of communication between those in 
the train and those in charge of it, the Shipton corp- 
ses chanced not to be witnesses to the precise point. 
Accordingly their evidence was, so to speak, ruled 
out of the case, and neither the utility nor the suc- 
cess of any appliance for this purpose was held to be 
yet proven. What further proof would be deemed 



30 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

conclusive did not appear, but the history of the 
discussion before and since is not without value. 
There is, indeed, something almost ludicrously char- 
acteristic in the manner with which those interested 
in the railway management of Great Britain strain 
at their gnats while they swallow their camels. They 
have grappled with the great question of city travel 
with a superb financial and engineering sagacity, 
which has left all other communities hopelessly dis- 
tanced ; but, while carrying their passengers under 
and over the ebb and flow of the Thames and 
among the chimney pots of densest London to leave 
them on the very steps of the Royal Exchange, they 
have never been able to devise any satisfactory 
means for putting the traveller, in case of a disaster 
to the carriage in which he happens to be, in com- 
munication with the engine-driver of his train. An 
English substitute for the American bell-cord has 
for more than thirty years set the ingenuity of 
Great Britain at defiance. 

As long ago as the year 1857, m consequence of 
two accidents to trains by fires, a circular on this sub- 
ject was issued to the railway companies by the 
Board of Trade, in which it was stated that " from 
the beginning of the year 1854, down to the present 
time (December, 1857) there have been twenty-six 
cases in which either the accidents themselves or 
some of the ulterior consequences of the accidents 
would probably have been avoided had such a means 



THE BELL-CORD. 31 

of communication existed." * As none of these acci- 
dents had resulted in any considerable number of 
funerals the railway managers wholly failed to see 
the propriety of this circular, or the necessity of tak- 
ing any steps in consequence of it. As, however, 
accidents from this cause were still reported, and 
with increasing frequency, the authorities in July, 
1864, again bestirred themselves and issued another 
circular in which it was stated that " several instan- 
ces have occurred of carriages having taken fire, or 
having been thrown off the rails, the passengers in 
which had no means of making their perilous situa- 
tion known to the servants of the company in 
charge of the train. Recent occurrences also of a 
criminal nature in passenger railway trains have ex- 
cited among the public a very general feeling of 
alarm." The last reference was more particularly to 
the memorable Briggs murder, which had taken 
place only a few days before on July Qth, and was 
then absorbing the public attention to the almost 
entire exclusion of everything else. 

* The bell-cord in America, notwithstanding the theoretical objec- 
tions which have been urged to its adoption in other countries, has 
proved such a simple and perfect protection against dangers from in- 
ability to communicate between portions of trains that accidents from 
this cause do not enter into the consideration of American railroad 
managers. Yet they do, now and again, occur. For instance, on 
February 28, 1874, a passenger coach in a west-bound accommodation 
train of the Great Western railroad of Canada took fire from the fall- 
ing of a lamp in the closet at its forward end. The bell-cord was 
for some reason not connected with the locomotive, and the train 
ran two miles before it could be stopped. The coach in question was 
entirely destroyed and eight passengers were either burned or suffo- 
cated, while no less than thirteen others sustained injuries in jump- 
ing from the train. 



32 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

As no better illustration than this can be found of 
the extreme slowness with which the necessity for 
new railroad appliances is recognized in cases where 
profit is not involved, and of the value of wholesale 
slaughters, like those at Shipton and Angola, as a 
species of motive force in the direction of progress, a 
digression on the subject of English accidents due to 
the absence of bell-cords may be not without value. 
In the opinion of the railway managers the cases 
referred to by the Board of Trade officials failed to 
show the existence of any necessity for providing 
means of communication between portions of the 
train. A detailed statement of a few of the cases 
thus referred to will not only be found interesting 
in itself, but it will give some idea of the description 
of evidence which is considered insufficient. The 
circumstances of the Briggs murder, deeply interest- 
ing as they were, are too long for incidental state- 
ment ; this, however, is not the case with some of 
the other occurrences. For instance, the Board of 
Trade circular was issued on July 3Oth ; on July /th, 
a year earlier, the following took place on the Lon- 
don & North Western road. 

Two gentlemen took their seats at Liverpool in 
one of the compartments of the express train to 
London. In it they found already seated an elderly 
lady and a large, powerfully built man, apparently 
Irish, respectably dressed, but with a lowering, sus- 
picious visage. Though one of the two gentlemen 
noticed this peculiarity as he entered the carriage, 



A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 33 

he gave no thought to it, but, going on with their 
conversation, he and his friend took their seats, and 
in a few moments the train started. Scarcely was it 
out of the station when the stranger changed his 
seat, placing himself on the other side of the car- 
riage, close to the window, and at the same time, in 
a menacing way, incoherently muttering something 
to himself. The other passengers looked at him, 
but felt no particular alarm, and for a time he re- 
mained quietly in his seat. He then suddenly sprang 
up, and, with a large clasp-knife in his hand, rushed 
at one of the gentlemen, a Mr. Warland by n&me, 
and struck him on the fopehead, the knife sliding 
along the bone and inflicting a frightful flesh wound. 
As he was in the act of repeating the blow, Warland's 
companion thrust him back upon the seat. This 
seemed to infuriate him, and starting to his feet he 
again tried to attack the wounded man. A frightful 
struggle ensued. It was a struggle for life, in a nar- 
row compartment feebly lighted, for it was late at 
night, on a train running at full speed and with no 
stopping place for eighty miles. The passengel: who 
had not been hurt clutched the 'maniac by the throat 
with one hand and grasped his knife with the other, 
but only to feel the blade drawn through his fingers, 
cutting them to the bone. The unfortunate elderly 
woman, the remaining occupant of the compartment, 
after screaming violently in her terror for a few mo- 
ments, fainted away and fell upon the floor. The 
struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, 



34 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

until at last, though blinded with blood and weak 
from its loss, the wounded Mr. Warland got behind 
his assailant and threw him down, in which posi- 
tion the two succeeded in holding him, he striking 
and stabbing at both of them with his knife, shout- 
ing loudly all the time, and desperately endeavoring 
to rise and throw them off. They finally, 'how- 
ever, got his knife away from him, and then kept 
him down until the train at last drew up at Cam- 
dentovfh station. When the ticket collector open- 
ed the compartment door at that place he found 
the- four passengers on the floor, the woman sense- 
less and two of the men holding the third, while 
the faces and clothing of all of them, together 
with seats, floor, windows and sides of the carriage 
were covered with blood or smeared with finger 
marks. 

The assailant in this case, as it subsequently ap- 
peared upon his commitment for an assault, was 
a schoolmaster who had come over from Ireland 
to a competitive examination. He was insane, of 
course, but before the magistrate he made a state- 
ment which had in it something quite touching ; 
he said that he saw the two gentlemen talking 
together, and, as he thought, making motions to 
wards him ; he believed them to be thieves who 
intended to rob him, and so he thought that he 
could not do better than defend himself, " if only 
for his dear little ones at home." 

This took place before the Board of Trade circular 



ASSAULTS AND INDECENCIES. 35 

was issued, but, as if to give emphasis to it, a few 
days only after its issue, in August, 1864, there was 
a not dissimilar occurrence in a third class carriage 
between London and Peterborough. The running 
distance was in this case eighty miles without a stop, 
and occupied generally an hour and fifty minutes, 
the rate being iorty-three miles an hour. In the 
compartment in question were five passengers, one 
of whom, a tall powerful fellow, was dressed like a 
sailor. The train was hardly out -of London when 
this man, after searching his pockets for a moment, 
cried out that he had been robbed of his purse con- 
taining 17, and began violently to shout and ges- 
ticulate. He then tried to clamber through the win- 
dow, getting his body and one leg out, and when his 
fellow passengers, catching hold of his other leg, suc- 
ceeded in hauling him back, he turned savagely upon 
them and a desperate struggle ensued. At last he 
was gotten down by main force and bound to a seat. 
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the speed at which they 
were running, the noise of the struggle was heard in 
the adjoining compartments, and almost frantic 
efforts were made to stop the train. Word was 
passed from carriage to carriage for a short distance, 
but it proved impossible to communicate with the 
guard, or to do anything but thoroughly alarm the 
passengers. These merely knew that something was 
the matter, what, they could only imagine, and 
so the run to Peterborough was completed amid 
shouts of " stop the train," interspersed with frantic 



36 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

female shrieks. The man was suffering from delir- 
ium tremens. 

About a year later, in December, 186$, a similar 
case occurred which, however, had in it strong ele- 
ments of the ludicrous. A clergyman, laboring 
under great indignation and excitement, and with- 
out the slightest sense of the ridiculous, recounted 
his experience in a communication to the Times. 
He had found himself alone in a compartment of an 
express train in which were also a young lady and a 
man, both total strangers to him. Shortly after the 
train started the man began to give unmistakable 
indications of something wrong. He made no 
attempt at any violence on either of his fellow pas-- 
sengers, but he was noisy, and presently he proceeded 
to disrobe himself and otherwise to indulge in antics 
which were even more indecent than they were ex- 
traordinary. The poor clergyman, a respected in- 
cumbent of the established church returning to the 
bosom of his family, was in a most distressing 
situation. At first he attempted remonstrance. 
This, however, proved worse than unavailing, and 
there was nothing for it but to have recourse to his 
umbrella, behind the sheltering cover of which he 
protected the modesty of the young lady, while 
over its edges he himself from time to time effected 
observations through an apparently interminable 
journey of forty and more miles. 

These and numerous other cases of fires, murders, 
assaults and indecencies had occurred and filled the 



A BURGLAR'S PLUNGE. 37 

columns of the newspapers, without producing the 
slightest effect on the managers of the railway com- 
panies. No attention was paid by them to the 
Board of Trade circulars. At last Parliament took 
the matter up and in 1868 an act was passed, making 
compulsory some " efficient means of communication 
between the passenger and the servants of the com- 
pany in charge " of railroad trains. Yet when six 
years later in 1874 the Shipton accident occurred, 
and was thought to be in some degree attributable 
to the absence of the very means of communication 
thus made compulsory, it appeared, as has been seen, 
that the associated general managers did. not yet 
consider any such means of communication either 
required or likely to be useful. 

Meanwhile, as if in ironical comment on such 
measured utterances, occurrences like the following, 
which took place as recently as the early part of 
1878, from time to time still meet the eye in the 
columns of the English press : 

" A burglar was being taken in a third-class carriage 
from London to Sheffield. When about twelve miles 
from Sheffield he asked that the windows might be 
opened. This was no sooner done than he took a dive 
out through the aperture. One of the warders succeeded 
in catching him by a foot, and for two miles he hung head 
downward suspended by one foot and making terrific 
struggles to free himself. In vain he wriggled, for al- 
though his captors were unable to catch the other foot, 
both held him as in a vise. But he wore spring-sided 
boots, and the one on which his fate seemingly depended 
came off. The burglar fell heavily on the foot-board of 



38 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the carriage and rolled off on the railway. Three miles 
further on the train stopped, and the warders went back 
to the scene of the escape. Here they found him in the 
snow bleeding from a wound on the head. During the 
time he was struggling with the warders the warder who 
had one hand free and the passengers of the other com- 
partments who were witnessing the scene from the windows 
of the train were indefatigable in their efforts tq attract 
the attention of the guards by means of the communica- 
tion cord, but with no result. For two miles the unfortu- 
nate man hung head downward, and for three miles further 
the train ran until it stopped at an ordinary resting place." 

A single further example will more than sufficient- 
ly illustrate this instance of British railroad conserva- 
tism, and indicate the tremendous nature of the 
pressure which has been required to even partially 
force the American bell-cord into use in that coun- 
try. One day, in the latter part of 1876, a Mr. A. J. 
Ellis of Liverpool had occasion to go to Chester. 
On his way there he had an experience with a lunatic, 
which he subsequently recounted before a magistrate 
as follows : 

"On Friday last I took the 10.35 A.M., train from Lime 
Street in a third-class carriage, my destination being 
Chester. At Edge Hill Station the prisoner and another 
man, whom I afterward understood to be the prisoner's 
father, got into the same compartment, no one else being 
in the same compartment. The other person was much 
under the influence of drink when he entered, and was 
very noisy during the journey. The prisoner had the ap- 
pearance of having been drinking, but was quiet. I sat 
with my back to the engine, on the getting-out side of the 
carriage ; prisoner was sitting on the opposite side, with 
his right arm to the window, and the other person was 



A RIDE WITH A MANIA C. 39 

sitting on the same side as prisoner, about the middle of 
the seat. I was engaged reading, and did not exchange 
words with the prisoner. 

" After we had passed over Runcorn bridge and through 
the station, I perceived -the prisoner make a start, and 
looking toward him saw a white-hatted knife in his hand, 
about five inches long, with the blade open. He held it 
in his right hand in a menacing manner. Drawing his 
left hand along the edge of the blade, he said, " This will 

have to go into some ." At that moment he looked 

at me across the carriage ; he was on his feet in an instant, 

and looking across to me, he said, " You , this will 

have to go into you," and made a bound toward me. The 
other jumped up and tried to prevent him. The prisoner 
threw him away ; he made a plunge at my throat. I 
caught his wrist just as he advanced, and struggled with 
him, still holding fast to his wrist with both hands. We 
fell over and under one another two or three times, and 
eventually he overpowered me. I had fallen on my side 
on the seat, but still retained my hold upon his wrist. 
While lying in that position he held the knife down to 
within an inch of my throat. I called to the other man 
to hold the prisoner's hand back which contained the 
knife, and by that means he saved my life. I was growing 
powerless, and as the other man restrained the prisoner 
from using the knife, I jerked myself from his grasp, and 
knocked the knife out of the prisoner's hand with my left 
hand. 

" The prisoner eluded the grip of his father, and falling 
on his knees began to seek for his knife. Failing to find 
the knife, he was instantly on his feet, and made a spring 
upon me. If I recollect aright, he threw his arms around 
my neck, and in this manner we struggled together up 
and down the carriage for some minutes, during which 
time he got my left thumb (with a glove on at the time) 
in his mouth, and bit it. Still retaining my thumb in his 
mouth, the other man struck him under the chin, when he 
released it, and fell on his knees seeking the knife, which 



OF THE 

CTNIVERSTTV 



40 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

he did not find. He was immediately on his feet, and 
again made a spring upon me. We had then a very long 
and desperate struggle, when he overpowered me and 
pinned me in a corner of the compartment. At last he 
got my right thumb into his mouth, holding my hand to 
steady it with both his hands while he bit it. With a 
great effort he then bit my thumb off, clean to the bone. 
I had no glove on that hand. I called to the other man 
to help me, but he seemed stupefied. He called two or 
three times to the prisoner, ' Leave the poor man alone. 
The poor man has done thee no harm.' Though sitting 
within nine inches of my knees he rendered me no help. 

" When the prisoner bit my thumb off, he held it in his 
mouth ; he pushed his head through the glass, spat the 
thumb into his hand and flung it out through the window. 
I then stood up and put my left hand in my pocket, took 
out my purse and cried out : ' If it is money you want 
take all I have.' He made a grab at the purse and flung 
it through the window, on the same side as the thumb 
was thrown out. From this act I inferred that I was strug- 
gling with a maniac. I retreated to the other end of the 
compartment, holding the other man between me and the 
prisoner, but he passed the other man by jumping over 
the seat and again got hold of me. Then he forced his 
head through the other window, breaking the glass, and, 
loosing me for a moment, with his fists smashed the re- 
maining glass in the window. Addressing me he said : 

' You , you will have to go over ; ' at the same time 

he flung both his arms around my waist. I put my leg 
behind his and threw him on his back. I called upon the 
other man to help me and he did so. 

" We held him down for some time, but he overpowered 
us and flung us back some distance. He then laid hold 
of my travelling rug and threw it through the window. 
Laying his hand on the bottom of the window he cried 
out, 'Here goes,' and made a'leap through the window. 
I and the other man instantly laid hold of his legs as he 



THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. 41 

was falling over. I got my four fingers into his right 
shoe, and, his father assisting me, we held him through 
the window, hanging head downward for about half a 
mile. I then fainted, and as I was losing my hold on his 
heels I have some faint recollection that the prisoner's 
father lost his hold at the same time, and I can't say 
what happened afterward. As I was coming to myself 
the train was stopping, and I heard the other man say, 
'Oh, my son, my son.' When the train stopped I walked 
from the carriage to the station, and Dr. Robinson, who 
was sent for, came in about an hour and amputated my 
thumb further back." 

While thus referring, however, to this instance of 
British railroad conservatism, which with a stolid 
indifference seems to ignore the teachings of every 
day life and to meet constantly recurring experi- 
ence with a calm defiance, it will not do for the 
American railroad manager to pride himself too 
much on his own greater ingenuity and more amen- 
able disposition. The Angola disaster has been re- 
ferred to, as well as that at Shipton. If the absence 
of the bell-cord had indeed any part in the fatality of 
the latter, the presence in cars crowded with passen- 
gers of iron pots full of living fire lent horrors before 
almost unheard of to the former. The methods of 
accomplishing needed results which are usual to any 
people are never easily changed, whether in Europe 
or in America; but certainly the disasters which 
have first and last ensued from the failure to devise 
any safe means of heating passenger coaches in this 
country are out of all proportion to those which can 
be attributed in England to the absence of means of 



4 2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

communication between the passengers on trains and 
those in charge of them. There is an American 
conservatism as well as an English ; and when it 
comes to a question of running risks it would be 
strange indeed if the greater margin of security were 
found west of the Atlantic. The security afforded 
by the bell-cord assuredly has not as yet in this 
country off-set the danger incident to red-hot stoves. 



THE FIRST CA TA STROPHE. 43 



, CHAPTER V. 

TELESCOPING AND THE MILLER PLATFORM. 

THE period of exemption from wholesale railroad 
slaughters referred to in a previous chapter and 
which fortunately marked the early days of the 
system, seems to have lasted some eleven years. 
The record of great catastrophes opened on the 
Great Western railway of England, and it opened 
also, curiously enough, upon the 24th of Decem- 
ber, a day which seems to have been peculiarly un- 
fortunate in the annals of that corporation, seeing 
that it was likewise the date of the Shipton-on- 
Cherwell disaster. Upon that day, in 1841, a train, 
while moving through a thick fog at a high rate of 
speed, came suddenly in contact with a mass of 
earth that had slid down upon the track from the 
slope of the cutting. Instantly the whole rear of 
the train was piled up on the top of the first car- 
riage, which happened to be crowded with passen- 
gers, eight of whom were killed on the spot while 



44 . RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

seventeen others were more or less injured. The 
coroner's jury returned a verdict of accidental death, 
and at the same time, as if to give the corporation 
a forcible hint to look closer to the condition of its 
roadway, a " deodand " of one hundred pounds was 
levied on the locomotive and tender. This practice, 
by the way, of levying a deodand in cases of rail- 
road accidents resulting in loss of life, affords a cu- 
rious illustration of how seldom those accidents 
must have occurred. The mere mention of it now 
as ever having existed sounds almost as strange and 
unreal as would an assertion that the corporations 
had in their earlier days been wont to settle their 
differences by wager of battle. Like the wager of 
battle, the deodand was a feature of the English 
common law derived from the feudal period. It was 
nothing more nor less than a species of fine, every- 
thing through the instrumentality of which accidental 
death occurred being forfeited to the crown : or, in 
lieu of the thing itself, its supposed money value as 
assessed by a coroner's jury.* Accordingly, down to 
somewhere about the year 1847, when the practice 
was finally abolished by act of Parliament, we find 

* " Deodand. By this is meant whatever personal chattel is the 
immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature : which is 
forfeited to the king, to be applied to pious uses, and distributed in 
alms by his high almoner ; though formerly destined to a more su- 
perstitious purpose. * * * Wherever the thing is in motion, not 
only that part which immediately gives the wounds (as the wheel 
which runs over his body,) but all things which move with it and help 
to make the wound more dangerous, (as the cart and loading, which 
increase the pressure of the wheel) are forfeited." Blackstone, Book 
I, Chap. 8, XVI. 



THE DEODAND. 45 

in -all cases of English railroad accidents resulting 
in death, mention of the deodand assessed by coro- 
ner's juries on the locomotives. These appear to 
have been arbitrarily fixed, and graduated in amount 
as the circumstances of the particular accident 
seemed to excite in greater or less degree the sym- 
pathies or the indignation of the jury. In Novem- 
ber, 1838, for instance, a locomotive exploded on the 
Manchester & Liverpool road, killing its engineer 
and fireman : and for this escapade a deodand of 
twenty pounds was assessed upon it by the coroner's 
jury; while upon another occasion, in 1839, where 
the locomotive struck and killed a man and horse at 
a street crossing, the deodand was fixed at no less a 
sum than fourteen hundred pounds, the full value of 
the engine. Yet in this last case there did not ap- 
pear to be any circumstances rendering the corpora- 
tion liable in civil damages. The deodand seems to 
have been looked upon as a species of rude penalty 
imposed on the use of dangerous appliances, a 
sharp reminder to the corporations to look closely 
after their locomotives and employe's. As, how- 
ever, accidents increased in frequency it became 
painfully apparent that " crowner's 'quest law " was 
not in any appreciable degree better calculated to 
command the public respect in the days of Victoria 
than in those of Elizabeth, and the ancient usage 
was accordingly at last abolished. Certainly the 
position of railroad corporations would now be even 
more hazardous than it is, if, after every catastrophe 



46 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

resulting in death, the coroner's jury of the vicinage 
enjoyed the power of arbitrarily imposing on them 
such additional penalty not exceeding the value of 
a locomotive, in addition to all other liabilities, as 
might seem to it proper under the circumstances of 
the case. 

Recurring, however, to the accident of December 
24, 1 86 1 $ the numerous casualties in that case were 
due^fcf the crushing of the rolling stock which was 
not strong enough to resist the shock of the sudden 
stop. Under these circumstances the light, short 
English carriages rode over each other and were 
broken to pieces ; under similar circumstances the 
longer and heavier cars then in use in America would 
have " telescoped ; " that is, the platformsb etween 
the cars would have been broken off and the forward 
end of each car riding slightly up on its broken 
coupling would have shot in over the floor of the 
car before it, sweeping away the studding and other 
light wood-work and crushing stoves, seats and 
passengers into one inextricable mass, until, if the 
momentum was sufficiently great, the several ve- 
hicles in the train would be enclosed in each other 
somewhat like the slides of a partially shut tele- 
scope. 

Crushing in other countries and telescoping in 
America were formerly the greatest, if not the worst, 
dangers to which travel by rail was liable. As re- 
spects crushing there is little to be said. It is a 
mere question of proportions, resisting strength 



TELESCOPING. 47 

opposed to momentum. So long as trains go at 
great speed it is inevitable that they will occasion- 
ally be brought to a dead-stand by running upon 
unexpected obstacles. The simple wonder is that 
they do this so infrequently. When, however, now 
-and again, they are thus brought to a dead-stand 
the safety of the passenger depends and can de- 
pend on nothing but the strength of the car in 
which he is sitting as measured by the force of the 
shock to which it is subjected. This matter has 
already been referred to in connection with the 
Shipton and Wollaston accidents,* the last of 
which was a significant reminder to all railroad 
managers that no matter how strongly or with how 
careful a regard to scientific principles cars may be 
constructed, just so long as they are made by 
human hands it is easy to load on weight sufficient, 
when combined with only a moderate momentum, 
to crush them into splinters. 

Telescoping, however, was an incident of crush- 
ing, and a peculiarly American incident, which is 
not without a certain historical interest ; for the par- 
ticular feature in car construction which led directly 
to it and all its attendant train of grisly horrors 
furnishes a singular and instructive illustration of 
the gross violations of mechanical principles into 
which practical, as opposed to educated, mechanics 
are apt constantly to fall, and in which, when 
once they have fallen, they steadily persist. The 

* Ante pp. 18-19. 



48 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

original idea of the railroad train was a succession 
of stage coaches chained together and hauled by a 
locomotive. The famous pioneer train of August 
9, 1831, over the Mohawk Valley road was liter- 
ally made up in this way, the bodies of stage 
coaches having been placed on trucks, which " were 
coupled together with chains or chain-links, leaving 
from two to three feet slack, and when the loco- 
motive started it took up the slack by jerks, with 
sufficient force to jerk the passengers, who sat on 
seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under 
their hats, and in stopping they came together with 
such force as to send them flying from their seats." 
On this trip, it will be remembered, the train pres- 
ently came to a stop, when the passengers upon it, 
with true American adaptability, set their wits at 
once to the work of devising some means of 
remedying the unpleasant jerks.* " A plan was 
soon hit upon and put in execution. The three 
links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to 
their utmost tension, a rail, from a fence in the 
neighborhood, was placed betw*een each pair of 
cars and made fast by means of the packing yarn 
from the cylinders." Here was the incipient idea 
of couplers and buffers improvised by practical 
men, and for a third of a century it remained al- 
most unimproved upon, except by the introduction 
of a spring upon which coupler and buffer played. 
The only other considerable change made in the 

* Railroads : their Origin and Problems, p. 49. 



A PRACTICAL BLUNDER. 49 

earlier days of car construction was by no means 
an improvement, inasmuch as it introduced the new 
and wholly unnecessary danger of telescoping. 

The original passenger cars, however frail and 
light they may have been, were at least, when 
shackled together in a train, continuous in their 
bearings on each other, that is, their sills and floor 
timbers were all on a level and in line, so that, if the 
cars were suddenly pressed together, they met in 
such a way as to resist the pressure to the extent of 
their resisting power, and the floor of one did not 
quietly slide under or over that of another. The 
bodies of these cars were about thirty-two inches 
from the rails. This was presently found to be too 
low. In raising the bodies of the cars, however, 
the mechanics of those days encountered a prac- 
tical difficulty. The couplings of the cars built on 
the new model were higher than those of the old. 
They at once met, and, as they thought, no less 
ingeniously then successfully overcame this diffi- 
culty, by placing the couplings and draw-heads of 
their new cars below the line of the sills. This 
necessitated putting the platform which sustained 
the coupling also beneath the sills, and in doing 
that they disregarded, without the most remote 
consciousness of the fact, a fundamental law of 
mechanics, With a possible pressure, both sudden 
and heavy to be resisted, the line of resistance was 
no longer the line of greatest strength. During 
thirty years this stupid blunder remained uncor- 



50 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

reeled. It was as if the builders during that period 
had from force of habit insisted upon always using 
as supports pillars which were curved or bent 
instead of upright. At the close of those thirty 
years also the railroad mechanics had become so 
thoroughly educated into their false methods that 
it took yet other years and a series of frightful 
disasters, the significance of which they seemed 
utterly unable to take in, before they could be in- 
duced to abandon those methods. 

The two great dangers of telescoping and. os- 
cillation were directly due to this system of car 
construction and of train coupling, and telescop- 
ing and oscillation were probably the cause of one- 
half at least of the loss of life and the injuries to 
persons incident to the first thirty years of Amer- 
ican railroad experience. The badly built and 
loosely connected coaches of every train going at 
any considerable rate of speed used then to swing 
and roll about and hammer against each other after 
a fashion which made the infrequent occurrence of 
serious disaster the only fair subject for surprise. 
In case of a sudden stoppage or partial derailment, 
the train stopped or went on, not as a whole, but as 
a succession of parts, while the low platforms and 
slack couplings fearfully increased the danger; for, 
if the train held together, the cars in stopping were 
likely to break off the platforms, making of what 
remained of them a sort of inclined plane over 
which the car-bodies rode into each other at differ- 



MILLERS PLA TPORM AND B UPPER. 5 1 

ent levels; or, if the couplings, as was more 
probable, held and the train did not part, the sway- 
ing and swinging of the loosely connected cars was 
almost sure to throw them from the track and 
break them in pieces. The invention through 
which this difficulty was at last overcome, simple 
and obvious as it was, is fairly entitled, so far as 
America at least is concerned, to be classed among 
the four or five really noticeable advances which 
have of late years been made in railroad appliances. 
It contributed unmistakably and essentially to the 
safety of every traveller. Known as the Miller 
platform and buffer, from the name of the inventor, 
it was, like all good work of the sort, a simple and 
intelligent recurrence to correct mechanical prin- 
ciples. Miller went to work to construct cars in 
such a way as to cause them to . come in contact 
with each other in the line of their greatest resist- 
ing power, while in coupling them together in trains 
he introduced both tension and compression ; that 
is he, in plain language, brought the ends of the 
heavy longitudinal floor timbers of the separate 
cars exactly on a line and directly bearing on each 
other, and then forced them against each other 
until the heavy spring buffers which played on 
those floor timbers were compressed, when the 
couplers sprung together and the train then stood 
practically one solid body from end to end. It 
could no more swing or crush than a single car 
could swing or crush. It then only remained to 



52 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

increase the weight and to perfect the construction 
of the vehicles to insure all the safety in this re- 
spect of which travel by rail admitted. 

Simple as these improvements were, and appar- 
ently obvious as the mechanical principles on which 
they were based now seem, the opposition for years 
offered to them by practical master-mechanics and 
railroad men would have been ludicrous had it not 
been exasperating. There was hardly a railroad in 
the country whose officers did not insist that their 
method of construction was exceptional, it . was 
true, but far better than Miller's. It was main- 
tained that the slack couplings were necessary in 
order to enable the locomotives to start the trains, 
that a train made up without the slack, on Mil- 
ler's plan, could not be set in motion, and that if it 
was set in motion it must twist apart at every sharp 
curve etc. The ingenuity displayed in thus invent- 
ing theoretical objections to the appliance far ex- 
ceeded that required for inventing it, and indeed 
no one who has not had official experience of it 
can at all realize the objecting capacity of the 
typical practical mechanic whose conceit as a rule 
is measured by his ignorance, while his stupidity is 
unequalled save by his obstinacy. Even when 
Miller's invention for one reason or another was 
not adopted, the principles upon which that in- 
vention was founded, the principles of tension, 
cohesion and direct resistance, at last forced their 
way into general acceptance. The long-urged ob- 



THE "IMPOSSIBLE " IN PRACTICE. 53 

jection that the thing was practically impossible 
was slowly abandoned in face of the awkward but 
undeniable fact that it was done every day, and 
many times a day. Consequently, as the result of 
much patient arguing, duly emphasized by the 
regular recurrence of disaster, it is not too much to 
assert that for weight, resisting power, perfection of 
construction and equipment and the protection 
they afford to travellers, the standard American 
passenger coach is now far in advance of any other. 
As to comfort, convenience, taste in ornamentation, 
etc., these are so much matters of habit and edu- 
cation that it is unnecessary to discuss them. They 
do not affect the question of safety. 

A very striking illustration of the vast increase of 
safety secured through this improved car construc- 
tion was furnished in an accident, which happened in 
Massachusetts upon July 15, 1872. As an express 
train on the Boston & Providence road was that day 
running to Boston about noon and at a rate of speed 
of some forty miles an hour, it came in contact with 
a horse and wagon at a grade crossing in the town 
of Foxborough. The train was made up of thor- 
oughly well-built cars, equipped with both the Miller 
platform and the Westinghouse train-brake. There 
was no time in which to check the speed, and it thus 
became a simple question of strength of construc- 
tion, to be tested in an unavoidable collision. The 
engine struck the wagon, and instantly destroyed it. 
The horse had already cleared the rails when the 



54 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

wagon was struck, but, a portion of his harness get- 
ting caught on the locomotive, he was thrown down 
and dragged a short distance until his body came in 
contact with the platform of a station close to the 
spot of collision. The body was then forced under 
the cars-, having been almost instantaneously rolled 
and pounded up into a hard, unyielding mass. The 
results which ensued were certainly very singular. 
Next to the locomotive was an ordinary baggage 
and mail car, and it was under this car, and between 
its forward and its hind truck, that the body of the 
horse was forced ; coming then directly in contact 
with the truck of the rear wheels, it tore it from its 
fastenings and thus let the rear end of the car drop 
upon the track. In falling, this end snapped the 
coupling by its weight, and so disconnected the 
train, the locomotive going off towards Boston drag- 
ging this single car, with one end of it bumping 
along the track. Meanwhile the succeeding car of 
the train had swept over the body of the horse and 
the disconnected truck, which were thus brought in 
contact with its own wheels, which . in their turn 
were also torn off; and so great was the momentum 
that in this way all of the four passenger cars which 
composed that part of the train were successively 
driven clean off their rolling gear, and not only did 
they then slide off the track, but they crossed a rail- 
road siding which happened to be at that point, 
went down an embankment three or four feet in 
height, demolished a fence, passed into an adjoining 



1854 AND 1874. 55 

field, and then at last, after glancing from the stump 
of a large oak-tree, they finally came to a stand-still 
some two hundred feet from the point at which they 
had left the track. There was not in this case even 
an approach to telescoping; on the contrary, each car 
rested perfectly firmly in its place as regarded all the 
others, not a person was injured, and when the wheel- 
less train at last became stationary the astonished 
passengers got up and hurried through the doors, 
the very glass in which as well as that in the win- 
dows was unbroken. Here was an indisputable 
victory of skill and science over accident, showing 
most vividly to what an infinitesimal extreme the 
dangers incident to telescoping may be reduced. 

The vast progress in this direction made within 
twenty years can, however, best perhaps be illustrated 
by the results of two accidents almost precisely simi- 
lar in character, which occurred, the one on the Great 
Western railroad of Canada, in October, 1854, the 
other on the Boston & Albany, in Massachusetts, in 
October, 1874. In the first case a regular train made 
up of a locomotive and seven cars, while approach- 
ing Detroit at a speed of some twenty miles an hour, 
ran into a gravel train of fifteen cars which was 
backing towards it at a speed of some ten miles an 
hour. The locomotive of the passenger train was 
thrown completely off the track and down the em- 
bankment, dragging after it a baggage car. At the 
head of the passenger portion of the train were two 
second-class cars filled with emigrants ; both of these 



$6 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

were telescoped and demolished, and all their un- 
fortunate occupants either killed or injured. The 
front of the succeeding first-class car was then crushed 
in, and a number of those in it were hurt. In all, no 
less than forty-seven persons lost their lives, while 
sixty others were maimed or severely bruised. So 
much for a collision in October, 1854. In October, 
1874, on the Boston & Albany road, the regular New 
York express train, consisting of a locomotive and 
seven cars, while going during the night at a speed 
of forty miles an hour, was suddenly, near the Brim- 
field station, thrown by a misplaced switch into a 
siding upon which a number of platform freight cars 
were standing. The train was thoroughly equipped, 
having both Miller platform and Westinghouse brake. 
The six seconds which intervened, in the darkness, 
between notice of displacement and the collision did 
not enable the engineer to check perceptibly the 
speed of his train, and when the blow came it was a 
simple question of strength to resist. The shock 
must have been tremendous, for the locomotive and 
tender were flung off the track to the right and the 
baggage car to the left, the last being thrown across 
the interval between the siding and the main track 
and resting obliquely over the latter. The forward 
end of the first passenger coach was thrown beyond 
the baggage car up over the tender, and its rear 
end, as well as the forward end of the succeeding 
coach, was injured. As in the Foxborough case, 
several of the trucks were jerked out from under 



1854 AND 1874. 57 

the cars to which they belonged, but not a person 
on the train was more than slightly bruised, the 
cars were not disconnected, nor was there even 
a suggestion of telescoping. 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE VERSAILLES ACCIDENT. 

GOING back once more to the early days, a third 
of a century since, before yet the periodical recur- 
rence of slaughter had caused either train-brake or 
Miller platform to be imagined as possibilities, be- 
fore, indeed, there was yet any record of what we 
would now consider a regular railroad field-day, with 
its long train of accompanying horrors, including in 
the grisly array death by crushing, scalding, drown- 
ing, burning, and impalement, going back to the 
year 1840, or thereabouts, we find that the railroad 
companies experienced -a notable illustration of the 
truth of the ancient adage that it never rains but it 
pours ; for it was then that the long immunity was 
rudely broken in upon. After that time disasters 
on the rail seemed to tread upon one another's heels 
in quick and frightful succession. Within a few 
months of the English catastrophe of December 
24, 1841, there happened in France one of the most 



MA Y 8, 1842. 59 

famous and most horrible railroad slaughters ever 
recorded. It took place on the 8th of May, 1842. 
It was the birthday of the king, Louis Philippe, and, 
in accordance with the usual practice, the occasion 
had been celebrated at Versailles by a great display 
of the fountains. At half past five o'clock these had 
stopped playing, and a general rush ensued for the 
trains then about to leave for Paris. That which 
went by the road along the left bank of the Seine 
was densely crowded, and so long that two loco- 
motives were required to draw it. As it was mov- 
ing at a high rate of speed between Bellevue and 
Meudon, the axle of the foremost of these two lo- 
comotives broke, letting the body of the engine drop 
to the ground. It instantly stopped, and the second 
locomotive was then driven by its impetus on top of 
the first, crushing its engineer and fireman, while the 
contents of both the fire-boxes were scattered over 
the roadway and among the debris. Three carriages 
crowded with passengers were then piled on top of 
this burning mass and there crushed together into 
each other. The doors of these carriages were 
locked, as was then and indeed is still the custom 
in Europe, and it so chanced that they had all been 
newly painted They blazed up like pine kindlings. 
Some of the carriages were so shattered that a por- 
tion of those in them were enabled to extricate them- 
selves, but the very much larger number were held 
fast ; and of these such as were not so fortunate as to 
be crushed to death in the first shock perished hope- 



60 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

lessly in the flames before the eyes of a throng of 
lookers-on impotent to aid. Fifty-two or fifty-three 
persons were supposed to have lost their lives in 
this disaster, and more than forty others were in- 
jured ; the exact number of the killed, however, 
could never be ascertained, as the piling-up of the 
cars on top of the two locomotives had made of 
the destroyed portion of the train a veritable holo- 
caust of the most hideous description. Not only 
did whole families perish together, in one case no 
less than eleven members of the same family shar- 
ing a common fate, but the remains of such as 
were destroyed could neither be identified nor sepa- 
rated. In one case a female foot was alone recog- 
nizable, while in others the bodies were calcined and 
and fused into an indistinguishable mass. The 
Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to in- 
quire whether Admiral D'Urville, a distinguished 
French navigator, was among the victims. His 
body was thought to be found, but it was so terribly 
mutilated that it could, be recognized only by a 
sculptor, who chanced some time before to have 
taken a phrenological cast of the skull. His wife 
and only son had perished with him. 

It is not easy now to conceive the excitement and 
dismay which this catastrophe caused throughout 
France. The railroad was at once associated in 
the minds of an excitable people with novel forms 
of imminent death. France had at best been lag- 
gard enough in its adoption of the new invention, 



THE RETURN FROM THE FETE. 6 1 

9 

and now it seemed for a time as if the Versailles dis- 
aster was to operate as a barrier in the way of all 
further railroad development. Persons availed them- 
selves of the steam roads already constructed as 
rarely as possible, and then in fear and trembling, 
while steps were taken to substitute horse for steam 
power on other roads then in process of construction. 

The disaster was, indeed, one well calculated to 
make a deep impression on the popular mind, for it 
lacked almost no attribute of the dramatic and ter- 
rible. There were circumstances connected with it, 
too, which gave it a sort of moral significance, con- 
trasting so suddenly the joyous return from the 
country/^ in the pleasant afternoon of May, with 
what De Quincey has called the vision of sudden 
death. It contained a whole homily on the familiar 
text. As respects the number of those killed and 
injured, also, the Versailles accident has not often 
been surpassed ; perhaps never in France. In this 
country it was surpassed on one occasion, among 
others, under circumstances very similar to it. 
*This was the accident at Camphill station, about 
twelve miles from Philadelphia, on July 17, 1856, 
which befell an excursion train carrying some eleven 
hundred children, who had gone out on a Sunday- 
school picnic in charge of their teachers and friends. 

It was the usual story. The road had but a single 
track, and the train, both long and heavy, had been 
delayed and was running behind its schedule time. 
The conductor thought, however, that the next sta- 



62 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

tion could yet be reached in time to meet and there 
pass a regular train coming towards him. It may 
have been a miscalculation of seconds, it may have 
been a difference of watches, or perhaps the regular 
train was slightly before its time ; but, however it 
happened, as the excursion train, while running at 
speed, was rounding a reverse curve, it came full 
upon the regular train, which had just left the sta- 
tion. In those days, as compared with the present, 
the cars were but egg-shells, and the shock was ter- 
rific. The locomotives struck each other, and, after 
rearing themselves up for an instant, it is said, like 
living animals, fell to the ground mere masses of 
rubbish. In any case the force of the shock was 
sufficient to hurl both engines from the track and lay 
them side by side at right angles to, and some dis- 
tance from it. As only the excursion train happened 
to be running at speed, it alone had all the impetus 
necessary for telescoping ; three of its cars accord- 
ingly closed in upon each other, and the children in 
them were crushed ; as in the Versailles accident, 
two succeeding cars were driven upon this mass, 
and then fire was set to the whole from the ruins 
of the locomotives. It would be hard to imagine 
anything more thoroughly heart-rending, for the 
holocaust was of little children on a party of plea, 
sure. Five cars in all were burned, and sixty-six 
persons perished ; the injured numbered more than 
a hundred.* 

*A collision very similar to that at Camphill occurred upon the 



THE CAMPHILL COLLISION. 63 

Of this disaster nothing could be said either in) 
excuse or in extenuation ; itwas not only one oJL 
the worst description, but it was one of that de- 
scription the occurrence of which is most frequent. \fe 
An excursion train, while running against time on a ~L C 
single-track road, came in collision with a regular 
train. The record is full of similar disasters, too 
numerous to admit of specific reference. Primarily 
of course, the conductors of the special trains are as 
a rule in fault in such cases. He certainly was at 
Camphill, and felt himself to be so, for the next day 
he committed suicide by swallowing arsenic. But 
in reality in these and in all similar cases, both j 
those which have happened and those hereafter ' 
surely destined to happen, the full responsibility 

Erie railway at a point about 20 miles west of Port Jervis on the after- 
noon of July 15, 1864. The train in this case consisted of eighteen 
cars, in which were some 850 Confederate soldiers on their way 
under guard to the prisoner's camp at Elmira. A coal train consist- 
ing of 50 loaded cars from the hanch took the main line at Lacka- 
waxea. The telegraph operator there informed its conductor that the 
track was clear, and, while rounding a sharp reversed curve, the two 
trains came together, the one going at about twelve and the other at 
some twenty miles an hour. Some 60 of the soldiers, besides a 
number of train hands were killed on the spot, and 120 more were 
seriously injured, some of them fatally. 

This disaster occurred in the midst of some of the most important 
operations of the Rebellion and excited at the time hardly any notice. 
There was a suggestive military promptness in the subsequent pro- 
ceedings. " T. J. Ridgeway, Esq., Associate Judge of Pike County, 
was soon on the spot, and, after consultation with Mr. Riddle [the 
superintendent of the Erie roacl] and the officer in command of the 
men, a jury was impanneled and an inquest held ; after which a 
large trench was dug by the soldiers and the railway employes, 76 
feet long, 8 feet wide and 6 feet deep, in which the bodies were at 
once interred in boxes, hastily constructed one being allotted to 
four rebels, and one to each Union soldier." There were sixteen of 
the latter killed. 



64 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

does not rest upon the unfortunate or careless sub- 
ordinate ; nor should the weight of punishment 
be visited upon him. It belongs elsewhere. At this 
late day no board of directors, nor president, nor 
superintendent has any right to operate a single 
track road without the systematic use of the tele- 
graph in connection with its train movements. 
That the telegraph can be used to block, as it 
is termed, double-track roads, by dividing them 
into sections upon no one of which two trains can 
be running at the same time, is matter of long and 
daily experience. There is nothing new or experi- 
mental about it. It is a system which 'has been 
forced on the more crowded lines of the world as an 
alternative to perennial killings. * That in the year 
1879 excursion trains should rush along single-track 
roads and hurl themselves against regular trains, 
just as was done twenty-three years ago at Camphill, 
would be deemed incredible were not exactly simi- 
lar accidents still from time to time reported. One 
occurred near St. Louis, for instance, on July 4, 
1879. T ne simple fact is that to now operate single- 
track roads without the constant aid of the tele- 
graph, as a means of blocking them for every irreg- 
ular train, indicates a degree of wanton careless- 
ness, or an excess of incompetence,, for which ade- 
quate provision should be made in the criminal 
law. Nothing but this appeal to the whipping- 
post, as it were, seems to produce the needed 
mental activity; for it is difficult to realize the 



THE STIMULUS OF PROSECUTION. 65 

stupid conservatism of ordinary men when brought 
to the consideration of something to which they 
are not accustomed. On this very point of control- 
ling the train movement of single-track roads by- 
telegraph, for instance, within a very, recent period 
the superintendent of a leading Massachusetts road 
gravely assured the railroad commissioners of that 
state, that he considered it a most dangerous reli- 
ance which had occasioned many disasters, and that 
he had no doubt it would be speedily abandoned 
as a practice in favor of the old time-table and 
running-rules system, from which no deviations 
would be allowed. This opinion was expressed^ 
also, after the Revere disaster of 1871, it might 
have been supposed, had branded into the record of 
the state the impossibility of safely running any 
crowded railroad in a reliance upon the schedule.* 
Such men as this, however, are not accessible to 
argument or the teachings of experience, and the 
gentle stimulant of a criminal prosecution seems 
to be the only thing left. 

* Chapter XIV, XVI. 



66 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

TELEGRAPHIC COLLISIONS. 

AND yet, even with the wires in active use, col- 
lisions will occasionally take place. They have 
sometimes, indeed, even been caused by the tele- 
graph, so that railroad officials at two adjacent sta- 
tions on the same road, having launched trains at 
each other beyond recall, have busied themselves 
while waiting for tidings of the inevitable collision 
in summoning medical assistance for those sure soon 
to be injured. In such cases, however, the mishap 
can almost invariably be traced to some defect in the 
system under which the telegraph is used ; such as 
a neglect to exact return messages to insure accu- 
racy, or the delegating to inexperienced subordinates 
the work which can be properly performed only by 
a principal. This was singularly illustrated in a ter- 
rible collision which took place at Thorpe, between 
Norwich and Great Yarmouth, on the Great Eastern 
Railway in England, on the loth of September, 



THE COLLISION A T THORPE. 67 

1874. The line had in this place but a single track, 
and the mail train to Norwich, under the rule, had 
to wait at a station called Brundell until the arrival 
there of the evening express from Yarmouth, or un- 
til it received permission by the telegraph to pro- 
ceed. On the evening of the disaster the express 
train was somewhat behind its time, and the in- 
spector wrote a dispatch directing the mail to come 
forward without waiting for it. This dispatch he 
left in the telegraph office unsigned, while he went 
to attend to other matters. Just then the express 
train came along, and he at once allowed it to pro- 
ceed. Hardly was it under way when the unsigned 
dispatch occurred to him, and the unfortunate man 
dashed to the telegraph office only to learn that the 
operator had forwarded it. Under the rules of the 
company no return message was required. A second 
dispatch was instantly sent to Brundell to stop the 
mail ; the reply came back that the mail was gone. 
A collision was inevitable. 

The two trains were of very equal weight, the 
one consisting of fourteen and the other of thirteen 
carriages. They were both drawn by powerful 
locomotives, the drivers of which had reason for 
putting on an increased speed, believing, as each had 
cause to believe, that the other was waiting for him. 
The night was intensely dark and it was raining 
heavily, so that, even if the brakes were applied, the 
wheels would slide along the slippery track. Under 
these circumstances the two trains rushed upon each 



68 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

other around a slight curve which sufficed to conceal 
their head-lights. The combined momentum must 
have amounted to little less than sixty miles an hour, 
and the shock was heard through all the neighboring 
village. The smoke-stack of the locomotive draw- 
ing the mail train was swept away as the other lo- 
comotive seemed to rush on top of it, while the car- 
riages of both trains followed until a mound of 
locomotives and shattered cars was formed which 
the descending torrents alone hindered from becom- 
ing a funeral pyre. So sudden was the collision 
that the driver of one of the engines did not appa- 
rently have an opportunity to shut off the steam, 
and his locomotive, though forced from the track 
and disabled, yet remained some time in operation 
in the midst of the wreck. In both trains, very for- 
tunately, there were a number of empty cars between 
the locomotives and the carriages in which the pas- 
sengers were seated, and they were utterly demol- 
ished ; but for this fortunate circumstance the 
Thorpe collision might well have proved the most 
disastrous of all railroad accidents. As it was, the 
men- on both the locomotives were instantly killed, 
together with seventeen passengers, and four other 
passengers subsequently died of their injuries ; mak- 
ing a total of twenty-five deaths, besides fifty cases 
of injury. 

It would be difficult to conceive of a more violent 
collision than that which has just been described ; 
and yet, as curiously illustrating the rapidity with 



THE TYRONE COLLISION-. 69 

which the force of the most severe shock is ex- 
pended, it is said that two gentlemen in the last 
carriage of one of the trains, finding it at a sudden 
standstill close to the place to which they were going, 
supposed it had stopped for some unimportant cause 
and concluded to take advantage of a happy chance 
which left them almost at the doors of their homes. 
They accordingly got out and hurried away in the 
rain, learning only the next morning of the catas- 
trophe in which they had been unconscious par- 
ticipants. 

The collision at Thorpe occurred in September, 

1874. Seven months later, on the 4th of April, 

1875, there was an accident similar to it in almost 
every respect, except fatality, on the Burlington 
& Missouri road in Iowa. In this case the opera- 
tor at Tyrone had telegraphic orders to hold the 
east-bound passenger express at that point to meet 
the west-bound passenger express. This order 
he failed to deliver, and the train accordingly at 
once went on to the usual passing place at the 
next station. It was midnight and intensely dark, 
with a heavy mist in the air .which at times thick- 
ened to rain. Both of the trains approaching each 
other were made up in the way usual with through 
night trains on the great western lines, and con- 
sisted of locomotives, baggage and smoking cars, 
behind which were the ordinary passenger cars of 
the company followed by several heavy Pullman 
sleeping coaches. Those in charge of the east-bound 



70 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

train, knowing that it was behind time, were run- 
ning it rapidly, so as to delay as little as possible the 
west-bound train, which, having received the order 
to pass at Tyrone was itself being run at speed. 
Both trains were thus moving at some thirty-five 
miles an hour, when suddenly in rounding a sharp 
curve they came upon each other. Indeed so close 
were they that the west-bound engineer had no time 
in which to reverse, but, jumping straight from the 
gangway, he afterwards declared that the locomo- 
tives came together before he reached the ground. 
The engineer of the east-bound train succeeded both 
in reversing his locomotive and in applying his air- 
brake, but after reversal the throttle flew open. The 
trains came together, therefore, as at Thorpe, with 
their momentum practically unchecked, and with 
such force that the locomotives were completely 
demolished, the boilers of the two, though on the 
same line of rails, actually, in some way, passing 
each other. The baggage-cars were also destroyed, 
and the smoking cars immediately behind them were 
more or less damaged, but the remaining coaches 
of each train stood upon the tracks so wholly un- 
injured that four hours later, other locomotives hav- 
ing been procured but the track being still blocked, 
the passengers were transferred from one set of cars 
to the other, and in them were carried to their des- 
tinations. So admirably did Miller's construction 
serve its purpose in this case, that, while the super- 
intendent of the road, who happened to be in the 



THE MILLER PLATFORM. 71 

rear sleeping car of one of the trains, merely re- 
ported that he " felt the shock quite sensibly," pas- 
sengers in the rear coaches of the other train hardly 
felt it at all. 

At Tyrone the wrecks of the trains caught fire 
from the stoves thrown out of the baggage cars and 
from the embers from the. fire-boxes of the loco- 
motives, but the flames were speedily extinguished. 
Of the train hands three were killed and two in- 
jured, but no passenger was more than shaken or 
slightly bruised. This was solely due to strength 
of car construction. Heavy as the shock was, so 
heavy that in the similar case at Thorpe the car- 
riages were crushed like nut-shells under it, the 
resisting power was equal to it. The failure of ap- 
pliances at one point in the operation of the road 
was made good by their perfection at another. 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OIL-TANK ACCIDENTS. 

SIMILAR in some of its more dramatic features to 
the Versailles accident, though originating from a 
wholly different cause, was the Abergele disaster, 
which at the time occupied the attention of the 
British public to the exclusion of everything else. 
It occurred in 1868, and to the " Irish mail," per. 
haps the most famous train which is run in England, 
if, indeed, not in the world. Leaving London shortly 
after 7 A.M., the Irish mail was then timed to make 
the distance to Chester, 166 miles, in four hours and 
eighteen minutes, or at the rate of 40 miles an hour. 
For the next 85 miles, completing the run to Holy- 
head, the speed was somewhat increased, two hours 
and five minutes only being allowed for it. Aber- 
gele is a point on the sea-coast of Wales, nearly 
midway between Chester and Holyhead. On the 
day of the accident, August 20, 1868, the Irish 
mail left Chester as usual. It was made up of thir- 



THE ABERGELE ACCIDENT. 73 

teen carriages in all, which were occupied, as the 
carriages of that train usually were, by a large num- 
ber of persons whose names at least were widely 
known. Among these, on this particular occasion, 
was the Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the then Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, with five children. Under the 
running arrangements of the London & North West- 
ern road a freight, or as it is there called a goods 
train, left Chester half an hour before the mail, and 
was placed upon the siding at Llanddulas, a station 
about a mile and a half beyond Abergele, to allow 
the mail to pass. From Abergele to Llanddulas the 
track ascended by a gradient of some sixty feet to 
the mile. On the day of the accident it chanced 
that certain wagons between the engine and the 
rear end of the goods train had to be taken out to 
be left at Llanddulas, and in doing this it became 
necessary to separate the train and to leave five or 
six of the last wagons in it standing on the tracks of 
the main line, while those which were to be left 
were backed onto a siding. The employe, whose 
duty it was, neglected to set the brakes on the 
wagons thus left standing, and consequently when 
the engine and the rest of the train returned 
for them, the moment they were touched and be- 
fore a coupling could be effected, the jar set them 
in motion down the incline towards Abergele. They 
started so slowly that a brakeman of the train ran 
after them, fully expecting to catch and stop them, 
but as they went down the grade they soon out- 



74 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

stripped him and it became clear that there was 
nothing to check them until they should meet the 
Irish mail, then almost due. It also chanced that 
the cars thus set in motion were oil cars. 

The track of the North Western road between 
Abergele and Llanddulas runs along the sides of the 
picturesque Welsh hills, which rise up to the south, 
while to the north there stretches out a wide ex- 
panse of sea. The mail train was skirting the hills 
and laboring up the grade at a speed of thirty miles 
an hour, when its engineer suddenly became aware 
of the loose wagons coming down upon it around 
the curve, and then but a few yards off. See- 
ing that they were oil cars he almost instinctively 
sprang from his locomotive, and was thrown down 
by the impetus and rolled to the side of the road- 
bed. Picking himself up, bruised but not seriously 
hurt, he saw that the collision had already taken 
place, that the tender had ridden directly over the 
engine, that the colliding cars were demolished, and 
that the foremost carnages of the train were already 
on fire. Running quickly to the rear of the train 
he succeeded in uncoupling six carriages and a van, 
which were drawn away from the rest, before the 
flames extended to them, by an engine which most 
fortunately was following the train. All the other 
carriages were utterly destroyed, and every person 
in them perished. 

The Abergele was probably the solitary instance 
of a railroad accident in which but a single sur- 



DEATH WITHOUT A STRUGGLE. 75 

vivor sustained any injury. There was no maim- 
ing. It was death or entire escape. The collision 
was not a particularly severe one, and the engineer 
of the mail train especially stated that at the mo- 
ment it occurred the loose cars were still moving 
so slowly that he would not have sprung from his 
engine had he not seen that they were loaded with 
oil. The very instant the collision took place, how- 
ever, the fluid seemed to ignite and to flash along 
the train like lightning, so that it was impossible to 
approach a carriage when once it caught fire. The 
fact was that the oil in vast quantities was spilled ' 
upon the track and ignited by the fire of the loco- 
motive, and then the impetus of the mail train forced 
all of its leading carriages into the dense mass of 
smoke and flame. All those who were present, con- 
curred in positively stating that not a cry, nor a 
moan, nor a sound of any description was heard 
from the burning carriages, nor did any one in them 
apparently make an effort to escape. 

The most graphic description of this extraordin- 
ary and terrible catastrophe was that given by the 
Marquis of Hamilton, the eldest, son of the Duke of 
Abercorn whose wife and family, fortunately for 
themselves, occupied one of those rear carriages 
which were unshackled and saved. In this account 
the Marquis of Hamilton said : " We were startled 
by a collision and a shock which, though not very 
severe, were sufficient to throw every one against 
his opposite neighbor. I immediately jumped out 



? RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

of the carriage, when a fearful sight met my view. 
Already the whole of the three passengers' carnages 
in front of ours, the vans, and the engine were en- 
veloped in dense sheets of flame and smoke, rising 
fully twenty feet high, and spreading out in every 
direction. It was the work of an instant. No words 
can convey the instantaneous nature of the explo- 
sion and conflagration. I had actually got out al- 
most before the shock of the collision was over, and 
this was the spectacle which already presented itself. 
Not a sound, not a scream, not a struggle to escape, 
not a movement of any sort was apparent in the 
doomed carriages. It was as though an electric 
flash had at once paralyzed and stricken every one 
of their occupants. So complete was the absence of 
any presence of living or struggling life in them that 
as soon as the passengers from the other parts of 
the train were in some degree recovered from their 
first shock and consternation, it was imagined that 
the burning carriages were destitute of passengers ; 
a hope soon changed into feelings of horror when 
their contents of charred and mutilated remains were 
discovered an hour afterward. From the extent, 
however, of the flames, the suddenness of the conflag- 
ration, and the absence of any power to extricate 
themselves, no human aid would have been of any 
assistance to the sufferers, who, in all probability, 
were instantaneously suffocated by the black and 
fetid smoke peculiar to paraffine, which rose in vol- 
umes around the spreading flames." 



THE VICTIMS' JEWELRY. // 

Though the collision took place before one o'clock, 
in spite of the efforts of a large gang of men who 
were kept throwing water on the tracks, the perfect 
sea of flame which covered the line for a distance of 
some forty or fifty yards could not be extinguished 
until nearly eight o'clock in the evening ; for the 
petroleum had flowed down into the ballasting of 
the road, and the rails themselves were red-hot. It 
was therefore small occasion for surprise that, when 
the fire was at last gotten under, the remains of 
those who lost their lives were in some cases wholly 
undistinguishable, and in others almost so. Among 
the thirty-three victims of the disaster the body of 
no single one retained any traces of individuality ; 
the faces of all were wholly destroyed, and in no 
case were there found feet, or legs, or anything at 
all approaching to a perfect head. Ten corpses 
were finally identified as those of males, and thir- 
teen as those of females, while the sex of ten others 
could not be determined. The body of one pas- 
senger, Lord Farnham, was identified by the crest 
on his watch ; and, indeed, no better evidence of 
the wealth and social position of the victims of this 
accident could have been asked for than the collec- 
tion of articles found on its site. It included dia- 
monds of great size and singular brilliancy ; rubies, 
opals, emeralds, gold tops of smelling-bottles, 
twenty-four watches, of which but two or three 
were not gold, chains, clasps of bags, and very 
many bundles of keys. Of- these the diamonds 



73 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

alone had successfully resisted the intense heat of 
the flame ; the settings were nearly all destroyed. 

Of the causes of this accident little need or can 
be said. No human appliances, no more ingenious 
brakes or increased strength of construction, could 
have averted it or warded off its consequences once 
it was inevitable. It was occasioned primarily by 
two things, the most dangerous and the most dim- 
cult to reach of all the many sources of danger 
against which those managing railroads have un- 
sleepingly to contend : a somewhat defective disci- 
pline, aggravated by a little not unnatural care- 
lessness. The rule of the company was specific 
that all the wagons of every goods train should be 
out of the way and the track clear at least ten 
minutes before a passenger train was due ; but in 
this case shunting was going actively on when the 
Irish-mail was within a mile and a half. A careless 
brakeman then forgot for once that he was leaving 
his wagons close to the head of an incline ; a blow 
in coupling, a little heavier perhaps than usual, 
sufficed to set them in motion ; and they happened 
to be loaded with oil. 

A catastrophe strikingly similar to that at Aber- 
gele befell an express train on the Hudson River 
railroad, upon the night of the 6th of February, 
1871. The weather for a number of days preceding 
the accident had been unusually cold, and it is to 
the suffering of employes incident to exposure, and 
the consequent neglect of precautions on their part, 



THE NEW HAMBURG DISASTER. 79 

that accidents are peculiarly due. On this night a 
freight train was going south, all those in charge of 
which were sheltering themselves during a steady 
run in the caboose car at its rear end. Suddenly, 
when near a bridge over Wappinger's Creek, not far 
from New Hamburg, they discovered that a car in 
the centre of the train was off the track. The train 
was finally stopped on the bridge, but in stopping it 
other cars were also derailed, and one of these, bear- 
ing on it two large oil tanks, finally rested obliquely 
across the bridge with one end projecting over the up 
track. Hardly had the disabled train been brought 
to a stand-still, when, before signal lanterns could in 
the confusion incident to the disaster be sent out, 
the Pacific express from New York, which was a 
little behind its time, came rapidly along. As it 
approached the bridge, its engineer saw a red lan- 
tern swung, and instantly gave the signal to apply 
the brakes. It was too late to avoid the collis- 
ion ; but what ensued had in it, so far as the engi- 
neer was concerned, an element of the heroic, which 
his companion, the fireman of the engine, after- 
wards described on the witness stand with a direct- 
ness and simplicity of language which exceeded all 
art. The engineer's name was Simmons, and he 
was familiarly known among his companions as 
" Doc." His fireman, Nicholas Tallon, also saw the 
red light swung on the bridge, and called out to him 
that the draw was open. In reply Simmons told 
him to spring the patent brake, which he did, and 



80 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

by this time they were alongside of the locomotive 
of the disabled train and running with a somewhat 
slackened speed. Tallon had now got out upon the 
step of the locomotive, preparatory to springing off, 
and turning asked his companion if he also pro- 
posed to do the same : " ' Doc ' looked around at me 
but made no reply, and then looked ahead again, 
watching his business ; then I jumped and rolled 
down on the ice in the creek ; the next I knew I 
heard the crash and saw the fire and smoke." The 
next seen of " Doc " Simmons, he was dragged up 
days afterwards from under his locomotive at the 
bottom of the river. But it was a good way to die. 
He went out of the world and of the sight of men 
with his hand on the lever, making no reply to the 
suggestion that he should leave his post, but " look- 
ing ahead and watching his business." 

Dante himself could not have imagined a greater 
complication of horrors than then ensued : liquid 
fire and solid frost combined to make the work of 
destruction perfect. The shock of the collision 
broke in pieces the oil car, igniting its contents and 
flinging them about in every direction. In an in- 
stant bridge, river, locomotive, cars, and the glitter- 
ing surface of the ice were wrapped in a sheet of 
flame. At the same time the strain proved too se- 
vere for the trestlework, which gave way, precipitat- 
ing the locomotive, tender, baggage cars, and one 
passenger car onto the ice, through which they in- 
stantly crushed and sank deep out of sight beneath 



LIQUID FIRE AND SOLID FROST. 8 1 

the water. Of the remaining seven cars of the pas- 
senger train, two, besides several of the freight train, 
were destroyed by fire, and shortly, as the supports 
of the remaining portions of the bridge burned 
away, the superstructure 'fell on the half-submerged 
cars in the water and buried them from view. 

Twenty-one persons lost their lives in this disaster, 
and a large number of others were injured ; but the 
loss of life, it will be noticed, was only two-thirds of 
that at Abergele. The New Hamburg catastrophe 
also differed from that at Abergele in that, under its 
particular circumstances, it was far more preventa- 
ble, and, indeed, with the appliances since brought 
into use it would surely be avoided. The modern 
train-brake had, however, not then been perfected, 
so that even the hundred rods at which the signal 
was seen did not afford a sufficient space in which to 
stop the train. 



82 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DRAW-BRIDGE DISASTERS. 

It is difficult to see how on double track roads, 
where the occurrence of an accident on one line of 
tracks is always liable to instantly " foul " the other 
line, it is possible to guard against contingencies 
like that which occurred at New Hamburg. At the 
time, as is usual in such cases, the public indignation 
expended itself in vague denunciation of the Hudson 
River Railroad Company, because the disaster hap- 
pened to take place upon a bridge in which there 
was a draw to permit the passage of vessels. There 
seemed to be a vague but very general impression 
that draw-bridges were dangerous things, and, be- 
cause other accidents due to different causes had 
happened upon them, that the occurrence of this 
accident, from whatever cause, was in itself sufficient 
evidence of gross carelessness. The fact was that 
not even the clumsy Connecticut rule, which compels 
the stopping of all trains before entering on any 



THE "FOULING" OF TRACKS. 83 

draw-bridge, would have sufficed to avert the New 
Hamburg disaster, for the river was then frozen and 
the draw was not in use, so that for the time being 
the bridge was an ordinary bridge ; and not even in 
the frenzy of crude suggestions which invariably 
succeeds each new accident was any one ever found 
ignorant enough to suggest the stopping of all trains 
before entering upon every bridge, which, as rail- 
roads generally follow water-courses, would not in- 
frequently necessitate an average of one stop to 
every thousand feet or so. Only incidentally did the 
bridge at New Hamburg have anything to do with 
the disaster there, the essence of which lay in the 
sudden derailment of an oil car immediately in front 
of a passenger train running in the opposite direction 
and on the other track. Of course, if the derailment 
had occurred long enough before the passenger train 
came up to allow the proper signals to be given, and 
this precaution had been neglected, then the disaster 
would have been due, not to the original cause, but 
to the defective discipline of the employes. Such 
does not appear to have been the case at New Ham- 
burg, nor was that disaster by any means the first 
due to derailment and the throwing of cars from one 
track in front of a train passing upon the other ; 
nor will it be the last. Indeed, an accident hardly 
less destructive, arising from that very cause, had 
occurred only eight months previous in England, 
and resulted in eighteen deaths and more than fifty 
cases of injury. 



84 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

A goods train made up of a locomotive and 
twenty-nine wagons was running at a speed of some 
twenty miles an hour on the Great Northern road, 
between Newark and Claypole, about one hundred 
miles from London, when the forward axle under 
one of the wagons broke. As a result of the derail- 
ment which ensued the train became divided, and 
presently the disabled car was driven by the pressure 
behind it out of its course and over the interval, so 
that it finally rested partly across the other track. 
At just this moment an excursion train from London, 
made up of twenty-three carriages and containing 
some three hundred and forty passengers, came 
along at a speed of about thirty-five miles an hour. 
It was quite dark, and the engineer of the freight 
train waved his arm as a signal of danger ; one of 
the guards, also, showed a red light with his hand 
lantern, but his action either was not seen or was 
misunderstood, for without any reduction of speed 
being made the engine of the excursion train 
plunged headlong into the disabled goods wagon. 
The collision was so violent as to turn the engine 
aside off the track and cause it to strike the stone 
pier of a bridge near by, by which it was flung com- 
pletely around and then driven up the slope of 
the cutting, where it toppled over like a rear- 
ing horse and fell back into the roadway. The 
tender likewise was overturned ; but not so the 
carriages. They rushed along holding to the track, 
and the side of each as it passed was ripped and 



SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. 85 

torn by the projecting end of the goods wagon. Of 
the twenty-three carriages and vans in the train 
scarcely one escaped damage, while the more for- 
ward ones were in several cases lifted one on top of 
the other or forced partly up the slope of the cut- 
ting, whence they fell back again, crushing the pas- 
sengers beneath them. 

This accident occurred on the 2ist of June, 1870; 
it was very thoroughly investigated by Captain 
Tyler on behalf of the Board of Trade, with the ap- 
parent conclusion that it was one which could hardly 
have been guarded against. The freight cars, the 
broken axle of which occasioned the disaster, did not 
belong to the Great Northern company, and the 
wheels of the train had been properly examined by 
viewing and tapping at the several stopping-places; 
the flaw which led to the fracture was, however, of 
such a nature that it could have been detected only 
by the removal of the wheel. It did not appear 
that the employe's of the. company had been guilty 
of any negligence ; and it was difficult to avoid the 
conclusion that the accident was due to one of those 
defects to which the results of even the most per- 
fect human workmanship must ever remain liable, 
and this had revealed itself under exactly those con- 
ditions which must involve the most disastrous con- 
sequences. 

The English accident did, however, establish one 
thing, if nothing else ; it showed the immeasurable 
superiority of the system of investigation pursued 



86 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

in the case of railroad accidents in England over 
that pursued in this country. There a trained ex- 
pert after the occurrence of each disaster visits the 
spot and sifts the affair to the very bottom, locating 
responsibility and pointing out distinctly the meas- 
ures necessary to guard against its repetition. Here 
the case ordinarily goes to a coroner's jury, the 
findings of which as a rule admirably sustain the 
ancient reputation of that august tribunal. It is 
absolutely sad to follow the course of these in- 
vestigations, they are conducted with such an en- 
tire disregard of method and lead to such inade- 
quate conclusions. Indeed, how could it be other- 
wise? The same man never investigates two acci- 
dents, and, for the one investigation he does make, 
he is competent only in his own esteem. 

Take the New Hamburgh accident as an example. 
Rarely has any catastrophe merited a more careful 
investigation, and few indeed have ever called forth 
more ill-considered criticism or crude suggestions. 
Almost nothing of interest respecting it was elicited 
at the inquest, and now no reliable criticism can be 
ventured upon it. The question of responsibility in 
that case, and of prevention thereafter, involved 
careful inquiry into at least four subjects : First, 
the ownership and condition of the freight car, the 
fractured axle of which occasioned the disaster, to- 
gether with the precautions taken by the company, 
usually and in this particular case, to test the 
wheels of freight cars moving over its road, espe- 



THE DRA W-BRIDGE FRENZY. 87 

pecially during times of severe cold. Second, the 
conduct of those in charge of the freight train imme- 
diately preceding and at the time of the accident ; 
was the fracture of the axle at once noticed and 
were measures taken to stop the train, or was the 
derailment aggravated by neglect into the form it 
finally took? Third, was there any neglect in sig- 
naling the accident on the part of those in charge of 
the disabled train, and how much time elapsed be- 
tween the accident and the collision ? Fourth, 
what, if any, improved appliances would have en- 
abled those in charge of either train to. have averted 
the accident ? and what, if any, defects either in the 
rules or the equipment in use were revealed? 

No satisfactory conclusion can now be arrived at 
upon any of these points, though the probabilities 
are that with the appliances since introduced the 
train might have been stopped in time. In this case, 
as in that at Claybridge, the coroner's jury returned 
a verdict exonerating every one concerned from re- 
sponsibility, and very possibly they were justified in 
so doing; though it is extremely questionable 
whether Captain Tyler would have arrived at a sim- 
ilar conclusion. Trrere is a strong probability that 
the investigation went off, so to speak, on a wholly 
false issue, turned on the draw-bridge frenzy in- 
stead of upon the question of care. So far as the 
verdict declared that the disaster was due to a col- 
lision between a passenger train and a derailed oil 
car, and not to the existence of a draw in the bridge 



88 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

on which it happened to occur, it was, indeed, en- 
titled to respect, and yet it was on this very point 
that it excited the most criticism. Loud commen- 
dation was heard through the press of the Con- 
necticut law, which had been in force for twenty 
years, and, indeed, still is in force there, under which 
all trains are compelled to come to a full stop before 
entering on any bridge which has a draw in it, a 
law which may best be described as a useless nui- 
sance. Yet the grand jury of the Court of Oyer 
and Terminer of New York city even went so far as 
to recommend, in a report made by it on the 23d of 
February, 1871, sixteen days after the accident, 
the passage by the legislature then in session at Al- 
bany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately bet- 
ter counsels prevailed, and, as the public recovered 
its equilibrium, the matter was allowed to drop. 

The Connecticut law in question, however, orig- 
inated in an accident which at the time had startled 
and shocked the community as much even as that at 
Versailles did before or that at Abergele has since 
done. It occurred to an express train on the New 
York & New Haven road at Norwalk, in Connecti- 
cut, on the 6th of May, 1853. 



MA Y 6, 1853. 89 



CHAPTER X. 

THE NORWALK ACCIDENT. 

THE railroad at Norwalk crosses a small inlet of 
Long Island Sound by means of a draw-bridge, which 
is approached from the direction of New York around 
a sharp curve. A ball at the mast-head was in 1853 
the signal that the draw was open and the bridge 
closed to the passage of trains. The express passen- 
ger train for Boston, consisting of a locomotive and 
two baggage and five passenger cars, containing about 
one hundred and fifty persons, left New York as usual 
at eight o'clock that morning. The locomotive was 
not in charge of its usual engine-driver but of a 
substitute named Tucker ; a man who some seven 
years before had been injured in a previous collision 
on the same road, for which he did not appear to 
have been in any way responsible, but who had then 
given up his position and gone to California, whence 
he had recently returned and was now again an ap- 
plicant for an engineer's situation. This was his 



QO RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

third trip over the road, as substitute. In approach- 
ing the bridge at Norwalk he apparently wholly ne- 
glected to look for the draw-signal. He was running 
his train at about the usual rate of speed, and first 
became aware that the draw was open when within 
four hundred feet of it and after it had become 
wholly impossible to stop the train in time. He im- 
mediately whistled for brakes and reversed his engine, 
and then, without setting the brake on his tender, 
both he and the fireman sprang off and escaped with 
trifling injuries. The train at this time did not ap- 
pear to be moving at a speed of over fifteen miles an 
hour. The draw was sixty feet in width ; the water 
in the then state of the tide was about twelve feet 
deep, and the same distance below the level of the 
bridge. Although the speed of the train had been 
materially reduced, yet when it came to the opening 
it was still moving with sufficient impetus to send 
its locomotive clean across the sixty foot interval 
and to cause it to strike the opposite abutment 
about eight feet below the track ; it then fell 
heavily to the bottom. The tender lodged on 
top of the locomotive, bottom up and resting 
against the pier, while on top of this again was 
the first baggage car. The second baggage car, 
which contained also a compartment for smokers, 
followed, but in falling was canted over to the 
north side of the draw in such a way as not to be 
wholly submerged, so that most of those in it were 
saved. The first passenger car next plunged into 



THE BELCEIL DRAW-BRIDGE. QI 

the opening; its forward end crushed in, as it fell 
against the baggage car in front of it, while its rear 
end dropped into the deep water below ; and on top 
of it came the second passenger car, burying the 
passengers in the first beneath the debris, and itself 
partially submerged. The succeeding or third pas- 
senger car, instead of following the others, broke in 
two in the middle, the forward part hanging down 
over the edge of the draw, while the rear of it rested 
on the track and stayed the course of the remainder 
of the train. Including those in the smoking com- 
partment more than a hundred persons were plunged 
into the channel, of whom forty-six lost their lives, 
while some thirty others were more or less severely 
injured. The killed were mainly among the passen- 
gers in the first car ; for, in falling, the roof of the 
second car was split open, and it finally rested in 
such a position that, as no succeeding car came on 
top of it, many of those in it were enabled to extri- 
cate themselves ; indeed, more than one of the pas- 
sengers in falling were absolutely thrown through 
the aperture in the roof, and, without any volition on 
their part, were saved with unmoistened garments. 

Shocking as this catastrophe was, it was eclipsed 
in horror by another exactly similar in character, 
though from the peculiar circumstances of the case 
it excited far less public notice, which occurred 
eleven years later oh the Grand Trunk railway of 
Canada. In this case a large party of emigrants, 
over 500 in number and chiefly Poles, Germans and 



9 2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

Norwegians of the better class, had landed at Que- 
bec and were being forwarded on a special train to 
their destination in the West. With their baggage 
they rilled thirteen cars. The Grand Trunk on 
the way to Montreal crosses the Richelieu river at 
Belceil by an iron bridge, in the westernmost span 
of which was a draw over the canal, some 45 feet 
below it Both by law and under the running rules 
of the road all trains were to come to a dead stand 
on approaching the bridge, and to proceed only 
when the safety signal was clearly discerned. This 
rule, however, as it appeared at the subsequent in- 
quest, had been systematically disobeyed, it hav- 
ing been considered sufficient if the train was 
" slowed down." In the present case, however the 
night of June 29, 1864, though the danger signal 
was displayed and in full sight for a distance of 
1, 600 feet, the engine-driver, unfamiliar with the road 
and its signals, failed to see it, and, without slowing 
his train even, ran directly onto the bridge. He be- 
came aware of the danger when too late to stop. The 
draw was open to permit the passage of a steamer 
with six barges in tow, one of which was directly un- 
der the opening. The whole train went through the 
draw, sinking the barge and piling itself up in the 
water on top of it. The three last cars, falling on 
the accumulated wreck, toppled over upon the west 
embankment and were thus less injured than the 
others. The details of the accident were singularly 
distressing. " As soon as possible a strong cable was 



JUNE 29, 1864. 93 

attached to the upper part of the piling, and by this 
means two cars, the last of the ill-fated train, were 
dragged onto the wharf under the bridge. Their 
removal revealed a horrible sight. A shapeless blue 
mass of hands and heads and feet protruded among 
the splinters and frame-work, and gradually resolved 
itself into a closely-packed mass of human beings, 
all ragged and bloody and dinted from crown to foot 
with blue bruises and weals and cuts inflicted by the 
ponderous iron work, the splinters and the enormous 
weight of the train. * * * A great many of 
the dead had evidently been asleep ; the majority of 
them had taken off their boots and coats in the 
endeavor to make themselves as comfortable as pos- 
sible. They lay heaped upon one another like sacks, 
dressed in the traditional blue clothing of the Ger- 
man people. * * * A child was got at and re- 
moved nine hours after the accident, being uninjured 
in its dead mother's arms." 

The accident happened at 2 A.M, and before sun- 
down of the next day 86 bodies had been taken out 
of the canal ; others were subsequently recovered, 
and yet more died from their hurts. The injured 
were numbered by hundreds. It was altogether a 
disaster of the most appalling description, in exten- 
uation of which nothing was to be said. It befell, 
however, a body of comparatively friendless emi- 
grants, and excited not a tithe of the painful interest 
which yet attaches to the similar accident to the 
Boston express at Norwalk. 



94 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

These terrible disasters were both due, not alone 
to the carelessness of the two engine-drivers, but 
to the use of a crude and inadequate system of sig- 
nals. It so happened, however, that the legislature 
of Connecticut was unfortunately in session at the 
time of the Norwalk disaster, and consequently the 
public panic and indignation took shape in a law 
compelling every train on the railroads of that 
state to come to a dead stand-still before enter- 
ing upon any bridge in which there was a draw. 
This law is still in force, and from time to time, as 
after the New Hamburg catastrophe, an unreason- 
ing clamor is raised for it in other states. In 
point of fact it imposes a most absurd, unnecessary 
and annoying delay on travel, and rests upon the 
Connecticut statute book a curious illustration of 
what usually happens when legislators undertake 
to incorporate running railroad regulations into the 
statutes-at-large. It is of a par with another law, 
which has for more than twenty-five years been in 
force in Connecticut's sister state of Massachusetts, 
compelling in all cases where the tracks of different 
companies cross each other at a level the trains of 
each company t-o stop before reaching the crossing, 
and then to pass over it slowly. The danger of 
collision at crossings is undoubtedly much greater 
than that of going through open draws. Precau- 
tions against danger in each case are unquestion- 
ably proper and they cannot be too perfect, but to 
have recourse to stopping either in the one case or 






AN INADEQUATE PROTECTION. 95 

the other simply reveals an utter ignorance of the 
great advance which has been made in railroad sig- 
nals and the science of interlocking. In both these 
cases it is, indeed, entitled to just about the same 
degree of respect as would be a proposal to recur 
to pioneer engines as a means of preventing acci- 
dents to night trains. 

The machinery by means of which both draws 
and grade crossings can be protected, will be re- 
ferred to in another connection,* meanwhile it is 
a curious fact that neither at grade crossings nor 
at draws has the mere stopping of trains proved 
a sufficient protection. Several times in the ex- 
perience of Massachusetts' roads have those in 
charge of locomotives, after stopping and while 
moving at a slow rate of speed, actually run them- 
selves into draws with their eyes open, and after- 
wards been wholly unable to give any satisfactory 
explanation of their conduct. But the insufficiency 
of stopping as a reliable means of prevention was 
especially illustrated in the case of an accident which 
occurred upon the Boston & Maine railroad on the 
morning of the 2ist of November, 1862, when the 
early local passenger train was run into the open 
draw of the bridge almost at the entrance to the 
Boston station. It so happened that the train had 
stopped at the Charlestown station just before going 
onto the bridge, and at the time the accident 
occurred was moving at a speed scarcely faster than 

* Chapters XVII and XVIII. 



96 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

a man could walk; and yet the locomotive was 
entirely submerged, as the water at that point is 
deep, and the only thing which probably saved the 
train was that the draw was so narrow and the cars 
were so long that the foremost one lodged across 
the opening, and its forward end only was beneath 
the water. At the rate at which the train was mov- 
ing the resistance thus offered was sufficient to stop 
it, though, even as it was, no less than six persons 
lost their lives and a much larger number were more 
or less injured. Here all the precautions imposed 
by the Connecticut law were taken, and served only 
to reveal the weak point in it. The accident was 
due to the neglect of the corporation in not having 
the draw and its system of signals interlocked in 
such a way that the movement of the one should 
automatically cause a corresponding movement of 
the other ; and this neglect in high quarters made it 
possible for a careless employ^ to open the draw on 
a particularly dark and foggy morning, while he 
forgot at the same time to shift his signals. An 
exactly similar instance of carelessness on the 
part of an employe resulted in the derailment of a 
train upon the Long Branch line of the Central 
Road of New Jersey at the Shrewsbury river draw 
on August 9, 1877. In this case the safety signal 
was shown while the draw fastening had been left 
unsecured. The jar of the passing train threw the 
draw slightjy open so as to disconnect the tracks ; 
thus causing the derailment of the train, which sub- 



INTERLOCKING. 97 

sequently plunged over the side of the bridge. For- 
tunately the tide was out, or there would have been 
a terrible loss of life ; as it was, some seventy per- 
sons were injured, five of whom subsequently died. 
This accident also, like that on the Boston & Maine 
road in 1862, very forcibly illustrated the necessity 
of an interlocking apparatus. The safety signal was 
shown before the draw was secured, which should 
have been impossible. 

Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive re- 
cord of this or any other class of railroad accidents 
occurring in America, but during the six years 1873-8 
there occurred twenty-one cases of minor disaster at 
draws, three only of them to passenger trains. Al- 
together, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, 
these resulted in the death of five employe's and in- 
jury to one other. No passenger was hurt. In 
Great Britain not a single case of disaster of any 
description has been reported as occurring at a draw- 
bridge since the year 1870, when the present system 
of official Board of Trade reports was begun. The 
lesson clearly to be drawn from a careful investiga- 
tion of all the American accidents reported would 
seem to be that a statute provision making compul- 
sory the interlocking of all draws in railroad bridges 
with a proper and infallible system of signals might 
have claims on the consideration of an intelligent 
legislature ; not so an enactment which compels the 
stopping of .trains at points where danger is small, 
and makes no provision as respects other points 
where it is great. 



9 8 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XI. 

BRIDGE ACCIDENTS. 

GREAT as were the terrors inspired by the Nor- 
walk disaster in those comparatively early days of 
railroad experience, and deep as the impression on 
the public memory must have been to leave its 
mark on the statute book even to the present time, 
that and the similar disaster at the Richelieu river 
are believed to have been the only two of great 
magnitude which have occurred at open railroad 
draws. That this should be so is well calculated 
to excite surprise, for the draw-bridge precautions 
against accident in America are wretchedly crude 
and inadequate, amounting as a rule to little more 
than the primitive balls and targets by day and lan- 
terns by night, without any system of alarms or in- 
terlocking. Electricity as an adjunct to human care, 
or a corrective rather of human negligence, is almost 
never used ; and, in fact, the chief reliance is still 
on the vigilance of engine-drivers. But, if acci- 



ASH TABULA BRIDGE. 99 

dents at draws have been comparatively rare and 
unattended with any considerable loss of life, it 
has been far otherwise with the rest of the struc- 
tures of which the draw forms a part. Bridge acci- 
dents in fact always have been, and will probably 
always remain, incomparably the worst to which 
travel by rail is exposed. It would be impossible 
for corporations to take too great precautions 
against them, and that the precautions taken are 
very great is conclusively shown by the fact that, 
with thousands of bridges many times each day 
subjected to the strain of the passage at speed of 
heavy trains, so very few disasters occur. When 
they do occur, however, the lessons taught by them 
are, though distinct enough, apt to be in one im- 
portant respect of a far less satisfactory character 
than those taught by collisions. In the case of 
these last the great resultant fact speaks for itself. 
The whole community knows when it sees a block 
system, or a stronger car construction, or an im- 
proved train brake suddenly introduced that the 
sacrifice has not been in vain that the lesson has 
been learned. It is by no means always so in the 
case of accidents on bridges. With these the cause 
of disaster is apt to be so scientific in its nature that 
it cannot even be described, except through the use 
of engineering terms which to the mass of readers 
are absolutely incomprehensible. The simplest of 
railroad bridges is an inexplicable mystery to at 
least ninety-nine persons out of each hundred. 



100 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

Even when the cause of disaster is understood, the 
precautions taken against its recurrence cannot be 
seen. From the nature of the case they must con- 
sist chiefly of a better material, or a more sci- 
entific construction, or an increased watchfulness 
on the part of officials and subordinates. This, 
however, is not apparent on the surface, and, when 
the next accident of the same nature occurs, the 
inference, as inevitable as it is usually unjust, is 
at once drawn that the one which preceded it had 
been productive of no results. The truth of this 
was strongly illustrated by the two bridge acci- 
dents which happened, the one at Ashtabula, Ohio, 
on the 29th of December, 1876, and the other 
at Tariffville, Connecticut, on the I5th of January, 
1878. 

There has been no recent disaster which combined 
more elements of horror or excited more widespread 
public emotion than that at Ashtabula bridge. It 
was, indeed, so terrible in its character and so heart- 
rending in its details, that for the time being it fairly 
divided the attention of the country with that dis- 
pute over the presidential succession, then the sub- 
ject uppermost in the minds of all. A blinding north- 
easterly snow-storm, accompanied by a heavy wind, 
prevailed throughout the day which preceded the 
accident, greatly impeding the movement of trains. 
The Pacific express over the Michigan Southern & 
Lake Shore road had left Erie, going west, consider- 
ably behind its time, and had been started only with 



DECEMBER 29, 1876. TO I 

great difficulty and with the assistance of four loco- 
motives. It was due at Ashtabula at about 5.30 
o'clock P.M., but was three hours late, and, the days 
being then at their shortest, when it arrived at the 
bridge which was the scene of the accident the dark- 
ness was so great that nothing could be seen through 
the driving snow by those on the leading locomotive 
even for a distance of 50 feet ahead. The train was 
made up of two heavy locomotives, four baggage, 
mail and express cars, one smoking car, two ordinary 
coaches, a drawing-room car and three sleepers, be- 
ing in all two locomotives and eleven cars, in the 
order named, containing, as nearly as can be ascer- 
tained, 190 human beings, of whom 170 were pas- 
sengers. Ashtabula bridge is situated only about 
1,000 feet east of the station of the same name, and 
spans a deep ravine, at the bottom of which flows a 
shallow stream, some two or three feet in depth, 
which empties into Lake Erie a mile or two away. 
The bridge was an iron Howe truss of 150 feet span, 
elevated 69 feet above the bottom of the ravine, and 
supported at either end by solid masonwork abut- 
ments. It had been built some fourteen years. As 
the train approached the bridge it had to force its 
way through a heavy snow-drift, and, when it passed 
onto it, it was moving at a speed of some twelve or 
fourteen miles an hour. The entire length of the 
bridge afforded space only for two of the express 
cars at most in addition to the locomotives, so that 
when the wheels of the leading locomotive rested 



IO2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

on the western abutment of the bridge nine of the 
eleven cars which made up the train, including all 
those in which there were passengers, had yet to 
reach its eastern end. At the instant when the 
train stood in this position, the engineer of the 
leading locomotive heard a sudden cracking sound 
apparently beneath him, and thought he felt the 
bridge giving way. Instantly pulling the throttle 
valve wide open, his locomotive gave a spring for- 
ward and, as it did so, the bridge fell, the rear wheels 
of his tender falling with it. The jerk and impetus 
of the locomotive, however, sufficed to tear out the 
coupling, and as his tender was dragged up out of the 
abyss onto the track, though its rear wheels did not 
get upon the rails, the frightened engineer caught 
a fearful glimpse of the second locomotive as it 
seemed to turn and then fall bottom upwards into 
the ravine. The bridge had given way, not at 
once but by a slowly sinking motion, which be- 
gan at the point where the pressure was heaviest, 
under the two locomotives and at the west abut- 
ment. There being two tracks, and this train being 
on the southernmost of the two, the southern truss 
had first yielded, letting that side of the bridge 
down, and rolling, as it were, the second locomo- 
tive and the cars immediately behind it off to the 
left and quite clear of a straight line drawn be- 
tween the two abutments ; then almost imme- 
diately the other truss gave way and the whole 
bridge fell, but in doing so swung slightly to the 



SNOW AND FIRE. 103 

right. Before this took place the entire train with 
the exception of the last two sleepers had reached 
the chasm, each car as it passed over falling nearer 
than the one which had preceded it to the east 
abutment, and finally the last two sleepers came, 
and, without being deflected from their course at 
all, plunged straight down and fell upon the wreck 
of the bridge at its east end. It was necessarily 
all the work of a few seconds. 

At the bottom of the ravine the snow lay waist 
deep and the stream was covered with ice some 
eight inches in thickness. Upon this were piled up 
the fallen cars and engine, the latter on top of the 
former near the western abutment and upside down. 
All the passenger cars were heated by stoves. At 
first a dead silence seemed to follow the successive 
shocks of the falling mass. In less than two min- 
utes, however, the fire began to show itself and 
within fifteen the holocaust was at its height. As 
usual, it was a mass of human beings, all more or 
less stunned, a few killed, many injured and help- 
less, and more yet simply pinned down to watch, in 
the possession as *full as helpless of all their fac- 
ulties, the rapid approach of the flames. The num- 
ber of those killed outright seems to have been sur- 
prisingly small. In the last car, for instance, no one 
was lost. This was due to the energy and presence 
of mind of the porter, a negro named Steward, who, 
when he felt the car resting firmly on its side, broke 
a window and crawled through it, and then passed 



104 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

along breaking the other windows and extricating the 
passengers until all were gotten out. Those in the 
other cars were far less fortunate. Though an im- 
mediate alarm had been given in the neighboring 
town, the storm was so violent and "the snow so 
deep that assistance arrived but slowly. Nor when 
it did arrive could much be effected. The essential 
thing was to extinguish the flames. The means for 
so doing were close at hand in a steam pump be- 
longing to the railroad company, while an abundance 
of hose could have been procured at another place 
but a short distance off. In the excitement and 
agitation of the moment contradictory orders were 
given, even to fordidding the use of the pump, and 
practically no effort to extinguish the fire was made. 
Within half an hour of the accident the flames were 
at their height, and when the next morning dawned 
nothing remained in the ravine but a charred and 
undistinguishable mass of car trucks, brake-rods, 
twisted rails and bent and tangled bridge iron, 
with the upturned locomotive close to the west 
abutment. 

In this accident some eighty persons are supposed 
to have lost their lives, while over sixty others were 
injured. The exact number of those killed can 
never be known, however, as more than half of 
those reported were utterly consumed in the fire ; 
indeed, even of the bodies recovered scarcely one 
half could be identified. Of the cause of the disas- 
ter much was said at the time in language most un- 



A STOVE-DISASTER AS WELL. 10$ 

necessarily scientific ; but little was required to be 
said. It admitted of no extenuation. An iron 
bridge, built in the early days of iron-bridges, that 
which fell under the train at Ashtabula, was faulty 
in its original construction, and the indications of 
weakness it had given had been distinct, but had 
not been regarded. That it had stood so long and 
that it should have given way when it did, were 
equally matters for surprise. A double track bridge, 
it should naturally have fallen under the combined 
pressure of trains moving simultaneously in oppo- 
site directions. The strain under which it yielded 
was not a particularly severe one, even taken in con- 
nection with the great atmospheric pressure of the 
storm then prevailing. It was, in short, one of those 
disasters, fortunately of infrequent occurrence, with 
which accident has little if any connection. It was 
due to original inexperience and to subsequent ig- 
norance or carelessness, or possibly recklessness as 
criminal as it was fool-hardy. 

Besides being a bridge accident, this was also a 
stove accident, in this respect a repetition of An- 
gola. One of the most remarkable features about 
it, indeed, was the fearful rapidity with which the 
fire spread, and the incidents of its spread detailed 
in the subsequent evidence of the survivors were 
simply horrible. Men, women and children, full of 
the instinct of self-preservation, were caught and 
pinned fast for the advancing flames, while those 
who tried to rescue them were driven back by the 



106 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

heat and compelled helplessly to listen to their 
shrieks. It is, however, unnecessary to enter into 
these details, for they are but the repetition of an 
experience which has often been told, and they do 
but enforce a lesson which the railroad companies 
seem resolved not to learn. Unquestionably the 
time in this country will come when through trains 
will be heated from a locomotive or a heating-car. 
That time, however, had not yet come. Mean- 
while the evidence would seem to show that at 
Ashtabula, as at Angola, at least two lives were 
sacrificed in the subsequent fire to each one lost in 
the immediate shock of the disaster.* 

But a few days more than a year after the Ashta- 
bula accident another catastrophe, almost exactly 
similar in its details, occurred on the Connecticut 
Western road. It is impossible to even estimate 
the amount of overhauling to which bridges 
throughout the country had in the meanwhile been 
subjected, or the increased care used in their exami- 



* The Angola was probably the most impressively horrible of the 
many "stove accidents." That \vhich occurred near Prospect, N. Y., 
upon the Buffalo, Corry & Pittsburgh road, on December 24, 1872, 
should not, however, be forgotten. In this case a trestle bridge gave 
way precipitating a passenger train some thirty feet to the bottom of a 
ravine, where the cars caught fire from the stoves. Nineteen lives 
were lost, mostly by burning. The Richmond Switch disaster of 
April 19, 1873, on the New York, Providence & Boston road was of 
the same character. Three passengers only were there burned to 
death, but after the disaster the flames rushed "through the car as 
quickly as if the wood had been a lot of hay, ' and, after those who 
were endeavoring to release the wounded and imprisoned men were 
driven away, their cries were for some time heard through the smoke 
and flame. 



THE TARIFFVILLE BRIDGE. 1 07 

nation. All that can be said is that during the year 
1877 no serious accident due to the inherent weak- 
ness of any bridge occcurred on the 70,000 miles of 
American railroad. Neither, so far as can be ascer- 
tained, was the Tariffville disaster to be referred to 
that cause. It happened on the evening of January 
15, 1878. A large party of excursionists were re- 
turning from a Moody and Sankey revival meeting 
on a special train, consisting of two locomotives 
and ten cars. Half a mile west of Tariffville the 
railroad crosses the Farmington river. The bridge 
at this point was a wooden Howe truss, with 
two spans of 163 feet each. It had been in use 
about seven years and, originally of ample 
strength and good construction, there is no evi- 
dence that its strength had since been unduly im- 
paired by neglect or exposure. It should, there- 
fore, have sufficed to bear twice the strain to which 
it was now subjected. Exactly as at Ashtabula, 
however, the west span of the bridge gave way 
under the train just as the leading locomotives 
passed onto the tressel-work beyond it : the ice 
broke under the falling wreck, and the second loco- 
motive with four cars were precipitated into the 
river. The remaining cars were stopped by the 
rear end of the third car, resting as it did on 
the centre pier of the bridge, and did not leave 
the rails. The fall to the surface of the ice was 
about ten feet. There was no fire to add to the 
horrors in this case, but thirteen persons were 



108 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three 
others injured.* 

Naturally the popular inference was at once 
drawn that this was a mere repetition of the 
Ashtabula experience, that the fearful earlier les- 
son had been thrown away on a corporation either 
unwilling or not caring to learn. The newspapers 
far and wide resounded with ill considered de- 
nunciation, and the demand was loud for legislation 
of the crudest conceivable character, especially a 
law prohibiting the passage over any bridge of two 
locomotives attached to one passenger train. The 
fact, however, seems to be that, except in its super- 
ficial details, the Tariffville disaster had no features 
in common with that at Ashtabula ; as nearly as 
can be ascertained it was due neither to the weak- 



* Of the same general character with the Tariffville and Ashtabula 
accidents were those which occurred on November I, 1855, upon the 
Pacific railroad of Missouri at the bridge over the Gasconade, and 
on July 27, 1875, upon the Northern Pacific at the bridge over the 
Mississippi near Brainerd. In the first of these accidents the bridge 
gave way under an excursion train, in honor of the opening of the 
road, and its chief engineer was among the killed. The train fell 
some thirty feet, and 22 persons lost their lives while over 50 suffered 
serious injuries. 

At Brainerd the train, a "mixed" one, went down nearly 80 
feet into the river. The locomotive and several cars had passed the 
span which fell, in safety, but were pulled back and went down on 
top of the train. There were but few passengers in it, of whom three 
were killed. In falling the caboose car at the rear of the train, in 
which most of the passengers were, struck on a pier and broke in two, 
leaving several passengers in it. In the case of the Gasconade, the 
disaster was due to the weakness of the bridge, which fell under the 
weight of the train. There is some question as to the Brainerd ac- 
cident, whether it was occasioned by weakness of the bridge or the 
derailment upon it of a freight car. 



JANUARY 15, 1878. 109 

ness nor to the overloading of the bridge. Though 
the evidence subsequently given is not absolutely 
conclusive on this point, the probabilities would 
seem to be that, while on the bridge, the second 
locomotive was derailed in some unexplained way 
and consequently fell on the stringers which yielded 
under the sudden blow. The popular impression, 
therefore, as to the bearing which the first of these 
two strikingly similar accidents had upon the last 
tended only to bring about results worse than use- 
less. The bridge fell, not under the steady weight 
of two locomotives, but under the sudden shock 
incident to the derailment of one. The remedy, 
therefore, lay in the direction of so planking or 
otherwise guarding the floors of similar bridges that 
in case of derailment the locomotives or cars should 
not fall on the stringers or greatly diverge from the 
rails so as to endanger the trusses. On the other 
hand the suggestion of a law prohibiting the passage 
over bridges of more than one locomotive with any 
passenger train, while in itself little better than a 
legal recognition of bad bridge building, also served 
to divert public attention from the true lesson of 
the disaster. Another newspaper precaution, very 
favorably considered at the time, was the putting 
of one locomotive, where two had to be used, at the 
rear end of the train as a pusher, instead of both in 
front. This expedient might indeed obviate one 
cause of danger, but it would do so only by substi- 
tuting for it another which has been the fruitful 



110 RA ILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

source of some of the worst railroad disasters on 
record.* 

* " The objectionable and dangerous practice also employed on 
some railways of assisting trains up inclines by means of pilot en- 
gines in the rear instead of in front, has led to several accidents in 
the past year and should be discontinued." General Report to the 
Board of Trade upon the Accidents on the Railways of Great Britain 
in 1878, /. 15. 



BRIDGE GUARDS. Ill 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PROTECTION OF BRIDGES. 

LONG, varied and terrible as the record of bridge 
disasters has become, there are, nevertheless, certain 
very simple and inexpensive precautions against 
them, which, altogether too frequently, corporations 
do not and will not take. At As.htabula the bridge 
gave way. There was no derailment as there seems 
to have been at Tariffville. The sustaining power 
of a bridge is, of course, a question comparatively 
difficult of ascertainment. A fatal weakness in this 
respect may be discernable only to the eye of a 
trained expert. Derailment, however, either upon 
a bridge or when approaching it, is in the vast 
majority of cases a danger perfectly easy to guard 
against. The precautions are simple and they are 
not expensive, yet, taking the railroads of the United 
States as a whole, it may well be questioned whether 
the bridges at which they have been taken do not 
constitute the exception rather than the rule. Not 



1 1 2 RAILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

only is the average railroad superintendent accus- 
tomed to doing his work and running his road under 
a constant pressure to make both ends meet, which, 
as he well knows, causes his own daily bread to de- 
penci upon the economies he can effect ; but, while 
he finds it hard work at best to provide for the 
multifarious outlays, long immunity from disaster 
breeds a species of recklessness even in the most 
cautious : and yet the single mishap in a thousand 
must surely fall to the lot of some one. Many 
years ago the terrible results which must soon or 
late be expected wherever the consequences of a 
derailment on the approaches to a bridge are not 
securely guarded against, were illustrated by a dis- 
aster on the Great Western railroad of Canada, which 
combined many of the worst horrors of both the 
Norwalk and the New Hamburg tragedies; more 
recently the almost forgotten lesson was enforced 
again on the Vermont & Massachusetts road, upon 
the bridge over the Miller River, at Athol. The 
accident last referred to occurred on the i6th of 
June, 1870, but, though forcible enough as a re- 
minder, it was tame indeed in comparison with the 
Des Jardines Canal disaster, which is still remem- 
bered though it happened so long ago as the i/th 
of March, 1857. 

The Great Western railroad of Canada crossed 
the canal by a bridge at an elevation of about sixty 
feet. At the time of the accident there were some 
eighteen feet of water in the canal, though, as is 



THE DES JARDINES CANAL. 1 1 3 

usual in Canada at that season, it was covered by 
ice some two feet in thickness. On the afternoon 
of the i /th of March as the local accommodation 
train from Hamilton was nearing the bridge, its loco- 
motive, though it was then moving at a very slow 
rate of speed, was in some way thrown from the 
track and onto the timbers of the bridge. These 
it cut through, and then falling heavily on the string- 
pieces it parted them, and instantly pitched head- 
long down upon the frozen surface of the canal be- 
low, dragging after it the tender, baggage car and 
two passenger cars, which composed the whole train. 
There was nothing whatever to break the fall of 
sixty feet ; and even then two feet of ice only inter- 
vened between the ruins of the train and the bottom 
of the canal eighteen feet below. Two feet of solid 
ice will afford no contemptible resistance to a falling 
body ; the locomotive and tender crushed heavily 
through it and instantly sank out of sight. In fall- 
ing the baggage car struck a corner of the tender and 
was thus thrown some ten yards to one side, and was 
followed by the first passenger car, which, turning a 
somersault as it went, fell on its roof and was crush- 
ed to fragments, but only partially broke through 
the ice, upon which the next car fell endwise, and 
rested in that position. That every human being 
in the first car was either crushed or drowned seems 
most natural ; the only cause for astonishment is 
found in the fact that any one should have survived 
such a catastrophe, a tumble of sixty feet on ice 



114 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

as solid as a rock ! Yet of four persons in the bag- 
gage car three went down with it, and not one of 
them was more than slightly injured. The engineer 
and fireman, and the occupants of the second pas- 
senger car, were less fortunate. The former were 
found crushed under the locomotive at the bottom 
of the canal ; while of the latter ten were killed, and 
not one escaped severe injury. Very rarely indeed in 
the history of railroad accidents have so large a 
portion of those on the train lost their lives as in 
this case, for out of ninety persons sixty perished, 
and in the number was included every woman and 
child among the passengers, with a single excep- 
tion. 

There were two circumstances about this disaster 
worthy of especial notice. In the first place, as- 
well as can now he ascertained in the absence of 
any trustworthy record of an investigation into 
causes, the accident was easily preventable. It 
appears to have been immediately caused by the 
derailment of a locomotive, however occasioned, 
just as it was entering on a swing draw-bridge. 
Thrown from the tracks, there was nothing in the 
flooring to prevent* the derailed locomotive from 
deflecting from its course until it toppled over the 
ends of the ties, nor were the ties and the flooring 
apparently sufficiently strong to sustain it even 
while it held to its course. Under such circum- 
stances the derailment of a locomotive upon any 
bridge can mean only destruction ; it meant it then, 



BRIDGE DERAILMENTS. 1 1 5 

it means it now ; and yet our country is to-day full 
of bridges constructed in an exactly similar way. 
To make accidents from this cause, if not impossible 
at least highly improbable, it is only necessary to 
make the ties and flooring of all bridges between the 
tracks and for three feet on either side of them suf- 
ficiently strong to sustain the whole weight of a 
train off the track and in motion, while a third rail, 
or strong truss of wood, securely fastened, should 
be laid down midway between the rails throughout 
the entire length of the bridge and its approaches^ 
With this arrangement, as the flanges of the wheels 
are on the inside, it must follow that in case of de- 
railment and a divergence to one side or the other 
of the bridge, the inner side of the flange will come 
against the central rail or truss just so soon as the 
divergence amounts to half the space between the 
rails, which in the ordinary gauge is two feet and 
four inches. The wheels must then glide along this 
guard, holding the train from any further divergence 
from its course, until it can be checked. Meanwhile, 
as the ties and flooring extend for the space of three 
feet outside of the track, a sufficient support is fur- 
nished by them for the other wheels. A legislative 
enactment compelling the construction of all bridges 
in this way, coupled with additional provisions for 
interlocking of draws with their signals in cases of 
bridges across navigable waters, would be open to 
objection that laws against dangers of accident by 
rail have almost invariably proved ineffective when 



I 1 6 RA ILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

they were not absurd, but in itself, if enforced, 
it might not improbably render disasters like 
those at Norwalk and Des Jardines terrors of the 
past. 



CAR-COUPLING. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS. 

WHOLLY apart from the derailment, which was 
the real occasion of the Des Jardines disaster, there 
was one other cause which largely contributed to 
its fatality, if indeed that fatality was not in greatest 
part immediately due to it. 

The question as to what is the best method of 
coupling together the several individual vehicles 
which make up every railroad train has always been 
much discussed among railroad mechanics. The de- 
cided weight of opinion has been in favor of the 
strongest and closest couplings, so that under no cir- 
cumstances should the train separate into parts. 
Taking all forms of railroad accident together, this 
conclusion is probably sound. It is, however, at best 
only a balancing of disadvantages, a mere question 
as to which practice involves the least amount of 
danger. Yet a very terrible demonstration that there 
are two sides to this as to most other questions 



Il8 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

was furnished at Des Jardines. It was the custom 
on the Great Western road not only to couple the 
cars together in the method then in general use, but 
also, as is often done now, to connect them by heavy 
chains on each side of the centre coupling. Accord- 
ingly when the locomotive broke through the Des 
Jardines bridge, it dragged the rest of the train hope- 
lessly after it. This certainly would not have hap- 
pened had the modern self-coupler been in use, and 
probably would not have happened had the cars 
been connected only by the ordinary link and pins ; 
for the train was going very slowly, and the signal 
for brakes was given in ample time to apply them 
vigorously before the last cars came to the opening, 
into which they were finally dragged by the dead 
weight before them and not hurried by their own 
momentum. 

On the other hand, we have not far to go in search 
of scarcely less fatal disasters illustrating with equal 
force the other side of the proposition, in the terri- 
ble consequences which have ensued from the sep- 
aration of cars in cases of derailment. Take, for 
instance, the memorable accident of June 17, 1858, 
near Port Jervis, on the Erie railway. 

As the express train from New York was running 
at a speed of about thirty miles an hour over a per- 
fectly straight piece of track between Otisville and 
Port Jervis^shortly after dark on the evening of that 
day, it encountered a broken rail. The train was 
made up of a locomotive, two baggage cars and five 



THE PORT JERVIS DERAILMENT. 

passenger cars, all of which except the last passed 
safely over the fractured rail. The last car was ap- 
parently derailed, and drew the car before it off 
the track. These two cars were then dragged along, 
swaying fearfully from side to side, for a distance 
of some four hundred feet, when the couplings 
at last snapped and they went over the embank- 
ment, which was there some thirty feet in height. 
As they rushed down the slope the last car turned 
fairly over, resting finally on its roof, while one of 
its heavy iron trucks broke through and fell upon 
the passengers beneath, killing and maiming them. 
The other car, more fortunate, rested at last upon 
its side on a pile of stones at the foot of the em- 
bankment. Six persons were killed and fifty severely 
injured; all of the former in the last car. 

In this case, had the couplings held, the derailed 
cars would not have gone over the embankment and 
but slight injuries would have been sustained. Mod- 
ern improvements have, however, created safeguards 
sufficient to prevent the recurrence of other acci- 
dents under the same conditions as that at Port 
Jervis. The difficulty lay in "the inability to stop a 
train, though moving at only moderate speed, within 
a reasonable time. The wretched inefficiency of the 
old hand-brake in a sudden emergency received one 
more illustration. The train seems to have run 
nearly half a mile after the accident took place be- 
fore it could be stopped, although the engineer had 
instant notice of. it and reversed his locomotive. 



120 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

The couplings did not snap until a distance "had 
been traversed in which the modern train-brake 
would have reduced the speed to a point at which 
they would have been subjected to no dangerous 
strain. 

The accident ten years later at Carr's Rock, six- 
teen miles west of Port Jervis, on the same road, was 
again very similar to the one just described : and 
yet in this case the parting of the couplings alone 
prevented the rear of the train from dragging its 
head to destruction. Both disasters were occasioned 
by broken rails ; but, while the first occurred on a 
tangent, the last was at a point where the road 
skirted the hills, by a sharp curve, upon the outer 
side of which was a steep declivity of some eighty 
feet, jagged with rock and bowlders. It befell 
the night express on the I4th of April, 1876.7 ^ 
The train was a long one, consisting of the locomo- 
tive, three baggage and express, and seven passen- 
ger cars, and it encountered the broken rail while 
rounding the curve at a high rate of speed. Again 
all except the last car, passed over the fracture in 
safety; this was snapped, as it were, off the track 
and over the embankment. At first it was dragged 
along, but only for a short distance ; the intense 
strain then broke the coupling between the four 
rear cars and the head of the train, and, the last of 
the four being already over the embankment, the 
others almost instantly toppled over after it and 
rolled down the ravine. A passenger on this por- 



THE DERAILMENT AT CARRES ROCK. 121 

tion of the train, described the car he was in " as 
going over and over, until the outer roof was torn 
off, the sides fell out, and the inner roof was crushed 
in." Twenty-four persons were killed and eighty 
injured ; but in this instance, as in that at Des 
Jardines, the only occasion for surprise was that 
there were any survivors. 

Accidents arising from the parting of defective 
couplings have of course not been uncommon, and 
they constitute one of the greatest dangers incident 
to heavy gradients ; in surmounting inclines freight 
trains will, it is found, break in two, and their hinder 
parts come thundering down the grade, as was seen 
at Abergele. The American passenger trains, in 
which each car is provided with brakes, are much 
less liable than the English, the speed of which is 
regulated by brake-vans, to accidents of this descrip- 
tion. Indeed, it may be questioned whether in 
America any serious disaster has occurred from the 
fact that a portion of a passenger train on a road 
operated by steam got beyond control in descending 
an incline. There have been, however, terrible 
catastrophes from this cause in England, and that 
on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road near Helm- 
shere, a station some fourteen miles north of Man- 
chester, deserves a prominent place in the record 
of railroad accidents. 

It occurred in the early hours of the morning of 
the 4th of September, 1860. There had been a 
great fete at the Bellevue Gardens in Manchester on 



122 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the 3d, upon the conclusion of which some twenty- 
five hundred persons crowded at once upon the re- 
turn trains. Of these there were, on the Lancashire 
& Yorkshire road, three ; the first consisting of four- 
teen, the second of thirty-one, and the last of twenty- 
four carriages : and they were started, with intervals 
of tun minutes between them, at about eleven o'clock 
at night. The first train finished its journey in 
safety. Not so the second and the third. The 
Helmshere station is at the top of a steep incline. 
This the second train, drawn by two locomotives, 
surmounted, and then stopped for the delivery of 
passengers. While these were leaving the carriages, 
a snap as of fractured iron was heard, and the 
guards, looking back, saw the whole rear portion of 
the train, consisting of seventeen carriages and a 
brake-van, detached from the rest of it and quietly 
slipping down the incline. The detached portion 
was moving so slowly that one of the guards suc- 
ceeded in catching the van and applying the brakes ; 
it was, however, already too late. The velocity was 
greater than the brake-power could overcome, and 
the seventeen carriages kept descending more and 
more rapidly. Meanwhile the third train had reached 
the foot of the incline and begun to ascend it, when 
its engineer, on rounding a curve, caught sight of 
the descending carriages. He immediatly reversed 
his engine, but before he could bring his train to a 
stand they were upon him. Fortunately the van- 
brakes of the detached carriages, though insufficient 



THE HELM SHERE COLLISION. 12$ 

to stop them, yet did reduce their speed ; the col- 
lision nevertheless was terrific. The force of the 
blow, so far as the advancing train was concerned, 
expended itself on the locomotive, which was de- 
molished, while the passengers escaped with a fright. 
Not so those in the descending carriages. With 
them there was nothing to break the blow, and the 
two hindmost carriages were crushed to fragments 
and their passengers scattered over the line. It was 
shortly after midnight, and the excursionists clam- 
bered out of the trains and rushed frantically about, 
impeding every effort to clear away the cttbris and 
rescue the injured, whose shrieks and cries were 
incessant. The bodies of ten persons, one of whom 
had died of suffocation, were ultimately taken put 
from the wreck, and twenty-two others sustained 
fractures of limbs. 

At Des Jardines the couplings were too strong ; 
at Port Jervis and at Helmshere they were not 
strong enough ; at Carr's Rock they gave way not a 
moment too soon. " There are objections to a 
plenum and there are objections to a vacuum," as 
Dr. Johnson remarked, " but a plenum or a vacuum 
it must be." There are no arguments, however, in 
favor of putting railroad stations or sidings upon 
an inclined plane, and then not providing what the 
English call " catch-points " or " scotches " to pre- 
vent such disasters as those at Abergele or Helfn- 
shere. In these two instances alone the want of 
them cost over fifty lives. In railroad mechanics 



124 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

there are after all some principles susceptible of 
demonstration. That vehicles, as well as water, will 
run down hill may be classed among them. That 
these principles should still be ignored is hardly 
less singular than it is surprising. 



AUGUST 26, 1871. 125 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE REVERE CATASTROPHE. 

THE terrible disaster which occurred in front of 
the little station-building at Revere, six miles from 
Boston on the Eastern railroad of Massachusetts, in 
August 1871, was, properly speaking, not an accident 
at all ; it was essentially a catastrophe the legitimate 
and almost inevitable final outcome of an antiquated 
and insufficient system. As such it should long re- 
main a subject for prayerful meditation to all those 
who may at any time be entrusted with the imme- 
diate operating of railroads. It was terribly dra- 
matic, but it was also frightfully instructive ; and 
while the lesson was by no means lost, it yet admits 
of further and advantageous study. For, like most 
other men whose lives are devoted to a special call- 
ing, the managers of railroads are apt to be very 
much wedded to their own methods, and attention 
has already more than once been called to the fact 
that, when any new emergency necessitates a new 



126 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



appliance, they not infrequently, as Captain Tyler 
well put it in his report to the Board of Trade 
for the year 1870, " display more ingenuity in rind- 
ing objections than in overcoming them." 

The Eastern railroad of Massachusetts connects 
Boston with Portland, in the state of Maine, by a 
line which is located close along the sea-shore. Be- 
tween Boston and Lynn, a distance of eleven miles, 
the main road is in large part built across the salt 
marshes, but there is a branch which leaves it at 
Everett, a small station some miles out of Boston, 
and thence, running deviously through a succession 
of towns on the higher ground, connects with the 
main track again at Lynn ; thus making what is 
known in England as a loop-road. * At the time of 

the Revere accident this 
i Lynn, branch was equipped with 
but a single track, and 
was operated wholly by 
schedule without any re- 
liance on the telegraph ; 
and, indeed, there were 
not even telegraphic of- 
fices at a number of the 
stations upon it. Revere, 
the name of the station 
where the accident took 
place, was on the main 
line about five miles from 
Boston and two miles 
from Everett, ^where the 




Freight tracks 
from Revere to 
East Boston. 



Boston 



FLUCTUATIONS OF TRAVEL. I2/ 

Saugus branch, as the loop-road was called, began. 
The accompanying diagram shows the relative posi- 
tion of the several points and of the main and 
branch lines, a thorough appreciation of which is 
essential to a correct understanding of the disaster. 
The travel over the Eastern railroad is of a some- 
what exceptional nature, varying in a more than 
ordinary degree with the different seasons of the 
year. During the winter months the corporation 
had, in 1871, to provide for a regular passenger 
movement of about seventy-five thousand a week, 
but in the summer what is known as the excursion 
and pleasure travel not infrequently increased the 
number to one hundred and ten thousand, and even 
more. As a natural consequence, during certain 
weeks of each summer, and more especially towards 
the close of August, it was no unusual thing for the 
corporation to find itself taxed beyond its utmost 
resources. It is emergencies of this description, 
periodically occurring on every railroad, which al- 
ways subject to the final test the organization and 
discipline of companies and the capacity of superin- 
tendents. A railroad in quiet times is like a ship in 
steady weather; almost anybody can manage the 
one or sail the other. It is the sudden stress which 
reveals the undeveloped strength or the hidden 
weakness ; and the truly instructive feature in the 
Revere accident lay in the amount of hidden weak- 
ness everywhere which was brought to light under 
that sudden stress. During the week ending with 




128 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

that Saturday evening upon which the disaster oc- 
curred the rolling stock of the road had been heavily 
taxed, not only to accommodate the usual tide of 
summer travel, then at its full flood, but also those 
attending a military muster and two large camp- 
its line. The number of passengers 
going over ir had accordingly risen from about one 
hundred and ten thousand, the full summer average, 
to over one hundred and forty thousand ; while in- 
stead of the one hundred and fifty-two trains a day 
provided for in the running schedule, there were no 
less than one hundred and ninety-two. It had never 
been the custom with those managing the road to 
place any reliance upon the telegraph in directing 
the train movement, and no use whatever appears to 
have been made of it towards straightening out the 
numerous hitches inevitable from so sudden an in- 
crease in that movement. If an engine broke down, 
or a train got off the track, there had accordingly 
throughout that week been nothing done, except 
patient and general waiting, until things got in 
motion again ; each conductor or station-master had 
to look out for himself, under the running regula- 
tions of the road, and need expect no assistance 
trom headquarters. Thns T too T in spite of the fact 
that, including the Saugus branch, 
ninety-three of the entire one hundred finr| 

by the cornjp^nyjyere supplied 
k^ ,The whole train move- 



ment, both of the main line and of the branches, in- 



AMERICAN INDIVID UALIT Y. 1 29 

tricate in the extreme as it was, thus depended solely 
on a schedule arrangement and the watchful intelli- 
gence of individual employes. Not unnaturally, 
therefore, as the week drew to a close the confusion 
became so great that the trains reached and left the 
Boston station with an almost total disregard of the 
schedule ; while towards the evening of Saturday 
the employes of the road at that station directed 
their efforts almost exclusively to dispatching trains 
as fast as cars could be procured, thus trying to keep 
it as clear as possible of the throng of impatient trav- 
ellers which continually blocked it up. f Taken alto- 
gether the situation illustrated in a very striking 
manner that singular reliance of the corporation on 
the individuality and intelligence of its employe's, 
which in another connection is referred to as one of 
the most striking characteristics of American rail- 
road management, without a full appreciation of 
which it is impossible to understand its using or 
failing to use certain appliances. 

According to the regular schedule four trains 
should have left the Boston station in succession 
during the hour and a half between 6.30 and eight 
o'clock P. M.: a Saugus branch train for Lynn at 
6.30 ; a second Saugus branch train at seven ; an ac- 
commodation train, which ran eighteen miles over 
the main line, at 7.15 ; and finally the express train 
through to Portland, also over the main line, at eight 
o'clock. The collision at Revere was between these 
last two trains, the express overtaking and running 



130 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

into the rear 01 the accommodation train ; but it was 
indirectly caused by the delays and irregularity in 
movement of the two branch trains.* It will be no- 
ticed that, according to the schedule, both of the 
branch trains should have preceded the accommo- 
dation train ; in the prevailing confusion, however, 
the first of the two branch trains did not leave the 
station until about seven o'clock, thirty minutes be- 
hind its time, and it was followed forty minutes la- 
ter, not by the second branch train, but by the ac- 
commodation train, which in its turn was twenty-five 
minutes late. Thirteen minutes afterwards the sec- 
ond Saugus branch train, which should have preced- 
ed, followed it, being nearly an hour out of time. 
Then at last came the Portland express, which got 
away practically on time, at a few minutes after 
eight o'clock. All of these four trains went out over 
the same track as far as the junction at Everett, but 
at that point the first and third of the four were to 
go off on the branch, while the second and fourth 
kept on over the main line. Between these last two 
trains the running schedule of the road allowed an 
ample time-interval of forty-five minutes, which, how- 
ever, on this occasion was reduced, through the de- 
lay in starting, to some fifteen or twenty minutes. 
No causes of further delay, therefore, arising, the 
simple case was presented of a slow accommodation 
train being sent out to run eighteen miles in ad- 
vance of a fast express train, with an interval of 
twenty minutes between them. 



COMMON-SENSE AND ITS ABSENCE. 1 3 1 

Unfortunately, however, the accommodation train 
was speedily subjected to another and very serious 
delay. It has been mentioned that the Saugus 
branch was a single track road, and the rules^of the 
company were explicit that no outward train was to 
pass onto the branch at Everett until any inward 
train then due there should have arrived and passed 
off it. There was no siding at the junction, upon 
which an outward branch train could be temporarily 
placed to wait for the inward train, thus leaving the 
main track clear ; and accordingly, under a strict 
construction of the rules, any outward branch train 
while awaiting the arrival at Everett of an inward 
branch train was to be kept standing on the main 
track, completely blocking it. The outward branch 
trains, it subsequently appeared, were often delayed 
at the junction, but no practical difficulty had arisen 
from this cause, as the employe" in charge of the sig- 
nals and switches there, exercising his common 
sense, had been in the custom of moving any de- 
layed train temporarily out of the way onto the 
branch or the other main track, under protection of 
a flag, and thus relieving the block. The need of a 
siding to permit the passage of trains at this point 
had not been felt, simply because the employe" in 
charge there had used the branch or other main 
track as a siding. On the day of the accident this 
employe" happened to be sick, and absent from his 
post. His substitute either had no common sense 
or did not feel called upon to use it, if its use in- 



1 32 RAILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

volved any increase of responsibility. Accordingly, 
when a block took place, the simple letter of the 
rule was followed ; and it is almost needless to 
add that a block did take place on the afternoon 
of August 26th. 

The first of the branch trains, it will be remem- 
bered, had left Boston at about seven o'clock, in- 
stead of at 6.30, its schedule time. On arriving at 
Everett this train should have met and passed an 
inward branch train, which was timed to leave Lynn 
at six o'clock, but which, owing to some accident to 
its locomotive, and partaking of the general confu- 
sion of the day, on this particular afternoon did not 
leave the Lynn station until 7.30 o'clock, or one 
hour and a half after its schedule time, and one 
half-hour after the other train had left Boston. Ac- 
cordingly, when the Boston train reached the junc- 
tion its conductor found himself confronted by the 
rule forbidding him to enter upon the branch until 
the Lynn train then due should have passed off it, 
and so he quietly waited on the outward track of 
the main line, blocking it completely to traffic. He 
had not waited long before a special locomotive, on 
its way from Boston to Salem, came up and stopped 
behind him. This was presently followed by the 
accommodation train. Then the next branch train 
came along, and finally the Portland express. At 
such a time, and at that period of railroad develop- 
ment, there was something ludicrous about the spec- 
tacle. Here was a road utterly unable to accommo- 



THE SCHED ULE O UT OF JOINT. 1 3 3 

date its passengers with cars, while a succession of 
trains were standing idle for hours, because a loco- 
motive had broken down ten miles off. The tele- 
graph was there, but the company was not in the 
custom of putting any reliance upon it. A simple 
message to the branch trains to meet and pass at any 
point other than that fixed in the schedule would 
have solved the whole difficulty; but, no! there 
were the rules, and all the rolling stock of the road 
might gather at Everett in solemn procession, but, 
until the locomotive at Lynn could be repaired, the 
law of the Medes and Persians was plain ; and in 
this case it read that the telegraph was a new-fangled 
and unreliable auxiliary. And so the lengthening 
procession stood there long enough for the train 
which caused it to have gone to its destination and 
come back dragging the disabled locomotive from 
Lynn behind it to again take its place in the 
block. 

At last, at about ten minutes after eight o'clock, 
the long-expected Lynn train made its appearance, 
and the first of the branch trains from Boston im- 
mediately went off the main line. The road was 
now clear for the accommodation train, which had 
been standing some twelve or fifteen minutes in the 
block, but which from the moment of again starting 
was running on the schedule time of the Portland ex- 
press. This its conductor did not know. Every 
minute was vital, and yet he never thought to look 
at his watch. He had a vague impression that he 



134 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

had been delayed some six or eight minutes, when 
in reality he had been delayed fifteen ; and, though 
he was running wholly out of his schedule time, he 
took not a single precaution, so persuaded was he 
that every one knew where he was. 

The confusion among those in charge of the vari- 
ous engines and trains was, indeed, general and 
complete. As the Portland express was about to 
leave the Boston station, the superintendent of the 
road, knowing by the non-arrival of the branch train 
from Lynn that there must be a block at the Everett 
junction, had directed the depot-master to caution 
the engineer to look out for the trains ahead of him. 
The order, a merely verbal one, was delivered after 
the train had started, the depot-master walking 
along by the side of the slowly-moving locomotive, 
and was either incorrectly transmitted or not fully 
understood ; the engine-driver supposed it to apply 
to the branch train which had started just before 
him, out of both its schedule time and schedule 
place. Presently, at the junction, he was stopped 
by the signal man of this train. The course of 
reasoning he would then have had to pass through 
to divine the true situation of affairs and to guide 
himself safely under the schedule in the light of 
the running rules was complicated indeed, and some- 
what as follows : " The branch train," he should 
have argued to himself, " is stopped, and it is stop- 
ped because the train which should have left Lynn 
at six o'clock has not yet arrived ; but, under the 



FATAL MISAPPREHENSIONS. 135 

rules, that train should pass off the branch before 
the 6.30 train could pass onto it ; if, therefore, the 
* wild ' train before me is delayed not only the 6.30 
but all intermediate trains must likewise be delayed, 
and the accommodation train went out this after- 
noon after the 6.30 train, so it, too, must be in the 
block ahead of me ; unless, indeed, as is usually the 
case, the signal-master has got it out of the block 
under the protection of a flag." This line of rea- 
soning was, perhaps, too intricate ; at any rate, the 
engine-driver did not follow it out, but, when he saw 
the tail-lights immediately before him disappear on 
the branch, he concluded that the main line was now 
clear, and dismissed the depot-master's caution from 
his mind. Meanwhile, as the engine-driver of this 
train was fully persuaded that the only other train 
in his front had gone off on the branch, the con- 
ductor of the accommodation train was equally per- 
suaded that the head-light immediately behind him 
in the block at the junction had been that of the 
Portland express which consequently should be 
aware of his position. Both were wrong. 

Thus when they left Everett the express was fairly 
chasing the accommodation train, and overtaking it 
with terrible rapidity. Even then no collision ought 
to have been possible. Unfortunately, however, the 
road had no system, even the crudest, of interval 
signals; and the utter irregularity prevailing in the 
train movement seemed to have demoralized the 
employes along the line, who, though they noticed 



136 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the extreme proximity of the two trains to each 
other as they passed various points, all sluggishly 
took it for granted that those in charge of them 
were fully aware of their relative positions and 
knew what they were about. Thus, as the two 
trains approached the Revere station, they were 
so close together as to be on the same piece of 
straight track at the same time, and a passenger 
standing at the rear end of the accommodation 
train distinctly saw the head-light of the express 
locomotive. The night, however, was not a clear 
one, for an east wind had prevailed all day, driv- 
ing a mist in from the sea which lay in banks over 
the marshes, lifting at times so that distant ob- 
jects were quite visible, and then obscuring them in 
its heavy folds. Consequently it did not at all fol- 
low, because the powerful reflecting head-light of 
the locomotive was visible from the accommodation 
train, that the dim tail-lights of the latter were also 
visible to those on the locomotive. Here was an- 
other mischance. The tail-lights in use by the com- 
pany were ordinary red lanterns without reflecting 
power. 

The station house at Revere stood at the end of 
a tangent, the track curving directly before it. In 
any ordinary weather the tail-lights of a train stand- 
ing at this station would have been visible for a very 
considerable distance down the track in the direc- 
tion of Boston, and even on the night of the acci- 
dent they were probably visible for a sufficient dis- 



MISCHANCE ON MISCHANCE. !$/ 

tance in which to stop any train approaching at a 
reasonable rate of speed. Unfortunately the en- 
gineer of the Portland express did not at once see 
them, his attention being wholly absorbed in looking 
for other signals. Certain freight train tracks to 
points on the shore diverged from the main line at 
Revere, and the engine-drivers of all trains approach- 
ing that place were notified by signals at a masthead 
close to the station whether the switches were set 
for the main line or for these freight tracks. A red 
lantern at the masthead indicated that the main line 
was closed ; in the absence of any signal it was 
open. In looking for this signal as he approached 
Revere the engine-driver of the Portland express was 
simply attending closely to his business, for, had the 
red light been at the masthead, his train must at 
once have been stopped. Unfortunately, however, 
while peering through the mist at the masthead he 
overlooked what was directly before him, until, when 
at last he brought his eyes down to the level, to use 
Ijis own words at the subsequent inquest, " the tail 
lights of the accommodation train seemed to spring 
'right up in his face." 

When those in charge of the two trains at almost 
the same moment became aware of the danger, there 
was yet an interval of some eight hundred feet be- 
tween them. The express train was, however, mov- 
ing at a speed of some twenty-five or thirty miles an 
hour, and was equipped only with the old-fashioned 
hand-brake. In response to the sharply given signal 



138 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

from the whistle these were rapidly set, but the rails 
were damp and slippery, so that the wheels failed to 
catch upon them, and, when everything was done 
which could 'be done, the eight hundred feet of in- 
terval sufficed only to reduce the speed of the col- 
liding locomotive to about ten miles an hour. 

In the rear car of the accommodation train there 
were at the moment of the accident some sixty-five 
or seventy human beings, seated and standing. They 
were of both sexes and of all ages; for it was a 
Saturday evening in August, and many persons had, 
through the confusion of the trains, been long de- 
layed in their return from the city to their homes at 
the sea-side. The first intimation the passengers 
had of the danger impending over them was from 
the sudden and lurid illumination of the car by the 
glare from the head-light of the approaching loco- 
motive. One of them who survived the dis- 
aster, though grievously injured, described how 
he was carelessly watching a young man stand- 
ing in the aisle, laughing and gayly chatting 
with four young girls, who were seated, when 
he saw him turn and instantly his face, in the 
sudden blaze of the head-light, assumed a look 
of frozen horror which was the single thing in the 
accident indelibly impressed on the survivor's mem- 
ory ; that look haunted him. The car was crowded 
to its full capacity, and the colliding locomotive 
struck it with such force as to bury itself two-thirds 
of its length in it. At the instant of the crash a 



THE COLLISION. 139 

panic had seized upon the passengers, and a sort of 
rush had taken place to the forward end of the car, 
into which furniture, fixtures and human beings 
were crushed in a shapeless, indistinguishable mass. 
Meanwhile the blow had swept away the smoke- 
stack of the locomotive, and its forward truck had 
been forced back in some unaccountable way until 
it rested between its driving wheels and the tender, 
leaving the entire boiler inside of the passenger car 
and supported on its rear truck. The valves had 
been so broken as to admit of the free escape of 
the scalding steam, while the coals from the fire-box 
were scattered among the ddbris, and coming in 
contact with the fluid from the broken car lamps 
kindled the whole into a rapid blaze. Neither was 
the fire confined to the last car of the train. It has 
been mentioned that in the block at Everett a loco- 
motive returning to Salem had found itself stopped 
just in advance of the accommodation train. At 
the suggestion of the engine-driver of that train this 
locomotive had there coupled on to it, and conse- 
quently made a part of it at Revere. When the 
collision took place, therefore, the four cars of which 
the accommodation train was made up were crush- 
ed between the weight of the entire colliding train 
on one side and that of two locomotives on the 
other. That they were not wholly demolished was 
due simply to the fact that the last car yielded to 
the blow, and permitted the locomotive of the ex- 
press train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, 



14 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the remaining cars were jammed and shattered, and, 
though the passengers in them escaped, the oil from 
the broken lamps ignited, and before the flames 
could be extinguished the cars were entirely de- 
stroyed. 

This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine 
persons, and in rfiore or less severe injuries to fifty- 
seven others. No person, not in the last car of the 
accommodation train was killed, and one only was 
seriously injured. Of those in the last car more 
than half lost their lives ; many instantly by crush- 
ing, others by inhaling the scalding steam which 
poured forth from the locomotive boiler into the 
wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted 
frightful injuries. Indeed, for the severity of in- 
juries and for the protractedness of agony involved 
in it, this accident has rarely, if ever, been exceeded. 
Crushing, scalding and burning did their work to- 
gether. 

It may with^ perfect truth be said that the dis- 
aster at Revere marked an epoch in the history of 
railroad development in New England. At the 
moment it called forth the deepest expression of 
horror and indignation, which, as usual in such 
cases, was more noticeable for its force than for its 
wisdom. An utter absence of all spirit of justice 
is, indeed, a usual characteristic of the more imme- 
diate utterances, both from the press and on tne 
platform, upon occasions of this character. Writers 
and orators seem always to forget that, next co the 



HASTY CRITICISM. 141 

immediate sufferers and their families, the unfortu- 
nate officials concerned are the greatest losers by 
railroad accidents. For them, not only reputation 
but bread is involved. A railroad employe" impli- 
cated in the occurrence of' an accident lives under 
a stigma. And yet, from the tenor of public com- 
ment it might fairly be supposed that these offi- 
cials are in the custom of plotting to bring dis- 
asters about, and take a fiendish delight in them. 
Nowhere was this ever illustrated more perfectly 
than in Massachusetts during the last days of 
August and the early days of September, 1871. 
Grave men men who ought to have known 
better indulged in language which would have 
been simply ludicrous save for the horror of the 
event which occasioned but could not justify it. 
A public meeting, for instance, was held at the 
town of Swampscott on the evening of the Monday 
succeeding the catastrophe. The gentleman who 
presided over it very discreetly, in his preliminary 
remarks, urged those who proposed to join in the 
discussion to control their feelings. Hardly had he 
ceased speaking, however, when Mr. Wendell Phil- 
lips was noticed among the audience, and imme- 
diately called to the platform. His remarks were a 
most singular commentary on the chairman's in- 
junction to calmness. He began by announcing 
that the first requisite to the formation of a healthy 
public opinion in regard to railroad accidents, as 
other things, was absolute frankness of speech, and 



I4 2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

he then proceeded as follows: " So I begin by say- 
ing that to my mind this terrible disaster, which has 
made the last thirty-six hours so sad to us all, is a 
deliberate murder. I think we should try to get 
rid in the public mind of any real distinction be- 
tween the individual who, in a moment of passion 
or in a moment of heedlessness, takes the life of one 
fellow-man, and the corporation that in a moment 
of greed, of little trouble, of little expense, of little 
care, of little diligence, takes lives by wholesale. I 
think the first requisite of the public mind is to say 
that there is no accident in the case, properly speak- 
ing. It is a murder; the guilt of murder rests some- 
where." 

Mr. Phillip's definition of the crime of " deliberate 
murder " would apparently somewhat unsettle the 
criminal law as at present understood, but he was 
not at all alone in this bathos of extravagance. 
Prominent gentlemen seemed to vie with each other 
in their display of ignorance. Mr. B. F. Butler, for 
instance, suggested his view of the disaster and the 
measure best calculated to prevent a repetition of it ; 
which last was certainly original, inasmuch as he 
urged the immediate raising of the pay of all engine- 
men until a sufficiently high order of ability and edu- 
cation should be brought into the occupation to ren- 
der impossible the recurrence of an accident which 
was primarily caused by the negligence, not of an 
engineer, but of a conductor. Another gentleman 
described with much feeling his observations during 



A RASH STATEMENT. 143 

a recent tour in Europe, and declared that such a 
catastrophe as that at Revere would have been im- 
possible there. As a matter of fact the official re- 
ports not only showed that the accident was one of 
a class of most frequent occurrence, but also that 
sixty-on'e cases of it had occurred in Great Britain 
alone during the very year the gentleman in ques- 
tion was journeying in Europe, and had occasioned 
over six hundred cases of death or personal injury. 
Perhaps, in order to illustrate how very reckless in 
statement a responsible gentleman talking under ex- 
citement may become, it is worth while to quote in 
his own language Captain Tyler's brief description of 
one of those sixty-one accidents which " could not 
possibly," but yet did, occur. As miscellaneous 
reading it is amusing. 

" As four London & North-Western excursion trains 
on September 2, 1870, were returning from a volunteer 
review at Penrith, the fourth came into collision at Pen- 
ruddock with the third of those trains. An hundred 
and ten passengers and three servants of the company 
were injured. These trains were partly in charge of 
acting guards, some of whom were entirely inexperienced, 
as well in the line as in their duties ; and of engine- 
drivers and firemen, of whom one, at all events, was very 
much the worse for liquor. The side-lamps on the hind 
van of the third train were obscured by a horse-box, 
which was wider than the van. There were no special 
means of protection to meet the exceptional contingency 
of three such trains all stopping on their way from the 
eastward, to cross two others from the westward, at this 
station. And the regulations for telegraphing the trains 
were altogether neglected." 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XV. 

REAR END COLLISIONS. 

THE annals of railroad accidents are full of cases 
of " rear-end collision," as it is termed.* Their fre- 
quency may almost be accepted as a very accurate 
gauge of the pressure of traffic on any given system 
of lines, and because of them the companies are con- 
tinually compelled to adopt new and more intricate 
systems of operation. At first, on almost all roads, 
trains follow each other at such great intervals that 
no precaution at all, other than flags and lanterns, 
are found necessary. Then comes a succeeding period 
when an interval of time between following trains is 
provided for, through a system of signals which at 
given points indicate danger during a certain num. 

* In the nine years 1870-8, besides those which occurred and were 
not deemed of sufficient importance to demand special inquiry, 86 
cases of accidents of this description were investigated by the in- 
specting officers of the English Board of Trade and reported upon 
in detail. In America, 732 cases were reported as occurring during 
the six years 1874-8, and 138 cases in 1878 alone. 



THE BLOCK SYSTEM. 1 45 

her of minutes after the passage of every train. 
Then, presently, the alarming frequency of rear col- 
lisions demonstrates the inadequacy of this system, 
and a new one has to be devised, which, through the 
aid of electricity, secures between the trains an in- 
terval of space as well as of time. This last is known 
as the " block-system," of which so much has of 
late years been heard. 

The block-system is so important a feature in the 
modern operation of railroads, and in its present 
stage of development it illustrates so strikingly the 
difference between the European and the American 
methods, that more particular reference will have 
presently to be made to it.* For the present it is 
enough to say that rear-end collisions occur notwith- 
standing all the precautions implied in a thoroughly 
perfected " block-system." There was such a case 
on the Metropolitan road, in the very heart of Lon- 
don, on the 29th of August, 1873. It happened in 
a tunnel. A train was stalled there, and an unfor- 
tunate signal officer in a moment of flurry gave 
" line clear" and sent another train directly into it. 

A much more Impressive disaster, both in its dra- 
matic features and as illustrating the inadequacy 
of every precaution depending on human agency to 
avert accident under certain conditions, was afforded 
in the case of a collision which occurred on the 
London & Brighton Railway on August 25, 1861 ; 
ten years almost to a day before that at Revere. 

* Chapter XVII. 



146 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

Like the Eastern railroad, the London Si Brighton 
enjoyed an enormous passenger traffic, which be- 
came peculiarly heavy during the vacation season 
towards the close of August; and it was to the 
presence of the excursion trains made necessary to 
accomodate this traffic that the catastrophes were 
in both cases due. In the case of the London & 
Brighton road it occurred on a Sunday. An excur- 
sion train from Portsmouth on that day was to 
leave Brighton at five minutes after eight A. M., and 
was to be followed by a regular Sunday excursion 
train at 8.15 or ten minutes later, and that again, 
after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, by a regular 
parliamentary train at 8.30. These trains were cer- 
tainly timed to run sufficiently near to each other ; 
but, owing to existing pressure of traffic on the line, 
they started almost simultaneously. The Ports- 
mouth excursion, which consisted of sixteen car- 
riages, was much behind its time, and did not leave 
the Brighton station until 8.28 ; when, after a lapse 
of three minutes, it was followed by the regular ex- 
cursion train at 8.31, and that again by the parlia- 
mentary train at 8.35. Three passenger trains had 
thus left the station on one track in seven minutes ! 
The London and Brighton Railway traverses the 
chalky downs, for which that portion of England is 
noted, through numerous tunnels, the first of which 
after leaving Brighton is known as the Patcham 
Tunnel, about five hundred yards in length, while 
two and a half miles farther on is the Croydon Tun- 



THE CROYDON TUNNEL COLLISION. 

nel, rather more than a mile and a quarter in length. 
The line between these tunnels was so crooked 
and obscured that the managers had adopted extra- 
ordinary precautions against accident. At each end 
of the Croydon Tunnel a signal-man was stationed, 
with a telegraphic apparatus, a clock and a telegraph 
bell in his station. The rule was absolute that when 
any train entered the tunnel the signal-man at the 
point of entry was to telegraph " train in," and no 
other train could follow until the return signal of 
" train out " came from the other side. In face of 
such a regulation it was difficult to see how any col- 
lision in the tunnel was possible. When the Ports- 
mouth excursion train arrived, it at once entered the 
tunnel and the fact was properly signaled to the op- 
posite outlet. Before the return signal that this 
train was out was received, the regular excursion 
train came in sight. It should have been stopped 
by a self-acting signal which was placed about a 
quarter of a mile from the mouth of the tunnel, and 
which each passing locomotive set at " danger," 
where it remained until shifted to " safety," by the 
signal-man, on receipt of the message, " train out/ 
Through some unexplained cause, "the Portsmouth 
excursion train had failed to act on this signal, which 
consequently still indicated safety when the Brighton 
excursion train came up. Accordingly the engine- 
driver at once passed it, and went on to the tunnel 
As he did so, the signal-man, perceiving some mis- 
take and knowing that he had not yet got his re- 



148 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

turn signal that the preceding train was out, tried to 
stop him by waving his red flag. It was too late, 
however, and the train passed in. A moment later 
the parliamentary train also came in sight, and stop- 
ped at the signal of danger. Now ensued a most 
singular misapprehension between the signal-men, 
resulting in a terrible disaster. The second train 
had run into the tunnel and was supposed by the 
signal-man to be on its way to the other end of it, 
when he received the return message that the first 
train was out. To this he instantly responded by 
again telegraphing " train in," referring now to the 
second train. This dispatch the signal-man at the 
opposite end conceived to be a repetition of the 
message referring to the first train, and he accord- 
ingly again replied that the train was out. This re- 
ply, however, the other operator mistook as referring 
to the second train, and accordingly he signaled 
" safety," and the third train at once got under way 
and passed into the tunnel. Unfortunately the en- 
gineer of the second train had seen the red flag 
waved by the signal-man, and, in obedience to it, 
stopped his locomotive as soon as possible in the 
tunnel and began to back out of it. In doing so, he 
drove his train into the locomotive of the third train 
advancing into it. The tunnel was twenty-four feet 
in height. The engine of the parliamentary train 
struck the rear carriage of the- excursion train and 
mounted upon its fragments, and then on those of 
the carriage in front of it, until its smoke-stack came 



THE WELWYN TUNNEL COLLISION 1 49 

in contact with the roof of the tunnel. It rested 
finally in a nearly upright position. The collision 
had taken place so far within the tunnel as to be be- 
yond the reach of daylight, and the wreck of the 
trains had quite blocked up the arch, while the steam 
and smoke from the engines poured forth with loud 
sound and in heavy volumes, filling the empty space 
with stifling and scalding vapors. When at last as- 
sistance came and the trains could be separated, 
twenty-three corpses were taken from the ruin's, 
while one hundred and seventy-six other persons 
had sustained more or less severe injuries. 

A not less extraordinary accident of the same 
description, unaccompanied, however, by an equal 
loss of life, occured on the Great Northern Railway 
upon the loth of June, 1866. In this case the tube 
of a locomotive of a freight train burst at about the 
centre of the Welwyn Tunnel, some five miles north 
of Hatfield, bringing the train to a stand-still. The 
guard in charge of the rear of the train failed from 
some cause to go back and give the signal for an 
obstruction, and speedily another freight train from 
the Midland road entered and dashed into the rear 
of the train already there. Apparently those in 
charge of these two trains were in such consterna- 
tion that they did not think to provide against a 
further disaster; at any rate, before measures to 
that end had been taken, an additional freight train, 
this time belonging to the Great Northern road, 
came up and plowed into the ruins which already 



ISO RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

blocked the tunnel. One of the trains had con- 
tained wagons laden with casks of oil, which speedily 
became ignited from contact with the coals scattered 
from the fire-boxes, and there then ensued one of 
the most extraordinary spectacles ever witnessed on 
a railroad. The tunnel was filled to the summit of 
its arch and completely blocked with the wrecked 
locomotives and wagons. These had ignited, and 
the whole cavity, more than a half a mile in length, 
was converted into one huge furnace, belching forth 
smoke and flame with a loud roaring sound through 
its several air shafts. So fierce was the fire that 
no attempt was made to subdue it, and eighteen 
hours elapsed before any steps could be taken to- 
wards clearing the track. Strange to say, in this 
disaster the lives of but two persons were lost. 

Rear-end collisions have been less frequent in this 
country than in England, for the simple reason that 
the volume of traffic has pressed less heavily on the 
capacity of the lines. Yet here, also, they have been 
by no means unknown. In 1865 two occurred, both 
of which were accompanied with a considerable loss 
of life ; though, coming as they did during the ex- 
citing scenes which marked the close of the war of 
the Rebellion, they attracted much less public 
notice than they otherwise would. The first of 
these took place in New Jersey on the /th of March, 
1865, just three days after the second inauguration 
of President Lincoln. As the express train from 
Washington to New York over the Camden & Am- 



TWO AMERICAN COLLISIONS. l$l 

boy road was passing through Bristol, about thirty 
miles from Philadelphia, at half-past-two o'clock in 
the morning, it dashed into the rear of the twelve 
o'clock " owl train," from Kensington to New York, 
which had been delayed by meeting an oil train on 
the track before it. The case appears to have been 
one of very culpable negligence, for, though the owl 
train was some two hours late, those in charge of it 
seem to have been so deeply engrossed in what was 
going on before them that they wholly neglected to 
guard their rear. The express train accordingly, 
approaching around a curve, plunged at a high rate 
of speed into the last car, shattering it to pieces ; 
the engine is even said to have passed completely 
through that car and to have imbedded itself in 
the one before it. It so happened that most of the 
sufferers by this accident, numbering about fifty, 
were soldiers on their way home from the army 
upon furlough. 

The second of the two disasters referred to, oc- 
curred on the i6th of August, 1865, upon the 
Housatonic road of Connecticut. A new engine was 
out upon an experimental trip, and in rounding 
a curve it ran into the rear of a passenger train, 
which, having encountered a disabled freight train, 
had coupled on to it and was then backing down 
with it to a siding in order to get by. In this 
case the impetus was so great that the colliding 
locomotive utterly destroyed the rear car of the 
passenger train and penetrated some distance into 



1 52 RAILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

the car preceding it, where its boiler burst. For- 
tunately the train was by no means full of passen- 
gers ; but, even as it was, eleven persons were killed 
and some seventeen badly injured. 



THE RE VERE RE VELA TION. 1 5 3 



CHAPTER XVI. 

NOVEL APPLIANCES. 

)( THE great peculiarity of the Revere accident, and 
that which gave a permanent interest to it, lay in the 
revelation it afforded of the degree in which a sys- 
tem had outgrown its appliances. At every point 
a deficiency was apparent. The railroads of New 
England had long been living on their early reputa- 
tion, and now, when a sudden test was applied, it 
was found that they were years behind the time. 
In August, 1871, the Eastern railroad was run as if 
it were a line of stage-coaches in the days before the 
telegraph. )(Not in one point alone, but in every- 
thing, it broke down under the test. The disaster 
was due not to any single cause but to a combina- 
tion of causes implicating not only the machinery 
and appliances in use by the company, but its dis- 
cipline and efficiency from the highest official down 
to the meanest subordinate. In the first place the 
capacity of the road was taxed to the utmost ; it was 



154 RA IL ROAD A CCI DENTS. 

vital, almost, that every wheel should be kept in 
motion. Yet, under that very exigency, the wheels 
stopped almost as a,matter of necessity. How could 
it be otherwise P-^Here was a crowded line, more 
than half of which was equipped with but a single 
track, in operating which no reliance was placed 
upon the telegraph. With trains running out of 
their schedule time and out of their schedule place, 
engineers and conductors were left to grope their 
way along as best they could in the light of rules, 
the essence of which was that when in doubt they 
were to stand stock still. ^>Then, in the absence 
of the telegraph, a block occurred almost at the 
mouth of the terminal station ; and there the trains 
stood for hours in stupid obedience to a stupid 
rule, because the one man who, with a simple re- 
gard to the dictates of common sense, was habitu- 
ally accustomed to violate it happened to be sick. 
Trains commonly left a station out of time and out 
of place ; and the engineer of an express train was 
sent out to run a gauntlet the whole length of the 
road with a simple verbal injunction to look out for 
some one before him. Then, at last, when this ex- 
press train through all this chaos got to chasing an 
accommodation train, much as a hound might course 
a hare, there was not a pretence of a signal to in- 
dicate the time which had elapsed between the pas- 
sage of the two, and employes, lanterns in hand, 
gaped on in bewilderment at the awful race, con^ 
eluding that they could not at any rate do anything 



HARE AND HOUND. 155 

to help matters, but on the whole they were inclined 
to think that those most immediately concerned 
must know what they were about. Finally, even 
when the disaster was imminent, when deficiency in 
organization and discipline had done its worst, its 
consequences might yet have been averted through 
the use of better appliances ; had the one train been 
equipped with the Westinghouse brake, already 
largely in use in other sections of the country, it 
might and would have been stopped ; or had the 
other train been provided with reflecting tail-lights 
in place of the dim hand-lanterns which glimmered 
on its rear platform, it could hardly have failed to 
make its proximity known. Any one' of a dozen 
things, every one of which should have been but was 
not, ought to have averted the disaster. Obviously 
its immediate cause was not far to seek. It lay in 
the carelessness of a conductor who failed to consult 
his watch, and never knew until the crash came that 
his train was leisurely moving along on the time of 
another. Nevertheless, what can be said in extenua- 
tion of a system under which, at this late day, a rail- 
road is operated on the principle that each employe" 
under all circumstances can and will take care of him- 
self and of those whose lives and limbs are entrusted 
to his care ? 

There is, however, another and far more attract- 
ive side to the picture. The lives sacrificed at 
Revere were not lost in vain. Seven complete rail- 
road years passed by between that and the Wollas- 



I $ RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

ton Heights accident of 1878. During that time 
not less than two hundred and thirty millions of 
persons were carried by rail within the limits of 
Massachusetts. Of this vast number while only 50, 
or about one in each four and a half millions, sus- 
tained any injury from causes beyond their own 
power to control, the killed were just two. This 
certainly was a record with which no community 
could well find fault ; and it was due more than 
anything else to the great disaster of August 26, 
1871. More than once, and on more than one 
road, accidents occurred which, but for the im- 
proved appliances introduced in consequence of the 
experience at Revere, could hardly have failed of 
fatal results. Not that these appliances were in 
all cases very cheerfully or very eagerly accepted. 
Neither the Miller platform nor the Westinghouse 
brake won its way into general use unchallenged. 
Indeed, the earnestness and even the indignation 
with which presidents and superintendents then 
protested that their car construction was better and 
stronger than Miller's ; that their antiquated hand- 
brakes were the most improved brakes, better, 
much better, than the Westinghouse ; that their 
crude old semaphores and targets afforded a protec- 
tion to trains which no block-system would ever 
equal, all this certainly was comical enough, even in 
the very shadow of the great tragedy. Men of a cer- 
tain type always have protested and will always con- 
tinue to protest that they have nothing to learn ; 



THE LESSON LEARNED. 1 57 

yet, under the heavy burden of responsibility, learn 
they still do. They dare not but learn. On this 
point the figures of the Massachusetts annual re- 
turns between the year 1871 and the year 1878 
speak volumes. At the time of the Revere disaster, 
with one single honorable exception, that of the 
Boston & Providence road, both the atmospheric 
train-brake and the Miller platform, the two greatest 
modern improvements in American car construc- 
tion, were practically unrecognized on the railroads 
of Massachusetts. Even a year later, but 93 loco- 
motives and 415 cars had been equipped even with 
the train-brake. In September, 1873, the number 
had, however, risen to 194 locomotives and 709 cars ; 
and another twelve months carried these numbers 
up to 313 locomotives and 997 cars. Finally in 
1877 tne state commissioners in their report for 
that year spoke of the train-brake as having been 
then generally adopted, and at the same time called 
attention to the very noticeable fact " that the only 
railroad accident resulting in the death of a passen- 
ger from causes beyond his control within the state 
during a period of two years and eight months, was 
caused by the failure of a company to adopt this 
improvement on all its passenger rolling-stock." 
The adoption of Miller's method of car construc- 
tion had meanwhile been hardly less rapid. Almost 
unknown at the time of the Revere catastrophe in 
September, 1871, in October, 1873, when returns on 
the subject were first called for by the state com- 



1 5 8 RAILROAD A CCIDENTS. 

missioners, eleven companies had already adopted 
it on 778 cars out of a total number of 1548 re- 
ported. In 1878 it had been adopted by twenty- 
two companies, and applied to 1685 cars out of a 
total of 1792. In other words it had been brought 
into general use. 



THE AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER. I $9 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE AUTOMATIC ELECTRIC BLOCK SYSTEM. 

A REALIZING sense of the necessity of ultimately- 
adopting some system of protection against the 
danger of rear-end collisions was, above all else, 
brought directly home to American railroad mana- 
gers through the Revere disaster. In discussing and 
comparing the appliances used in the practical oper- 
ation of railroads in different countries, there is one 
element, however, which can never be left out of 
the account. The intelligence, quickness of per- 
ception and capacity for taking care. of themselves 
that combination of qualities which, taken to- 
gether, constitute individuality and adaptability 
to circumstance vary greatly among the railroad 
employe's of different countries. The American 
locomotive engineer, as he is called, is especially 
gifted in this way. He can be relied on to take care 
of himself and his train under circumstances which 
in other countries would be thought to insure disas- 



1 60 RAILROAD A CCI DENTS. 

ter. Volumes on this point were included in the fact 
that though at the time of the Revere disaster many 
of the American lines, especially in Massachusetts, 
were crowded with the trains of a mixed traffic, the 
necessity of making any provision against rear-end 
collisions, further than by directing those in imme- 
diate charge of the trains to keep a sharp look out 
and to obey their printed orders, seemed hardly to 
have occurred to any one. The English block sys- 
tem was now and then referred to in a vague, gen- 
eral way ; but it was very questionable whether one 
in ten of those referring to it knew anything about 
it or had ever seen it in operation, much less in- 
vestigated it. A characteristic illustration of this 
was afforded in the course of those official investi- 
gations which followed the Revere disaster, and 
have already more than once been alluded to. Prior 
to that disaster the railroads of Massachusetts 
had, as a rule, enjoyed a rather exceptional free- 
dom from accidents, and there was every reason 
to suppose that their regulations were as exact 
and their system as good as those in use in other 
parts of the country. Yet it then appeared that 
in the rules of very few of the Massachusetts roads 
had any provision, even of the simplest character, 
been made as to the effect of telegraphic orders, 
or the course to be pursued by employe's in charge 
of trains on their receipt. The appliances for 
securing intervals between following trains were 
marked by a quaint simplicity. They were, indeed, 



A NECESSITY OF THE FUTURE. l6l 

" singularly primitive," as the railroad commission- 
ers on a subsequent occasion described them, when 
it appeared that on one of the principal roads of the 
state the interval between two closely following 
trains was signalled to the engineer of the second 
train by a station-master's holding up to him as he 
passed a number of ringers corresponding to the 
number of minutes since the first train had gone 
by. For the rest the examination revealed, as the 
nearest approach to a block system, a queer collec- 
tion of dials, sand-glasses, green flags, colored lan- 
terns and hand-targets. The climax in the course 
of that investigation was, however, reached when 
some reference, involving a description of it, was 
made to the English block. This was met by a 
protest on the part of one veteran superintendent, 
who announced that it might work well under 
certain circumstances, but for himself he could 
not be responsible for the operation of a road 
running the number of trains he had charge of in 
reliance on any such system. The subject, in fact, 
was one of which he knew absolutely nothing ; 
not even that, through the block system and 
through it alone, fourteen trains were habitually 
and safely moved under circumstances where he 
moved one. This occurred in 1871, and though 
eight years have since elapsed information in regard 
to the block system is not yet very widely dissem- 
inated inside of railroad circles, much less outside 
of them. It is none the less a necessity of the 



1 62 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

future. It has got to be understood, and, in some 
form, it has got to be adopted ; for even in Amer- 
ica there are limits to the reliance which, when the 
lives and limbs of many are at stake, can be placed 
on the " sharp look out " of any class of men, no 
matter how intelligent they may be. 

The block system is of English origin, and it 
scarcely needs to be said that it was adopted by the 
railroad corporations of that country only when they 
were driven to it by the exigencies of their traffic. 
But for that system, indeed, the most costly portion 
of the tracks of the English roads must of neces- 
sity have been duplicated years ago, as their traffic 
had fairly outgrown those appliances of safety 
which have even to this time been found sufficient 
in America. There were points, for instance, where 
two hundred and seventy regular trains of one line 
alone passed daily. On the London & North- 
Western there are more than sixty through down 
trains, taking no account of local trains, each day 
passing over the same line of tracks, among which 
are express trains which stop nowhere, way trains 
which stop everywhere, express-freight, way-freight, 
mineral trains and parcel trains. On the Midland 
road there are nearly twice as many similar trains on 
each track. On the Metropolitan railway the ave- 
rage interval is three and one-third minutes between 
trains. In one case points were mentioned where 270 
regular trains of one line alone passed a given June- 
tion during each twenty-four hours,-where 470 trains 



LONDON TRAIN-MOVEMENT. 163 

passed a single station, the regular interval between 
them being but five-eighths of a mile, where 132 
trains entered and left a single station during three 
hours of each evening every day, being one train in 
eighty-two seconds. In 1870 there daily reached or 
left the six stations of the Boston roads some 385 
trains ; while no less than 650 trains a day were in the 
same year received and despatched from a single one 
of the London stations. On one single exception- 
al occasion 1,111 trains, carrying 145,000 persons, 
were reported as entering and leaving this station 
in the space of eighteen hours, being rather more 
than a train a minute. Indeed it may well be ques- 
tioned whether the world anywhere else furnishes an 
illustration so apt and dramatic of the great me- 
chanical achievements of recent times as that to be 
seen during the busy hours of any week-day from 
the signal and interlocking galleries which span the 
tracks as they enter the Charing Cross or Cannon 
street stations in London. Below and in front of 
the galleries the trains glide to and fro, coming sud- 
denly into sight from beyond the bridges and as 
suddenly disappearing, winding swiftly in and out, 
and at times four of them running side by side on 
as many tracks but in both directions, the whole 
making up a swiftly shifting maze of complex move- 
ment under the influence of which a head unaccus- 
tomed to the sight grows actually giddy. Yet it is 
all done so quietly and smoothly, with such an ab- 
sence of haste and nervousness on the part of the 



164 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

stolid operators in charge, that it is not easy to de- 
cide which most to wonder at, the almost incon- 
ceivable magnitude and despatch of the train-move- 
ment or the perfection of the appliances which make 
it possible. No man concerned in the larger manage- 
ment of railroads, who has not passed a morning in 
those London galleries, knows what it is to handle 
a great city's traffic. 

Perfect as it is in its way, however, it may well be 
questioned whether the block system as developed 
in England is likely to be generally adopted on 
American railroads. Upon one or two of them, and 
notably on the New Jersey Central and a division 
of the Pennsylvania, it has already been in use for 
a number of years. From an American point of 
view, however, it is open to a number of objections. 
That in itself it is very perfect and has been success- 
fully elaborated so as to provide for almost every 
possible contingency is proved by the results daily 
accomplished by means of it.* The English lines 
are made to do an incredible amount of work with 
comparative few accidents. The block system is, 
however, none the less a very clumsy and compli- 
cated one, necessitating the constant employment 
of a large number of skilled operators. Here is the 
great defect in it from the American point of view. 
In this country labor is scarce and capital costly. 
The effort is always towards the perfecting of 

* An excellent popular description of this system will be found in 
Barry's Railway Appliances, Chapter V. 



THE AMERICAN BLOCK. 1 65 

labor-saving machines. Hitherto the pressure of 
traffic on the lines has not been greater than could 
be fairly controlled by simpler appliances, and the 
expense of the English system is so heavy that its 
adoption, except partially, would not have been 
warranted. As Barry says in his treatise on the sub- 
ject, "one can 'buy gold too dear'; for if every 
possible known precaution is to be taken, regardless 
of cost, it may not pay to work a railway at all." 

It is tolerably safe, therefore, to predict that the 
American block system of the future will be essen- 
tially different from the present English system. 
The basis electricity will of course be the same ; 
but, while the operator is everywhere in the English 
block, his place will be supplied to the utmost possi- 
ble degree by automatic action in the American. It 
is in this direction that the whole movement since 
the Revere disaster has been going on, and the ad- 
vance has been very great. From peculiarities of 
condition also the American block must be made to 
cover a multitude of weak points in the operation of 
roads, and give timely notice of dangers against 
which the English block provides only to a limited 
degree, and always through the presence of yet 
other employes. For instance, as will presently 
be seen, many more accidents and, in Europe even, 
far greater loss of life is caused by locomotives 
coming in contact with vehicles at points where 
highways cross railroad tracks at a level therewith 
than by rear-end collisions ; meanwhile throughout 



1 66 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

America, even in the most crowded suburban neigh, 
borhoods, these crossings are the rule, whereas in 
Europe they are the exception. The English block 
affords protection against this danger by giving 
electric notice to gatemen ; but gatemen are al- 
ways supposed. So also as respects the movements 
of passengers in and about stations in crossing 
tracks as they come to or leave the trains, or pre- 
pare to take their places in them. The rule in 
Europe is that passenger crossings at local stations 
are provided over or under the tracks ; in Amer- 
ica, however, almost nowhere is any provision at 
all made, but passengers, men, women and children, 
are left to scramble across tracks as best they can 
in the face of passing trains. They are expected 
to take care of themselves, and the success with 
which they do it is most astonishing. Having been 
brought up to this self-care all their lives, they do 
not, as would naturally be supposed, become con- 
fused and stumble under the wheels of locomotives ; 
and the statistics seem to show that no more acci- 
dents from this cause occur in America than in 
Europe. Nevertheless some provision is manifestly 
desirable to notify employes as well as passengers 
that trains are approaching, especially where way- 
stations are situated on curves. 

Again, it is well known that, next to collisions, the 
greatest source of danger to railroad trains is due 
to broken tracks. It is, of course, apparent that 
tracks may at any time be broken by accident, as by 



IS A UTOMA TIC A C TION RE LI A BLE ? 1 67 

earth-slides, derailment or the fracture of rails. This 
danger has to be otherwise provided for ; the block 
has nothing to do with it further than to prevent a 
train delayed by any such break from being run into 
by any following train. The broken track which the 
perfect block should give notice of is that where the 
break is a necessary incident to the regular operation 
of the road. It is these breaks which, both in Am- 
erica and elsewhere, are the fruitful source of the 
great majority of railroad accidents, and draw-bridges 
and switches, or facing points as they are termed in 
the English reports, are most prominent among 
them. Wherever there is a switch, the chances are 
that in the course of time there will be an accident. 
Four matters connected with train movement 
have now been specified, in regard to which some 
provision is either necessary or highly desirable : 
these are rear collisions, tracks broken at draw- 
bridges or at switches, highway grade crossings, 
and the notification of agents and passengers at 
stations. The effort in America, somewhat in ad- 
vance of that crowded condition of the lines which 
makes the adoption of something a measure of pres- 
ent necessity, has been directed towards the inven- 
tion of an automatic system which at one and the 
same time should cover all the dangers and provide 
for all the needs which have been referred to, elim- 
inating the risks incident to human forgetfulness, 
drowsiness and weakness of nerves. Can reliable 
automatic provision thus be made ? The English 



1 68 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

authorities are of opinion that it cannot. They in- 
sist that " if automatic arrangements be adopted, 
however suitable they may be to the duties which 
they have to perform, they should in all cases be 
used as additions to, and not as substitutions for, 
safety machinery worked by competent signal-men. 
The signal-man should be bound to exercise his ob- 
servation, care and judgment, and to act thereon ; 
and the machine, as far as possible, be such that if 
he attempts to go wrong it shall check him." 

It certainly cannot be said that the American 
electrician has as yet demonstrated the incorrect- 
ness of this conclusion, but he has undoubtedly 
made a good deal of progress in that direction. Of 
the various automatic blocks which have now been 
experimented with or brought into practice, the Hall 
Electric and the Union Safety Signal Company sys- 
tems have been developed to a very marked degree 
of perfection. They depend for their working on 
diametrically opposite principles : the Hall signals 
being worked by means of an electric circuit caused 
by the action of wheels moving on the rails, and 
conveyed through the usual medium of wires; 
while, under the other system, the wires being 
wholly dispensed with, a continuous electric cir- 
cuit is kept up by means of the rails, which 
are connected for the purpose, and the signals are 
then acted upon through the breaking of this noi- 
mal circuit by the movement of locomotives and 
cars. So far as the signals are concerned, there is 



HALLS ELECTRIC SYSTEM. 169 

no essential difference between the two systems, 
except that Hall supplies the necessary motive 
force by the direct action of electricity, while in 
the other case dependence is placed upon suspended 
weights. Of the two the Hall system is the oldest 
and most thoroughly elaborated, having been com- 
pelled to pass through that long and useful ten- 
tative process common to all inventions, during 
which they are regarded as of doubtful utility and 
are gradually developed through a succession of 
partial failures. So far as Hall's system is con- 
cerned this period may now fairly be regarded as 
over, for it is in established use on a number of the 
more crowded roads of the North, and especially 
of New England, while the imperfections neces- 
sarily incident to the development of an appliance 
at once so delicate and so complicated, have for 
certain purposes been clearly overcome. Its signal 
arrangements, for instance, to protect draw-bridges, 
stations and grade-crossings are wholly distinct from 
its block system, through which it provides against 
dangers from collision and broken tracks. So far 
as draw-bridges are concerned, the protection it af- 
fords is perfect. Not only is its interlocking appa- 
ratus so designed that the opening of the draw 
blocks all approach to it, but the signals are also 
reciprocal ; and if through carelessness or automatic 
derangement any train passes the block, the draw- 
tender is notified at once of the fact in ample time 
to stop it. 






17 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

In the case of a highway crossing at a level, the 
electric bell under Hall's system is placed at the 
crossing, giving notice of the approaching train 
from .the moment it is within half a mile until it 
passes ; so that, where this appliance is in use, 
accidents can happen only through the gross care- 
lessness of those using the highway. When the 
electric bell is silent there is no train within half 
a mile and the crossing is safe ; it is not safe while 
the bell is ringing. As it now stands the law 
usually provides that the prescribed signals, either 
bell or whistle, shall be given from the locomotive 
as it approaches the highway, and at a fixed dis- 
tance from it. The signal, therefore, is given at a 
distance of several hundred yards, more or less, 
from the point of danger. The electric system im- 
proves on this by placing the signal directly at the 
point of danger, the traveller approaches the bell, 
instead of the bell approaching the traveller. At 
any point of crossing which is really dangerous, 
that is at any crossing where trees or cuttings or 
buildings mask the railroad from the highway, 
this distinction is vital. In the one case notice 
of the unseen danger must be given arid cannot be 
unobserved ; in the other case whether it is really 
given or not may depend on the condition of the 
atmosphere or the direction of the wind. 

Usually, however, in New England the level 
crossings of the more crowded thoroughfares, per- 
haps one in ten of the whole number, are protected 



HIGHWAY-CROSSING SIGNALS. I?l 

by gates or flag-men. Under similar circumstances 
in Great Britain there is an electric connection 
between a bell in the cabin of the gate-keeper and 
the nearest signal boxes of the block system on 
each side of the crossing, so that due notice is 
given of the approach of trains from either direc- 
tion. In this country it has heretofore been the 
custom to warn gate-keepers' by the locomotive 
whistle, to the intense annoyance of all persons 
dwelling near the crossing, or to make them depend 
for notice on their own eyes. Under the Hall 
system, however, the gate-keeper is automatically 
signalled to be on the look out, if he is attending 
to his duty; or, if he is neglecting it, the electric 
bell in some degree supplies his place, without re- 
leasing the corporation from its liability. In Amer- 
ica the heavy fogs of England are almost unknown, 
and the brilliant head lights, heavy bells and shrill 
high whistles in use on the locomotives would at 
night, it might be supposed, give ample notice to 
the most careless of an approaching train. Con- 
tinually recurring experience shows, however, that 
this is not the case. Under these circumstances 
the electric bell at the crossing becomes not only a 
matter of justice almost to the employe who is 
stationed there, but a watchman over him. 

This, however, like the other forms of signals 
which have been referred to, is, in the electric sys- 
tem, a mere adjunct of its chief use, which is the 
block, they are all as it were things thrown into 



1/2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the bargain. As contradistinguished from the 
English block, which insures only an unoccupied 
track, the automatic blocks seek to insure an un- 
broken track as well, that is not only is each seg- 
ment into which a road is divided, protected as res- 
pects following trains by, in the case of Hall's 
system, double signals watching over each other, 
the one at safety, the other at danger, both having 
to combine to open the block, but every switch or 
facing point, the throwing of which may break the 
main track, is also protected. The Union Signal 
Company's system it is claimed goes still further 
than this and indicates any break in the track, though 
due to accidental fracture or displacement of rails. 
Without attempting this the Hall system has one 
other important feature in common with the En- 
glish block, and a very important feature, that of 
enabling station agents in case of sudden emergency 
to control the train movement within half a mile or 
more of their stations on either side. Within the 
given distance they can stop trains either leaving or 
approaching. The inability to do this has been 
the cause of some of the most disastrous collisions 
on record, and notably those at Revere and at 
Thorpe. 

The one essential thing, however, in every perfect 
block system, whether automatic or worked by 
operators, is that in case of accident or derangement 
or doubt, the signal should rest at danger. This the 
Hall system now fully provides for, and in case even 



THE COST OF A SMALL ECONOMY. 173 

of the wilful displacement of a switch, an occurrence 
by no means without precedent in railroad experi- 
ence, the danger signal could not but be displaye/d, 
even though the electric connection had been tam- 
pered with. Accidents due to wilfullness, however, 
can hardly be provided for except by police pre- 
cautions. Train wrecking is not to be taken into 
account as a danger incident to the ordinary opera- 
tion of a railroad. Carelessness or momentary in- 
advertence, or, most dangerous of all, that reckless- 
ness that unnecessary assumption of risk some- 
where or at some time, which is almost inseparable 
from a long immunity from disaster these are the 
great sources of peril most carefully to be guarded 
against. The complicated and unceasing train 
movement depends upon many thousand employes, 
all of whom make mistakes or assume risks some- 
times ; and did they not do so they would be either 
more or less than men. Being, however, neither 
angels nor machines, but ordinary mortals whose 
services are bought for money at the average mar- 
ket rate of wages, it would certainly seem no small 
point gained if an automatic machine could be 
placed on guard over those whom it is the great 
effort of railroad discipline to reduce to automatons. 
Could this result be attained, the unintentional 
throwing of a lever or the carelessness which leaves 
it thrown, would simply block the track instead of 
leaving it broken. An example of this, and at the 
same time a most forcible illustration of the possible 



1/4 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

cost of a small economy in the application of a safe- 
guard, was furnished in the case of the Wollaston 
disaster. At the time of that disaster, the Old 
Colony railroad had for several years been partially 
equipped on the portion of its track near Boston, 
upon which the accident occurred, with Hall's sys- 
tem. It had worked smoothly and easily, was well 
understood by the employe's, and the company was 
sufficiently satisfied with it to have even then made 
arrangements for its extension. Unfortunately, with 
a too careful eye to the expenditure involved, the 
line had been but partially equipped ; points where 
little danger was apprehended had not been pro- 
tected. Among these was the " Foundry switch," 
so called, near Wollaston. Had this switch been 
connected with the system and covered by a signal- 
target, the mere act of throwing it would have auto- 
matically blocked the track, and only when it was 
re-set would the track have been opened. The 
switch was not connected, the train hands were 
recklessly careless, and so a trifling economy cost in 
one unguarded moment some fifty persons life and 
limb, and the corporation more than $300,000. 

One objection to the automatic block is gen- 
erally based upon the delicacy and complicated 
character of the machinery on which its action 
necessarily depends ; and this objection is especially 
urged against those other portions of the Hall 
system, covering draws and level crossings, which 
have been particularly described. It is argued that 



" PRE TTY AND INGENIO US; B UT " 1 75 

it is always liable to get out of order from a great 
multiplicity of causes, some of which are very diffi- 
cult to guard against, and that it is sure to get out 
of order during any electric disturbance ; but it is 
during storms that accidents are most likely to 
occur, and especially is this the case at highway 
grade-crossings. It is comparatively easy to avoid 
accidents so long as the skies are clear and the 
elements quiet ; but it is exactly when this is not 
the case and when it becomes necessary to use 
every precaution, that electricity as a safeguard fails 
or runs mad, and, by participating in the general 
confusion, proves itself worse than nothing. Then 
it will be found that those in charge of trains and 
tracks, who have been educated into a reliance 
upon it under ordinary circumstances, will from 
force of habit, if nothing else, go on relying upon 
it, and disaster will surely follow. 

This line of reasoning is plausible, but none the 
less open to one serious objection ; it is sustained 
neither by statistics nor by practical experience. 
Moreover it is not new, for, slightly varied in phrase- 
ology, it has been persistently urged against the in- 
troduction of every new railroad appliance, and, in- 
deed, was first and most persistently of all urged 
against the introduction of railroads themselves. 
Pretty and ingenious in theory, practically it is not 
feasible ! for more than half a century this for- 
mula has been heard. That the automatic electric 
signal system is complicated, and in many of its 



I? RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

parts of most delicate construction, is undeniable. 
So also is the locomotive. In point of fact the 
whole railroad organization from beginning to end 
from machine-shop to train-movement is at once 
so vast and complicated, so delicate in that action 
which goes on with such velocity and power, that it 
is small cause for wonder that in the beginning all 
plain, sensible, practical men scouted it as the fanci- 
ful creation of visionaries. They were wholly just- 
ified in so doing ; and to-day any sane man would 
of course pronounce the combined safety and rapid- 
ity of ordinary railroad movement an utter impos- 
sibility, did he not see it going on before his eyes. 
So it is with each new appliance. It is ever sug- 
gested that at last the final result has already 
been reached. It is but a few years, as will pres- 
ently be seen, since the Westinghouse brake en- 
countered the old " pretty and ingenious " formula. 
f Going yet a step further, and taking the case of 
electricity itself, the bold conception of operating 
an entire line of single track road wholly as respects 
one half of its train movement. by telegraph, and 
without the use of any time table at all, would once^- 
have, been condemned as mad. Yet to-day^lialf 
of the vast freight movement of this continent is 
carried on in absolute reliance on the telegraph, 
Nevertheless it is still not uncommon to hear 
among the class of men who rise to the height of 
their capacity in themselves being automaton super- "^^ 
intendents that they do not believe in deviating 



EXPERIENCE vs. THEORY. 177 

from their time tables and printed rules ; that, 
acting under them, the men know or ought to 
know exactly what to do, and any interference 
by a train despatcher only relieves them of re- 
sponsibility, and is more likely to lead to accidents 
than if they were left alone to grope their own 
way out. 

Another and very similar argument frequently 
urged against the electric, in common with all other 
block systems by the large class who prefer to ex- 
ercise their ingenuity in finding objections rather 
than in overcoming difficulties, is that they breed 
dependence and carelessness in employes ; that 
engine-drivers accustomed to rely on the signals, 
rely on them implicitly, and get into habits of reck- 
lessness which lead inevitably to accidents, for which 
they then contend the signals, and not they them- 
selves, are responsible. This argument is, indeed, 
hardly less familiar than the " pretty and ingenious" 
formula just referred to. It has, however, been met 
and disposed of by Captain Tyler in his annual re- 
ports to the Board of Trade in a way which can 
hardly be improved upon : 

It is a favorite argument with those who oppose the 
introduction of some of these improvements, or who 
make excuses for the want of them, that their servants 
are apt to become more careless from the use of them, in 
consequence of the extra security which they are be- 
lieved to afford ; and it is desirable to consider seriously 
how much of truth there is in this assertion. * * * 
Allowing to the utmost for these tendencies to confide 



178 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

too much in additional means of safety, the risk is 
proved by experience to be very much greater without 
them than with them ; and, in fact, the negligence and 
mistakes of servants are found to occur most frequently, 
and generally with the most serious results, not when the 
men are over-confident in their appliances or apparatus, 
but when, in the absence of them, they are habituated 
to risk in the conduct of the traffic. In the daily prac- 
tice of railway working station-masters, porters, signal- 
men, engine-drivers or guards are frequently placed in 
difficulties which they have to surmount as best they can. 
The more they are accustomed to incur risk in order to 
perform their duties, the less they think of it, and the 
more difficult it is to enforce discipline and obedience 
to regulations. The -personal risk which is encountered 
by certain classes of railway servants is coming to be 
more precisely ascertained. It is very considerable ; and 
it is difficult to prevent men who are in constant danger 
themselves from doing things which may be a source of 
danger to others, or to compel them to obey regulations 
for which they do not see altogether the necessity, and 
which impede them in their work. This difficulty in- 
creases with the want of necessary means and appliances ; 
and is diminished when, with proper means and appli- 
ances, stricter discipline becomes possible, safer modes of 
working become habitual, and a higher margin of safety 
is constantly preserved.* 

In Great Britain the ingenious theory that supe- 
rior appliances or greater personal comfort in some 
indefinable way lead to carelessness in employe's 
was carried to such an extent that only within the 
last few years has any protection against wind, rain 
and sunshine been furnished on locomotives for the 
engine-drivers and stokers. The old stage-coach 

* Reports ; 1872, page 23, and 1873, page 39. 



DUTY UNDER TORTURE. 1 79 

driver faced the elements, and why should not his 
successor on the locomotive do the same? If made 
too comfortable, he would become careless and go 
to sleep ! This was the line of argument advanced, 
and the tortures to which the wretched men were 
subjected in consequence of it led to their fortifying 
nature by drink. They had to be regularly in- 
spected and examined before mounting the foot- 
board, to see that they were sober. It took years 
in Great Britain for intelligent railroad managers to 
learn that the more protected and comfortable a man 
is the better he will attend to his duty. And even 
when the old argument, refuted by long experience, 
was at last abandoned as respected the locomotive 
cab, it, with perfect freshness and confidence in its 
own novelty and force, promptly showed its brutal 
visage in opposition to the next new safeguard. 

For the reasons which Captain Tyler has so 
forcibly put in the extracts which have just 
been quoted, the argument against the block sys- 
tem from the increased carelessness of employes, 
supposed to be induced by it, is entitled to no 
weight. Neither is the argument from the deli- 
cacy and complication of the automatic, electric 
signal system entitled to any more, when urged 
against that. Not only has it been too often 
refuted under similar conditions by practical re- 
sults, but in this case it is based on certain assump- 
tions of fact which are wholly opposed to experi- 
ence. The record does not show that there is any 



ISO RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

peculiar liability to railroad accidents during pe 
riods of storm ; perhaps because those in charge 
of train movements or persons crossing tracks are 
under such circumstances more especially on the 
look out for danger. On the contrary the full aver- 
age of accidents of the worst description appear 
to have occurred under the most ordinary condi- 
tions of weather, and usually in the most unantic- 
ipated way. This is peculiarly true of accidents 
at highway grade crossings. These commonly oc- 
cur when the conditions are such as to cause the 
highway travelers to suppose that, if any danger 
existed, they could not but be aware of it. In the 
next place, the question in regard to automatic 
electric signals is exactly what it was in regard to 
the Westinghouse brake, with its air-pump, its valves 
and connecting tubes ; it is the purely practical 
question, Does the thing work? The burden of 
proof is properly on the inventor. The presump- 
tion is all against him. In the case of the elec- 
tric signals they have for years been in limited 
but constant use, and while thus in use they have 
been undergoing steady improvement. Though 
now brought to a considerable degree of compar- 
ative perfection they are, of course, still in their 
earlier stage of development. In use, however, 
they have not been found open to the practical 
objections urged against them. At first much too 
complicated and expensive, requiring more machin- 
ery than could by any reasonable exertions be kept 



DOES THE THING WORK? l8l 

in order and more care than they were worth, they 
have now been simplified until a single battery 
properly located can do all the necessary work for a 
road of indefinite length. As a system they are 
effective and do not lead to accidents ; nor are they 
any more subject than telegraph wires to derange- 
ment from atmospheric causes. When any disturb- 
ance does take place, until it can be overcome it 
amounts simply to a general signal for operating the 
road with extreme caution. But with railroads, as 
everywhere else in life, it is the normal condition of 
affairs for which provision must be made, while the 
dangers incident to exceptional circumstances must 
be met by exceptional precautions. As long as 
things are in their normal state, that is, probably, 
during ninteen days out of twenty, the electric sig- 
nals have now through several years of constant 
trial proved themselves a reliable safeguard. It can 
hardly admit of doubt that in the near future 
they will be both further perfected and generally 
adopted. 



1 82 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

INTERLOCKING. 

IN their management of switches, especially at 
points of railroad convergence where a heavy traffic 
is concentrated and the -passage of trains or move- 
ment of cars and locomotives is unceasing, the Eng- 
lish are immeasurably in advance of the Americans ; 
and, indeed, of all other people. In fact, in this re- 
spect the American managers have shown them- 
selves slow to learn, and have evinced an indisposi^ 
tion to adopt labor-saving appliances which, con- 
sidering their usual quickness of discernment in that 
regard, is at first sight inexplicable. Having always 
been accustomed to the old and simple methods, 
just so long as they can through those methods 
handle their traffic with a bearable degree of incon- 
venience and expense, they will continue to do so. 
That their present method is most extravagant, just 
as extravagant as it would be to rent two houses or 
to run two steam engines where one, if properly 



THE CANNON STREET STATION. 183 

used, could be made to suffice, admits of demon- 
stration ; but the waste is not on the surface, and 
the necessity for economy is not imperative. The 
difference of conditions and the difference in results 
may be made very obvious by a comparison. Take, 
for instance, London and Boston the Cannon street 
station in the one and the Beach street station in 
the other. The concentration of traffic at London 
is so great that it becomes necessary to utilize every 
foot of ground devoted to railroad purposes to the 
utmost possible extent. Not only must it be pack- 
ed with tracks, but those tracks must never be idle. 
The incessant train movement at Cannon street has 
already been referred to as probably the most extra- 
ordinary and confusing spectacle in the whole wide 
circle of railroad wonders. The result is that in 
some way, at this one station and under this single 
roof, more trains must daily be made to enter and 
leave than enter and leave, not only the Beach 
street station, but all the eight railroad stations in 
Boston combined.* 

* " It has been estimated that an average of 50,000 persons were, 
in 1869, daily brought into Boston and carried from it, on three hun- 
dred and eighty-five trains, while the South Eastern railway of Lon- 
don received and despatched in 1870, on an average, six hundred and 
fifty trains a day, between 6 A.M. and 12 P.M. carrying from 35,000 
to 40,000 persons, and this too without the occurrence of a single 
train accident during the year. On one single exceptional day eleven 
hundred and eleven trains, carrying 145,000 persons, are said to have 
entered and left this station in the space of eighteen hours." Third 
Annual Report, [1872] of Massachusetts Railroad Commissioners, p. 
141. 

The passenger movement over the roads terminating in Boston was 
probably as heavy on June 17, 1875, as during any twenty-four hours 



1 84 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

During eighteen successive hours trains have 
been made to enter and leave this station at the 
rate of more than one in each minute. It con- 
tains four platforms and seven tracks, the longest of 
which is 720 feet. As compared with the largest sta- 
tion in Boston (the Boston & Providence), it has 
the same number of platforms and an aggregate of 
1,500 (three-fifths) more feet of track under cover ; it 
daily accommodates about nine times as many trains 
and four times as many passengers. Of it Barry, in 
his treatise on Railway Appliances (p. 197), says: 
" The platform area at this station is probably mini- 
mised but, the station accommodates efficiently a 
very large mixed traffic of long and short journey 
trains, amounting at times to as many as 40.0 trains 
in and 400 trains out in a working day.* " 

The American system is, therefore, one of great 
waste ; for, being conducted in the way it is that is 
with stations and tracks utilized to but a fractional 
part of their utmost capacity it requires a large 
number of stations and tracks and the services of 
many employes. Indeed it is safe to say that, 

in their history. It was returned at 280,000 persons carried in 641 
trains. About twice the passenger movement of the " exceptional 
day" referred to, carried in something more than half the number of 
trains, entering and leaving eight stations instead of one. 

* The Grand Central Depot on 42d Street in New York City, has 
nearly twice the amount of track room under cover of the Cannon 
street station. The daily train movement of the latter would be pre- 
cisely paralleled in New York, though not equalled in amount, if 
the 42d street station were at Trinity church, and, in addition to 
the trains which now enter and leave it, all the city trains of the 
Elevated road were also provided for there. 



PRIMITIVE WAYS. 1 8$ 

judged by the London standard, not more than two 
of the eight stations in Boston are at this time util- 
ized to above a quarter part of their full working 
capacity ; and the same is probably true of all other 
American cities. Both employes and the travelling 
public are accustomed to a slow movement and abun- 
dance of room ; land is comparatively cheap, and the 
pressure of concentration has only just begun to 
make itself felt. , Accordingly any person, who cares 
to pass an hour during the busy time of day in front 
of an American city station, cannot but be struck, 
while watching the constant movement, with the 
primitive way in which it is conducted. Here are 
a multiplicity of tracks all connected with each 
other, and cars and locomotives are being passed 
from one to another from morning to night. A 
constant shifting of switches is going on, and the 
little shunting engines never stand still. The 
switches, however, as a rule, are unprovided with 
signals, except of the crudest description ; they 
have no connection with each other, and during 
thirty years no change has been made in the 
method in which they are worked. When one of 
them has to be shifted, a man goes to it and shifts 
it. To facilitate the process, the monitor shunting 
engines are provided with a foot-board in front and 
behind, just above the track, upon which the yard 
hands jump, and are carried about from switch to 
switch, thus saving the time they would occupy if 
they had to walk. A simpler arrangement could 



OF THE 

JNIVERSITY- 



1 86 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

not be imagined ; anyone could devise it. The only 
wonder is that even a considerable traffic can be 
conducted safely in reliance upon it. 

Turning from Beach to Cannon street, it is ap- 
parent that the train movement which has there to 
be accommodated would fall into inextricable con- 
fusion if it was attempted to manage it in the way 
which has been described. The number of trains is 
so great and the movement so rapid and intricate, 
that not even a regiment of employes stationed here 
and there at the signals and switches could keep 
things in motion. From time to time they would 
block, and then the whole vast machine would be 
brought to a standstill until order could be re-estab- 
lished. The difficulty is overcome in a very simple 
way, by means of an equally simple apparatus. The 
control over the numerous switches and correspond- 
ing signals, instead of being divided up among 
many men stationed at many points, is concentrated 
in the hands of two men occupying a single gallery, 
which is elevated across the tracks in front of the 
station and commanding the approaches to it, much 
as the pilot-house of an American steamer com- 
mands a view of the course before it. From this 
gallery, by means of what is known as the interlock- 
ing system, every switch and signal in the yard be- 
low is moved ; and to such a point of perfection has 
the apparatus been carried, that any disaster from 
the misplacement of a switch or the display of a 
wrong signal is rendered impossible. Of this Can- 



THE ORIGIN OF INTERLOCKING. l8 

non street apparatus Barry says, " there are here 
nearly seventy point and signal levers concentrated 
in one signal house; the number of combinations' 
which would be possible if all the signal and point 
levers were not interlocked can be expressed only 
by millions. Of these only 808 combinations are 
safe, and by the interlocking apparatus these 808 
combinations are rendered possible, and all the 
others impossible. "^ 

It is not proposed to enter at any length into the 
mechanical details of this appliance, which, however, 
must be considered as one of the three or four great 
inventions which have marked epochs in the history 
of railroad traffic.f As, however, it is but little 
known in America, and will inevitably within the 
next few years find here the widest field for its in- 
creased use, a slight sketch of its gradual develop- 
ment and of its leading mechanical features may not 
be out of place. Prior to the year 1846 the switches 
and signals on the English roads were worked in the 
same way that they are now commonly worked in 
this country. As a train drew near to a junction, 
for instance, the switchman stationed there made 
the proper track connection and then displayed the 
signal which indicated what tracks were opened and 
what closed, and which line had the right of way ; 

* Railway Appliances, p. 113. 

f- A sufficiently popular description of this apparatus also, illustrated 
by cuts, will be found in Barry's excellent little treatise on Railway 
Appliances, already referred to, published by Longmans & Co. as one 
of their series of text-books of science. 



1 88 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

and the engine-drivers acted accordingly. As the 
number of trains increased and the movement at the 
junctions became more complicated, the danger of 
the wrong switches being thrown or the wrong sig- 
nals displayed, increased also. Mistakes from time 
to time would happen, even when only the most 
careful and experienced men were employed ; and 
mistakes in these matters led to serious consequences. 
It, therefore, became the practice, instead of having 
the switch or signal lever at the point where the 
switch or signal itself was, as is still almost univer- 
sally the case in this country, to connect them by 
rods or wires with their levers, which were concen- 
trated at some convenient point for working, and 
placed under the control of one man instead of sev- 
eral. So far as it went this change was an improve- 
ment, but no provision yet existed against the dan- 
ger of mistake in throwing switches and displaying 
signals. The blunder of first making one combina- 
tion of tracks and then showing the signal for an- 
other was less liable to happen after the concentra- 
tion of the levers under one hand than before, but 
it still might happen at any time, and certainly 
would happen at some time. If all danger of ac- 
cident from human fallibility was ever to be elim- 
inated a far more complicated mechanical appa- 
ratus must be devised. In response to this need 
the system of interlocking was gradually developed, 
though not until about the year 1856 was it brought 
to any considerable degree of perfection. The whole 



THE ELIMINA TION OF BL UNDER S. I 89 

object of this system is to render it impossible for a 
switchman, whether because he is weary or agitated 
or actually malicious or only inexperienced, to give 
contrary signals, or to break his line in one way and 
to give the signal for its being broken in another 
way. To bring this about the levers are concentrated 
in a cabin or gallery, and placed side by side in a 
frame, their lower ends connecting with the switch- 
points and signals by means of rods and wires. Be- 
neath this frame are one or more long bars, extend- 
ing its entire length under it and parallel with it. 
These are called locking bars ; for, being moved to 
the right or left by the action of the levers they 
hold these levers in certain designated positions, nor 
do they permit them to occupy any other. In this 
way what is termed the interlocking is effected. 
The apparatus, though complicated, is simplicity it- 
self compared with a clock or a locomotive. The 
complication, also, such as it is, arises from the fact 
that each situation is a problem by itself, and as 
such has to be studied out and provided for sepa- 
rately. This, however, is a difficulty affecting the 
manufacturer rather than the operator. To the lat- 
ter the apparatus presents no difficulty which a 
fairly intelligent mechanic cannot easily master ; 
while for the former the highly complicated nature 
of the problem may, perhaps, best be inferred 
from the example given by Mr. Barry, the sim- 
plest that can offer, that of an ordinary junction 
where a double-track branch-road connects with 



1 90 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

its double-track main line. There would in this 
case be of necessity two switch levers and four 
signal levers, which would admit of sixty-four 
possible combinations. " The signal might be ar- 
ranged in any of sixteen ways, and the points 
might occupy any of four positions, irrespective of 
the position of the signals. Of the sixty-four com- 
binations thus possible only thirteen are safe, and 
the rest are such as might lure an engine-driver 
into danger." 

Originally the locking bar was worked through 
the direct action of certain locks, as they were 
called, between which the levers when moved played 
to and fro. These locks were mere bars or plates 
of iron, some with inclined sides, and others with 
sides indented or notched. At one end they were 
secured on a pivot to "a fixed bar opposite to and 
parallel with the movable locking bar, while their 
other ends were made fast to the locking bar ; whence 
it necessarily followed that, as certain of the levers 
were pushed to and fro between them, the action 
of these levers on the inclined sides of the locks 
could by a skilful combination be made to throw 
other levers into the notches and indentations of 
other locks, thus securing them in certain positions, 
and making it impossible for them to be in any 
other positions. 

The apparatus which has been described, though 
a great improvement on anything which had pre- 
ceded it, was still but a clumsy affair, and naturally 



THE SPRING CATCH-ROD, IQI 

the friction of the levers on the locks was so great 
that they soon became worn, and when worn they 
could not be relied upon to move the switch-points 
with the necessary accuracy. The new appliance 
of safety had, therefore, as is often^the case, intro- 
duced a new and very considerable danger of its 
own. The signals and switches, it was true, could 
no longer disagree, but the points themselves were 
sometimes not properly set, or, owing to the great 
exertion required to work it, the interlocking gear 
was strained. This difficulty resulted in the next 
and last improvement, which was a genuine triumph 
of mechanical ingenuity. To insure the proper 
length of stroke being made in moving the lever 
that is to make it certain in each case that the 
switch points were brought into exactly the proper 
position two notches were provided in the slot, 
or quadrant, as it is called, in which the lever 
moved, and, when it was thrown squarely home, 
and not until then, a spring catch caught in one or 
other of these notches. This spring was worked 
by a clasp at the handle of the lever, and the whole 
was called the spring catch-rod. By a singularly in- 
genious contrivance, the process of interlocking was 
transferred from the action of the levers and the 
keys to these spring catch-rods, which were made to 
work upon each other, and thus to become the me- 
dium through which the whole process is effected. 
The result of this improvement was that, as the 
switchman cannot move any lever until the spring- 



I Q2 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

catch rod is fastened, except for a particular move- 
ment, he cannot, do what he will, even begin any 
other movement than that one, as the levers cannot 
be started. On the other hand, it may be said that, 
by means of this improvement, the mere " intention 
of the signal-man to move any lever, expressed by 
his grasping the lever and so raising the spring 
catch-rod, independently of his putting his inten- 
tion in force,- actuates all the necessary locking.* " 

* In regard to the interlocking system as then in use in England, 
Captain Tyler in his report as head of the railway inspecting depart- 
ment of the Board of Trade, used the following language in his re- 
port on the accidents during 1870. " When the apparatus is properly 
constructed and efficiently maintained, the signalman cannot make a 
mistake in the working of his points and signals which shall lead to 
accident or collision, except only by first lowering his signal and 
switching his train forward, then putting up his signal again as it ap- 
proaches, and altering the points as the driver comes up to, or while 
he is passing over them. Such a mistake was actually made in one 
of the cases above quoted. It is, of course, impossible to provide com- 
pletely for cases of this description ; but the locking apparatus, as 
now applied, is already of enormous value in preventing accidents ; 
and it will have a still greater effect on the general safety of railway 
travelling as it becomes more extensively applied on the older lines. 
Without it, a signalman in constantly working points and signals is 
almost certain sooner or later to make a mistake, and to cause an 
accident of a more or less serious character ; and it is inexcusable in 
any railway company to allow its mail or express trains to run at high 
speed through facing points which are not interlocked efficiently with 
the signals, by which alone the engine-drivers in approaching them 
can be guided. There is however, very much yet to be effected in 
different parts of the country in this respect. And it is worth while 
to record here, in illustration of the difficulties that are sometimes 
met with by the inspecting officers, that the Midland Railway Com- 
pany formally protested in June, 1866, against being compelled to 
apply such apparatus before receiving sanction for the opening of 
new lines of railway. They stated that in complying with the re- 
quirements in this respect of the Board of Trade, they ' were act- 
ing in direct opposition to their own convictions, and they must, 
so far as lay in their poiuer, decline the responsibility of the locking 
system?" 



DOES IT WORK? 1 93 

In spite of any theoretical or fanciful objections 
which may be urged against it, this appliance will 
be found an indispensable adjunct to any really 
heavy junction or terminal train movement. For 
the elevated railroads of New York, for instance, its 
early adoption proved a necessity. As for ques- 
tions of temperature, climate, etc., as affecting the 
long connecting rods and wires which are an essen- 
tial part of the system, objections based upon them 
are purely imaginary. Difficulties from this source 
were long since met and overcome by very simple 
compensating arrangements, and in practice occa- 
sion no inconvenience. That rods may break, and 
that wires are at all times liable to get out of gear, 
every one knows ; and yet this fact is urged as a 
novel objection to each new mechanical improve- 
ment. That a broken or disordered apparatus will 
always occasion a serious disturbance to any heavy 
train movement, may also be admitted. The fact 
none the less remains that in practice, and daily 
subjected through long periods of time to incom- 
parably the heaviest train movement known to rail- 
road experience, the rods of the interlocking appa- 
ratus do not break, nor do it's wires get out of 

To still further perfect the appliance a simple mechanism has since 
1870 been attached to the rod actuating the switch-bolt, which pre- 
vents the signal-man from shifting the switch under a passing train 
in the manner suggested by Captain Tyler in the above extract. In 
fact it is no exaggeration to say that the interlocking system has now 
been so studied, and every possible contingency so thoroughly pro- 
vided for, that in using it accidents can only occur through a wilful 
intention to bring them about. 



194 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

gear; while by means of it, and of it alone, this 
train movement goes unceasingly on never knowing 
any serious disturbance.* 

It is not, however, alone in connection with ter- 
minal stations and junctions that the interlocking 
apparatus is of value. . It is also the scientific sub- 
stitute for the law or regulation compelling trains to 
stop as a measure of precaution when they approach 
grade-crossings or draw-bridges. It is difficult in- 
deed to pass from the consideration of this fine re- 
sult of science and to speak with patience of the 
existing American substitute for it. If the former 
is a feature in the block system, the latter is a sig- 
nal example of the block-head system. As a device 
to avoid danger it is a standing disgrace to Amer- 
ican ingenuity ; and, fortunately, as stopping is com- 
patible only with a very light traffic, so soon as 
the passage of trains becomes incessant a substi- 
tute for it has got to be devised. In this country, 

* " As an instance of the possibility of preventing the mistakes so 
often made by signal men with conflicting signals or with facing 
points I have shown the traffic for a single day, and at certain hours 
of that day, at the Cannon Street station of the South Eastern Rail- 
way, already referred to as one of the no-accident lines of the year. 
The traffic of that station, with trains continually crossing one an- 
other, by daylight and in darkness, in fog or in sunshine, amounts to 
more than 130 trains in three hours in the morning, and a similar 
number in the evening ; and, altogether, to 652 trains, conveying 
more than 35,000 passengers in the day as a winter, or 40,000 passen- 
gers a day as a summer average. It is probably not too much to say, 
that without the signal and point arrangements which have there been 
supplied, and the system of interlocking which has there been so care- 
fully carried out, the signalmen could not carry on their duties fo* one 
hour without accident" Captain Tyler's report on accidents for 1870, 
P. 35- 



SWING-BRIDGES AND GRADE-CROSSINGS. IQ5 

as in England, that substitute will be found in 
the interlocking apparatus. By means of it the 
draw-bridge, for instance, can be so connected with 
the danger signals which may, if desired, be gates 
closing across the railroad tracks that the one can- 
not be opened except by closing the other. This 
is the method adopted in Great Britain not only at 
draws in bridges, but frequently also in the case 
of gates at level road crossings. It has already 
been noticed that in Great Britain accidents at 
draws in bridges seem to be unknown. Certainly 
not one has been reported during the last nine 
years. The security afforded in this case by inter- 
locking would, indeed, seem to be absolute ; as, if 
the apparatus is out of order, either the gates or the 
bridge would be closed, and could not be opened 
until it was repaired. So also as respects the grade- 
crossing of one railroad by another. Bringing all 
trains to a complete stop when approaching these 
crossings is a precaution quite generally observed in 
America, either as a matter of statute law or run- 
ning regulation ; and yet during the six years 
1873-8 no less than 104 collisions were reported at 
these crossings. In Great Britain during the nine 
years 1870-8 but nine cases of accidents of this 
description were reported, and in both the years 
1877 and 1878 under the head of "Accidents or 
Collisions on Level Crossings of Railways," the 
chief inspector of the Board of Trade tersely stated 
that, " No accident was inquired into under this 



196 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

head.* " The interlocking system there affords the 
most perfect protection which can be devised 
against a most dangerous practice in railroad con- 
struction to which Americans are almost reckless- 
ly addicted. It is, also, matter of daily eperience 
that the interlocking system does ^afford a per- 
fect practical safeguard in this case. Every junc- 
tion of a branch with a double track road in- 
volves a grade-crossing, and a grade-crossing of 
the most dangerous character. On the Metro- 
politan Elevated railroad of New York, at 53^ 
street, there is one of these junctions, where, all 
day long, trains are crossing at grade at the rate 
of some twenty miles an hour. These trains 
never stop, except when signalled so to do. The 
interlocking apparatus, however, makes it impossi- 
ble that one track should be open except when the 
other is closed. An accident, therefore, can hap- 
pen only through the wilful carelessness of the en- 
gineer in charge of a train ; and in the face of wil- 
ful carelessness laws are of no more avail than sig- 
nals. If a man in control of a locomotive wishes 
to bring on a collision he can always do it. Un- 

* " As affecting the safe working of railways, the level crossing of 
one railway by another is a matter of very serious import. Even 
when signalled on the most approved principles, they are a source of 
danger, and, if possible, should always be avoided. At junctions of 
branch or other railways the practice has been adopted by some com- 
panies in special cases, to carry the off line under or over the main 
line by a bridge. This course should generally be adopted in the 
case of railways on which the traffic is large, and more expressly 
where express and fast trains are run." Report on Accidents on Rail- 
ways of the United Kingdon during 1877, /. 35. 



GIVE SCIENCE A CHANCE t IQ? 

less he wishes to, however, the interlocking appa- 
ratus not only can prevent him from so doing, but as 
a matter of fact always does. The same rule 
which holds good at junctions would hold good at 
level crossings. There is no essential difference be- 
tween the two. By means of the interlocking appa- 
ratus the crossing can be so- blocked at any desired 
distance from it in such a way that when one track 
is open the other must be closed ; unless, indeed, 
the apparatus is out of order, and then both would 
be closed. The precaution in this case, also, is ab- 
solute. Unlike the rule as to stopping, it does not 
depend on the caution or judgment of individuals ; 
there are the signals and the obstructions, and if 
they are not displayed on one road they are on the 
other. So superior is this apparatus in every respect 
as regards safety as well as convenience to the 
precaution of coming to a stop, that, as an induce- 
ment to introduce an almost perfect scientific appli- 
ance, it would be very desirable that states like 
Massachusetts and Connecticut compelling the stop, 
should except from the operation of the law all draw- 
bridges or grade-crossings at which suitable inter- 
locking apparatus is provided. Surely it is not un- 
reasonable that in this case science should have a 
chance to assert itself. 

In any event, however, the general introduction 
of the interlocking apparatus into the American 
railroad system may be regarded as a mere question 
of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So 
long as every road terminating in our larger cities 



198 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stock, 
holders, in independent station buildings far remov- 
ed from business centres, the train movement can 
most economically be conducted as it now is. The 
expense of the interlocking apparatus is avoided by 
the very simple process of incurring the many fold 
heavier expense of several station buildings and vast 
disconnected station grounds. If, however, in the 
city of Boston, for instance, the time should come 
when the financial and engineering audacity of the 
great English companies shall be imitated, when 
some leading railroad company shall fix its central 
passenger station on Tremont street opposite the 
head of Court street, just as in London the South 
Eastern established itself on Cannon street, and then 
this company carrying its road from Pemberton 
Square by a tunnel under Beacon Hill and the State- 
house should at the crossing of the Charles radiate 
out so as to afford all other roads an access for their 
trains to the same terminal point, thus concentrating 
there the whole daily movement of that busy popu- 
lation which makes of Boston its daily counting-room 
and market-place, then, when this is attempted, the 
time will have come for utilizing to its utmost 
capacity every available inch of space to render pos- 
sible the incessant passage of trains. Then also will 
it at last be realized that it is far cheaper to use a 
costly and intricate apparatus which enables two 
companies to be run into one convenient station, 
than it is to build a separate station, even at an in- 
convenient point, to accommodate each company. 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEWER OF 1825. 199 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE. 

IN March, 1825, there appeared in the pages of 
the Quarterly Review an article in which the writer 
discussed that railway system, the first vague an- 
ticipation of which was then just beginning to make 
the world restless. He did this, too, in a very in- 
telligent and progressive spirit, but unfortunately 
secured for his article a permanence of interest he 
little expected by the use of one striking illustra- 
tion. He was peculiarly anxious to draw a distinct 
line of demarcation between his own very rational 
anticipations and the visionary dreams of those en- 
thusiasts who were boring the world to death over 
the impossibilities which they claimed that the new 
invention was to work. Among these he referred to 
the proposition that passengers would be " whirled 
at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour by 
means of a high pressure engine," and then con- 
temptuously added, " We should as soon expect 



200 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be 
fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as 
trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, 
going at such a rate ; their property perhaps they 
may trust." 

Under the circumstances, the criticism was a per- 
fectly reasonable one. The danger involved in 
going at such a rate of speed and the impossi- 
bility of stopping in time to avoid a sudden danger, 
would naturally suggest themselves to any one as 
insuperable objections to the new system for any 
practical use. Some means of preserving a sudden 
and powerful control over a movement of such un- 
heard of rapidity would almost as a matter of course 
be looked upon as a condition precedent. Yet it 
is a most noticeable fact in the history of railroad 
development that the improvement in appliances 
for controlling speed by no means kept pace with 
the increased rate of speed attained. Indeed, so 
far as the possibility of rapid motion is concerned, 
there is no reason to suppose that the Rocket 
could not have held its own very respectably by 
the side of a passenger locomotive of the present 
day. It will be remembered that on the occasion of 
the Manchester & Liverpool opening, Mr. Huskisson 
after receiving his fatal injury was carried seventeen 
miles in twenty-five minutes. Since then the details 
of locomotive construction have been simplified and 
improved upon, but no great change has been or 
probably will be effected in the matter of velocity ; 



SPEED AND CONTROL OVER IT. 2OI 

as respects that the maximum was practically reached 
at once. Yet down to the year 1870 the brake sys- 
tem remained very much what it was in 1830. Im- 
provements in detail were effected, but the essential 
principles were the same. In case of any sudden 
emergency, the men in charge of the locomotive had 
no direct control over the vehicles in the train ; they 
communicated with them by the whistle, and when 
the signal was heard the brakes were applied as soon 
as might be. When a train is moving at the rate 
of forty miles an hour, by no means a great speed 
for it while in full motion, it passes over fifty-eight 
feet each second ; at sixty miles an hour it passes 
over eighty-eight feet. Under these circumstances, 
supposing an engine driver to become suddenly aware 
of an obstruction on the track, as was the case at 
Revere, or of something wrong in the train behind 
him, as at Shipton, he had first himself to signal 
danger, and to this signal the brakemen throughout 
the train had to respond. Each operation required 
time, and every second of time represented many 
feet of space. It was small matter for surprise, 
therefore, that when in 1875 they experimented 
scientifically in England, it was ascertained that a 
train of a locomotive and thirteen cars moving at a 
speed of forty-five miles an hour could not be brought 
to a stand in less than one minute, or before it had 
traversed a distance of half a mile. The same re- 
sult it will be remembered was arrived at by prac- 
tical experience in America, where both at Angola 



202 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

and at Port Jet-vis,* it was found impossible to stop 
the trains in less than half-a-mile, though in each 
case two derailed cars were dragging and plunging 
along at the end of them. 

The need of a continuous train-brake, operated 
from the locomotive and under the immediate con- 
trol of the engine-driver, had been emphasized through 
years by the almost regular recurrence of accidents of 
the most appalling character. In answer to this need 
almost innumerable appliances had been patented and 
experimented with both in Europe and in America. 
Prior to 1869, however, these had been almost ex- 
clusively what are known as emergency brakes ; 
that is, although the trains were equipped with them 
and they were operated from the locomotives, they 
were not relied upon for ordinary use, but were held 
in reserve, as it were, against special exigencies. The 
Hudson River railroad train at the Hamburg acci- 
dent was thus equipped. Practically, appliances 
which in the operation of railroads are reserved for 
emergencies are usually found of little value when 
the emergency occurs. Accordingly no continuous 
brake had, prior to the development of Westing- 
house's invention, worked its way into general use. 
Patent brakes had become a proverb as well as a 
terror among railroad mechanics, and they had.ceased 
to believe that any really desirable thing of the sort 
would ever be perfected. Westinghouse, therefore, 
had a most unbelieving audience to encounter, and 

*Aute, pp. 15, 119. 



A PRETTY TOY! 2O3 

his invention had to fight hard for all the favor it 
won ; nor did his experience with master mechanics 
differ, probably, much from Miller's. His first 
patents were taken out in 1869, and he early se- 
cured the powerful aid of the Pennsylvania road 
for his invention. The Pullman Car Company, 
also, always anxious to avail themselves of every 
appliance of safety as well as of comfort, speedily 
saw the merits of the new brake and adopted it ; 
but, as they merely furnished cars and had nothing 
to do with the locomotives that pulled them, their 
support was not so effective as that of the great 
railroad company. Naturally enough, also, great 
hesitation was felt in adopting so complicated an 
appliance. It added yet another whole apparatus 
to a thing which" was already overburdened with 
machinery. There was, also, something in the deli- 
cacy and precision of the parts of this new contriv- 
ance, in its air-pump and reservoirs and long con- 
necting tubes with their numerous valves, which 
was peculiarly distasteful to the average practical rail- 
road mechanic. It was true that the idea of trans- 
mitting power by means of compressed air was 
by no means new, that thousands of drills were 
being daily driven by it wherever tunnelling was 
going on or miners were at work, yet the ap- 
plication of this familiar power to the wheels of 
a railroad train seemed no less novel than it was 
bold. It was, in the first place, evident that the 
new apparatus would not stand the banging and 



2O4 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

hammering to which the old-fashioned hand-brake 
might safely be subjected ; not indeed without de- 
ranging that simple appliance, but without incur- 
ring any very heavy bill for repairs in so doing. 
Accordingly the new brake was at first carelessly 
examined and patronizingly pushed aside as a 
pretty toy, nice in theory no doubt, but wholly 
unfitted for rough, every-day use. As it was 
tersely expressed during a discussion before the 
Society of Arts in London, as recently as May, 
1877, " It was no use bringing out a brake which 
could not be managed by ordinary officials, which 
was so wonderfully clever that those who had to use 
it could not understand it." A line of argument by 
the way, which, as has been already pointed out, 
may with far greater force be applied to the loco- 
motive itself; and, indeed, unquestionably was so 
applied about half a century ago by men of the same 
calibre who apply it now, to the intense weariness 
and discouragement no doubt of the late George 
Stephenson. Whether sound or otherwise, however, 
few more effective arguments against an appliance 
can be advanced ; and against the Westinghouse 
brake it was advanced so effectively, that even as 
late as 1871, although largely in use on western 
roads, it had found its way into Massachusetts only 
as an ingenious device of doubtful merit. It was in 
August, 1871, that the Revere disaster occurred, 
and the Revere disaster, as has been seen, would 
unquestionably have been averted had the colliding 



HAND-BRAKES vs. TRAIN-BRAKES. 2O$ 

train been provided with proper brake power. This 
at last called serious attention there to the new 
appliance. Even then, however, the mere sug- 
gestion of something better being in existence than 
the venerable hand-brakes in familiar use did not 
pass without a vigorous protest ; and at the meet- 
ing of railroad officials, which has already been 
referred to as having been called by the state com- 
missioners after the accident, one prominent gentle- 
man, when asked if the road under his charge was 
equipped with the most approved brake, indig- 
nantly replied that it was, that it was equipped 
with the good, old-fashioned hand-brake ; and he 
then proceeded to vehemently stake his profes- 
sional reputation on the absolute superiority of that 
ancient but somewhat crude appliance over any- 
thing else of the sort in existence. Nevertheless, on 
this occasion also, the great dynamic force which 
is ever latent in first-class railroad accidents again 
asserted itself. Even the most opinionated of pro- 
fessional railroad men, emphatically as he might 
in public deny it, quietly yielded as soon as might 
be. In a surprisingly short time after the exhi- 
bition of ignorance which has been referred to, the 
railroads in Massachusetts, as it has already been 
shown, were all equipped with train-brakes.* 

In its present improved shape it is safe to say 
that in all those requisites which the highest au- 
thorities known on the subject have laid down as 

*Page 157. 



2O6 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

essential to a model train brake, the Westinghouse 
stands easily first among the many inventions of the 
kind. It is now a much more perfect appliance 
than it was in 1871, for it was then simply atmos- 
pheric and continuous in its action, whereas it has 
since been made automatic and self-regulating. So 
far as its fundamental principle is concerned, that 
is too generally understood to call for explana- 
tion. By means of an air-pump, attached to , the 
boiler of the locomotive and controlled by the en- 
gine-driver, an atmospheric force is brought to bear, 
through tubes running under the cars, upon the 
break blocks, pressing them against the wheels. The 
hand of the engine-driver is in fact on every wheel 
in the train. This application of power, though un- 
questionably ingenious and, like all good things, 
most simple and obvious when once pointed out, 
was originally open to one great objection, which 
was persistently and with great force urged against 
it. The parts of the apparatus were all delicate, and 
some injury or derangement of them was always 
possible, and sometimes inevitable. The chief ad- 
vantage claimed for the brake was, however, that 
complete dependence could be placed upon it in 
the regular movement of trains. It was obvious, 
therefore, that if such dependence was placed upon 
it and any derangement did occur, the first intima- 
tion those in charge of the train would have that 
something was wrong might well come in the shape 
of a failure of the brake to act, and a subsequent 



THE A CCIDEN TAT CO MM UNIPA W FERR K. 2O/ 

disaster. Both in Massachusetts and in Connecti- 
cut, at the crossing of one railroad by another at 
the same level in the former state and in the ap- 
proach to draws in bridges in the latter, a number 
of cases of this failure of the original Westinghouse 
non-automatic brake to act did in point of fact 
occur. Fortunately they, none of them, resulted 
in disaster. This, however, was mere good luck, 
as was illustrated in the case of the accident of 
November n, 1876, at the Communipaw Ferry 
on the New Jersey Central. The train was there 
equipped with the ordinary train brake. It reached 
Jersey City on time shortly after 4 P.M., but, instead 
of slacking up, it ran directly through the station 
and freight offices, carrying away the walls and sup- 
ports, and the locomotive then plunged into the 
river beyond. The baggage and smoking car fol- 
lowed but fortunately lodged on the locomotive, 
thus blocking the remainder of the train. Fortu- 
nately no one was killed, and no passengers were 
seriously injured. 

Again, on the Metropolitan Elevated railroad in 
New York city, on the evening of June 23, 1879, 
one of the trains was delayed for a few moments 
at the Franklin street station. Meanwhile the next 
train came along, and, though the engine-driver of 
this following train saw the danger signals and en- 
deavored to stop in time, he found his brake out of 
order, and a collision ensued resulting in the injury 
of one employe* and the severe shattering of a pas- 



208 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

senger coach and locomotive. It was only a piece 
of good fortune that the first of these accidents did 
not result in a repetition of the Norwalk disaster 
and the second in that of Revere. 

It so chanced that it was the Smith vacuum 
brake which failed to work at Communipaw, and 
the Eames vacuum which failed to work at Franklin 
street. This, however, was wholly immaterial. It 
might just as well have been the original Westing- 
house. The difficulty lay, not in the maker's 
name, but in the imperfect action of the brake; 
and such significant intimations are not to be dis- 
regarded. The chances are naturally large that 
the failure of the continuous brake to act will 
not at once occur under just those circumstances 
which will entail a serious disaster and heavy loss 
of life ; that, however, if such intimations as these 
are disregarded, it will sooner or later so occur does 
not admit of doubt. 

But the possibility that upon some given occasion 
it might fail to work was not the only defect in the 
original Westinghouse ; it might well be in perfect 
order and in full action even, and then suddenly, as 
the result of derailment or separation of parts, the 
apparatus might be broken, and at once the shoes 
would drop from the wheels, and the vehicles of the 
disabled train would either press forward, or, on an 
incline, stop and run backwards until their un- 
checked momentum was exhausted. This appears 
to have been the case at Wollaston, and contri- 



THE TRIPLE VALVE. 2OQ 

buted some of its most disastrous features to that 
accident. 

To obviate these defects Westinghouse in 1872 
invented what he termed a triple valve attachment, 
by means of which, if the thing can be so expressed, 
his brake was made to always stand at danger. 
That is, in case of any derangement of its parts, it 
was automatically applied and the train stopped. 
The action of the brake was thus made to give 
notice of anything wrong anywhere in the train. 
A noticeable case of this occurred on the Midland 
railway in England, w'hen on the November 22, 
1876, as the Scotch express was approaching the 
Heeley station, at a speed of some sixty miles an 
hour, the hind-guard felt the automatic brake sud- 
denly self-applied. The forward truck of a Pullman 
car in the middle of the train had left the rails ; the 
front part of the train broke the couplings and 
went on, while the rear carriages, acted upon by 
the automatic brakes, came to a stand immediately 
behind the Pullman, which finally rested on its side 
across the opposite track. There was no loss of 
life. On the other hand, as the Scotch express on 
the North Eastern road was approaching Morpeth, 
on March 25, 1877, at a speed of some twenty-five 
miles an hour, the locomotive for some reason left 
the track. The train was not equipped with an 
automatic brake, and the carriages in it accordingly 
pressed forward upon each other until three of 
them were so utterly destroyed as to be indis- 



2IO RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

tinguishable. Five passengers lost their lives ; the 
remains of one of whom, together with the wheels 
of a carriage, were afterwards taken out from the 
tank of the tender, into which they had been driven 
by the force of the shock. 

The theoretical objection to the automatic brake 
is obvious. In case of any derangement of its ma- 
chinery it applies itself, and, shquld these derange- 
ments be of frequent occurrence, the consequent 
stoppage of trains would prove a great annoyance, 
if not a source of serious danger. This objection 
is not sustained by practical experience. The 
triple valve, so called, is the only complicated por- 
tion of the automatic brake, and this valve is well 
protected and not liable to get out of order.* 
Should it become deranged it will stop the work- 
ing of the brake on that car alone to which it be- 
longs ; and it will become deranged so as to set the 
brake only from causes which would render the non- 
automatic brake inoperative. When anything of this 

* Speaking of the modifications introduced into his brake by West- 
inghouse since 1874, Mr. Thomas E. Harrison, civil engineer of the 
North Eastern Railway Company in a communication to the directors 
of that company of April 24, 1879, recommending the adoption by it 
of the Westinghouse, and subsequently ordered to be printed for 
the use of Parliament, thus referred to the triple valve : " As the 
most important [of these modifications] I will particularly draw your 
attention to the " triple-valve" which has been made a regular bug- 
bear by the opponents of the system, and has been called complicated, 
delicate, and liable to get out of order, etc. * * * It is, in fact, 
as simple a piece of mechanism as well can be imagined, certain in 
its action, of durable materials, easily accessible to an ordinary work- 
man for examination or cleaning, and there is nothing about it that 
can justify the term complication ; on the contrary, it is a model of 
ingenuity and simplicity." 



"A REGULAR BUG-JBEAK." 211 



sort occurs, it stops the train until the defect is 
remedied. The returns made to the English Board 
of Trade enable us to know just how frequently in 
actual and regular service these stoppages occur, 
and what they- amount to. Take, for instance, the 
North Eastern and the Caledonian railways. Both 
use the automatic brake. During the last six 
months of 1878 the first ran 138,000 train miles with 
it, in the course of which there were eight delays 
or stoppages of some three to five minutes each 
occasioned by the action of the triple-valve ; being 
in round numbers one occasion of delay in 17,000 
miles of train movement. On the Caledonian rail- 
way, during the same period, four brake failures, 
due to the action of the triple-valve, were reported 
in runs aggregating over 62,000 miles, being about 
one failure to 15,000 miles. These failures more- 
over occasioned delays of only a few minutes each, 
and, where the cause of the difficulty was not 
so immediately apparent that it could at once 
be remedied, the brake-tubes of the vehicle on 
which the difficulty occurred were disconnected, 
and the trains went on.* One of these stop- 

* During the six months ending June 30, 1879, some 300 stops due 
to some derangement of the apparatus of the Westinghouse brake 
were reported by ten companies in runs aggregating about two million 
miles. Being one stop to 6,600 miles run. Very many of these 
stops were obviously due to the want of familiarity of the employes 
with an apparatus new to them, but as a rule the delays occasioned 
did not exceed a very few minutes ; of 82 stoppages, for instance, re- 
ported on the London, Brighton & South Coast road, the two longest 
were ten minutes each and the remainder averaged some three or four 
minutes. 



2 1 2 RAILROAD 

pages, however, resulted in a serious accident. As 
a train on the Caledonian road was approaching 
the Wemyss Bay junction on December I4th, 
in a dense fog, the engine driver, seeing the sig- 
nals at danger, undertook to apply his brake 
slightly, when it went full on, stopping the train 
between the distant and home signals, as they 
are called in the English block system. After the 
danger signal was lowered, but before the brake 
could be released, the signal-man allowed a follow- 
ing train to enter upon the same block section, and 
a collision followed in which some thirteen pas- 
sengers were slightly injured. This accident, how- 
ever, as the inspecting officer of the Board of Trade 
very properly found, was due not at all to the auto- 
matic brake, but to " carelessness on the part of the 
signal-man, who disregarded the rules for the work- 
ing of the block telegraph instruments," and to the 
driver of the colliding train, who " disobeyed the 
company's running regulations." It gives an Ameri- 
can, however, a realizing sense of one of the difficul- 
ties under which those crowded British lines are 
operated, to read that in this case the fog was " so 
thick that the tail-lamp was not visible from an ap- 
proaching train for more than a few yards." 

After the application of the triple valve had made 
it automatic, there remained but one further im- 
provement necessary to render the Westinghouse a 
well-nigh perfect brake. A superabundance of self- 
acting power had been secured, but no provision was 



THE MAXIMUM OF RE TARDING PO WER. 2 1 3 

yet made for graduating the use of that power so 
that it should be applied in the exact degree, neither 
more nor less, which would soonest stop the train. 
This for two reasons is mechanically a matter of no 
little importance. As is well known a too severe 
application of brakes, no matter of what kind they 
are, causes the wheels to stand still and slide upon 
the rails. This is not only very injurious to rolling 
stock, the wheels of which are flattened at the points 
which slide, but, as has long been practically well- 
known to those whose business it is to run locomo- 
tives, when once the wheels begin to slide the retard- 
ing power of the brakes is seriously diminished. In 
order, therefore, to secure the maximum of retarding 
power, the pressure of the brake-blocks on the revolv- 
ing wheels should be very great when first applied, 
and just sufficient not to slide them ; and should 
then be diminished, part passu with the momen- 
tum of the train, until it wholly stops. Familiar as 
all this has long been to engine-drivers and practical 
railroad mechanics, yet it has not been conceded in 
the results of many scientific inquiries. In the re- 
port of one of the Royal Commissions on Acci- 
dents, for instance, it was asserted that the mo- 
mentum of a train was retarded more by the ac- 
tion of sliding than of slowly revolving wheels ; 
and again, as recently as in May, 1877, in a 
scientific discussion in London at one of the meet- 
ings of the Society of Arts, a gentleman, with 
the letters C. E. appended to his name, ventured 



214 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the surprising assertion that "no brake could do 
more than skid the wheels of a train, and all 
continuous brakes professed to do this, and he 
believed did so about equally well." Now, what it 
is here asserted no brake can do is exactly what the 
perfect brake will be made to do, and what West- 
inghouse's latest improvement, it is claimed, enables 
his brake to do. It much more than " skids the 
wheels," by measuring out exactly that degree of 
power necessary to hold the wheels just short of 
the skidding point, and in this way always exerts 
the maximum retarding force. This is brought 
about by means of a contrivance which allows the 
air to leak out of the brake cylinders so as to ex- 
actly proportion the pressure of the blocks on the 
wheels to the speed with which the latter are re- 
volving. In other, and more scientific, language 
the force with which the brake-blocks are pressed 
upon the wheels is made to adjust itself auto- 
matically as the " coefficient of dynamic friction 
augments with the reduction of train speed." It 
hardly needs to be said that in this way the power 
of the brake is enormously increased. 

In America the superiority of the Westinghouse 
over any other description of train-brake has long 
been established through that large preponderance 
of use which in such matters constitutes the final 
and irreversible verdict.* In Europe, however, and 

* In Massachusetts, for instance, where no official pressure in favor 
of any particular brake was brought to bear, out of 473 locomotives 



THE BA TTLE OF THE BRAKES. 2 1 5 

especially in Great Britain, ever since the Shipton- 
on-Cherwell accident in 1874, the battle of the 
brakes, as it may not inappropriately be called, has 
waxed hotter and hotter; and not only has this 
battle been extremely interesting in a scientific way, 
but it has been highly characteristic, and at times 
enlivened by touches of human nature which were 
exceedingly amusing. 

equipped with train-brakes 361 have the Westinghouse, which is also 
applied to 1,363 out of 1,669 cars - Qf these, however, 79 locomotives 
and 358 cars are equipped with both the atmospheric and the vacuum 
brakes. 



2l6 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE BATTLE OF THE BRAKES. 

THE English battle of the brakes may be said 
to have fairly opened with the official report from 
Captain Tyler on the Shipton accident, in refer- 
ence to which he expressed the opinion, which has 
already been quoted in describing the accident, 
that " if the train had been fitted with continuous 
brakes throughout its whole length there is no 
reason why it should not have been brought 
to rest without any casuality." The Royal Com- 
mission on railroad accidents then took the mat- 
ter up and called for a series of scientifically con- 
ducted experiments. These took place under the 
supervision of two engineers appointed by the 
Commission, who were aided by a detail of officers 
and men from the royal engineers. Eight brakes 
competed, and a train, consisting of a locomotive 
and thirteen cars, was specially prepared for each. 
With these trains some seventy runs were made, and 



THE NEWARK BRAKE TRIALS. 2 1/ 

their results recorded and tabulated ; the experi- 
ments were continued through six consecutive work- 
ing days. Of the brakes experimented with three 
were American in their origin, Westinghouse's au- 
tomatic and vacuum, and Smith's vacuum. The re- 
mainder were English, and were steam, hydraulic, 
and air brakes ; among them also was one simple 
emergency brake. The result of the trials was a 
very decided victory for the Westinghouse auto- 
matic, and upon its performances the Commission 
based its conclusion that trains ought to be so 
equipped that in cases of emergency they could be 
brought to rest, when travelling on level ground at 
50 miles an hour, within a distance of 275 yards ; 
with an allowance of distance in cases of speed 
greater or less than 50 miles nearly proportioned 
to its square. These allowances they tabulated as 
follows : 

At 60 miles per hour, stopping distance within 400 yards. 
" 55 " " " 340 " 

" 5o " " 275 " 

" 45 22 " 

" 40 " " " 1 80 " 

" 35 " " " 135 " 

" 30 100 " 

To appreciate the enormous advance in what may 
be called stopping power which these experiments 
revealed, it should be added that the first series of 
experiments made at Newark were with trains 
equipped only with the hand-brake. The average 



2I& RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

speed in these experiments was 47 miles, and with 
the train-brake, according to the foregoing tabula- 
tion, the stop should have been made in about 250 
yards ; in reality it was made in a little less than 
five times that distance, or 1120 yards; in other 
words the experiments showed that the improved 
appliances had more than quadrupled the control 
over trains. It has already been noticed that in 
the cases of the Angola and the Port Jervis disas- 
ters, as well as in that at Shipton, the trains ran 
some 2,700 feet before they could be stopped. Un- 
der the English tabulations above given, in the re- 
sults of which certain recent improvements do not 
enter, a train runnin,g into the 42d Street Station 
in New York, at a speed of forty-five miles an hour 
when under the entrance arches, would be stopped 
before it reached the buffers at the end of the 
covered tracks. 

The Royal Commission experiments were follow- 
ed in May and June, 1877, by yet others set on 
foot by the North Eastern Railway Company for the 
purpose of making a competitive test of the West- 
inghouse automatic and the Smith's vacuum brakes. 
At this trial also the average stop at a speed of 50 
miles an hour was effected in 15 seconds, and within 
a distance of 650 feet. Other series of experiments 
with similar results were, about the same time, con- 
ducted under the auspices of the Belgian and Ger- 
man governments, of which elaborate official reports 
were made. The result was that at last, under date 



THE PERFECT TRAIN-BRAKE. 2ig 

of August 30, 1877, the Board of Trade issued a 
circular to the railway companies in which it called 
attention to the fact that, notwithstanding all the 
discussion which had taken place and the elaborate 
official trials which the government had set qp foot, 
there had " apparently been no attempt on tffe part 
of the various companies to take the first step of 
agreeing upon what are the requirements which, in 
their opinion, are essential to a good continuous 
brake." In other words, the Board found that, in- 
stead of becoming better, matters were rapidly be- 
coming worse. Each company was equipping its 
rolling stock with that appliance in which its officers 
happened to be interested as owners or inventors, 
and when carriages thus equipped passed from the 
tracks of one road onto those of another the result 
was a return to the old hand-brake system in a con- 
dition of impaired efficiency. The Board accord- 
ingly now proceeded to narrow down the field of se- 
lection by specifying the following as what it con- 
sidered the essentials of a good continuous brake : 

a. " The brakes to be efficient in stopping trains, in- 
stantaneous in their actions, and capable of being applied 
without difficulty by engine-drivers or guards. 

b. " In case of accident, to be instantaneously self- 
acting. 

c. " The brakes to be put on and taken off (with facil- 
ity) on the engine and on every vehicle of a train. 

d. " The brakes to be regularly used in daily working. 

e. " The materials employed to be of a durable char- 
acter, so as to be easily maintained and kept in order." 



220 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

These requirements pointed about as directly as 
they could to the Westinghouse, to the exclusion of 
all competing brakes. Not more than one other com- 
plied with them in all respects, and many made no 
pretence of complying at all. Then followed what 
may be termed the battle royal of the brakes, which 
as yet shows no signs of drawing to a close. As the 
avowed object of the Board of Trade was to intro- 
duce, one brake, to the necessary exclusion of all 
others, throughout the railroad system of Great 
Britain, the magnitude of the prize was not easy 
to over-estimate. The weight of scientific and 
official authority was decidedly in favor of the West- 
inghouse automatic, but among the railroad men 
the Smith vacuum found the largest number of ad- 
herents. It failed to meet three of the requirements 
of the Board of Trade, in that it was neither auto- 
matic nor instantaneous in its action, while the ma- 
terials employed in it were not of a durable char- 
acter. It was, on the other hand, a brake of un- 
questioned excellence, while it commended itself 
to the judgment of the average railroad official by 
its simplicity, and to that of the average railroad 
director by its apparent cheapness. Any one could 
understand it, and its first cost was temptingly 
small. The real struggle in Great Britain, therefore, 
has been, and now is, between these two brakes ; and 
the fact that both of them are American has been 
made to enter largely into it, and in a way also 
which at times lent to the discussion an element of 
broad humor. 



THE BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST. 221 

For instance, the energetic agent of the Smith 
vacuum, feeling himself aggrieved by some state- 
ment which appeared in the Times, responded there- 
to in a circular, in the composition of which he cer- 
tainly evinced more zeal than either judgment or 
literary skill. This circular and its author were then 
referred to by the editors of Engineering, a London 
scientific journal, in the following slightly de haut 
en bas style : 

" It is not a little remarkable, and it is a fact not har- 
monious with the feelings of English engineers, that the 
two brakes recommending themselves for adoption are of 
American origin. * * * Now we cannot wonder, 
considering what our past experience has been in many 
of our dealings with Americans, that this feeling of dis- 
trust and prejudice exists. It is not merely sentimental, 
it is founded on many and untoward and costly experi- 
ences of the past, and the fear of similar experiences in 
the future. And when we see the representative of one 
of these systems adopting the traditional policy of his 
country, and meeting criticism with abuse abuse of men 
pre-eminent in the profession, and journals which he ap- 
parently forgets are neither American nor venal we do 
not wonder that our railway engineers feel a repugnance 
to commit themselves." 

The superiority of the British over the American 
controversialist, as respects courtesy and restraint 
in language, being thus satisfactorily established, it 
only remained to illustrate it. This, however, had 
already been done in the previous May ; for at that 
time it chanced that Captain Tyler, having retired 
from his position at the head of the railway inspec- 



222 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

tors department of the Board of Trade, was consid- 
ering an offer which Mr. Westinghouse had made 
him to associate himself with the company owning 
the brakes known by that name. Before accepting 
this offer, Captain Tyler took advantage of a meet- 
ing of the Society of Arts to publicly give notice 
that he was considering it. This he did in a really 
admirable paper on the whole subject of continuous 
brakes, at the close of which a general discussion 
was invited and took place, and in the course of it 
the innate superiority of the British over any other 
kind of controversialist, so far at least as courtesy 
and a delicate, refraining from imputations is con- 
cerned, received pointed illustration. 

No sooner had Captain Tyler finished than Mr. 
Houghton, C. E., took occasion to refer to the 
paper he had read as " an elaborate puff to the 
Westinghouse brake, with which he [Tyler] was, as 
he told, connected, or about to be." Subsequently 
Mr. Steele proceeded to say that: 

" On receiving the invitation to be present at the 
meeting, he had been somewhat afraid that Captain 
Tyler was going to lose his fine character for impartiality 
by throwing in his lot with the brake-tinkers, but it came 
out that not only was he going to do that, but actually 
going to be a partner in a concern. * * * The 
speaker then proceeded to discuss the Westinghouse 
brake, which he called the Westinghouse and Tyler 
brake, designating it as a jack-in-the-box, a rattle trap, 
to please and decoy, and not an invencion at all. No 
engineer had a hand in its manufacture. It was the dis- 
covery of some Philadelphia barber or some such thing. 



"A BATTLE-TRAP." 22$ 

He had spoken of honest brakes. This was a brake 
which had all sorts of pretensions. It had not worked 
well, but whenever there was any row about its not work- 
ing well, they got the papers to praise it up, and that was 
how the papers were under the thumb, and would not 
speak of any other. * * * He thought it would not 
do for railway companies to take a bad brake, and Cap- 
tain Tyler and Mr. Westinghouse be able to make their 
fortunes by floating a limited company for its introduc- 
tion. They had heard of Emma mines and Lisbon 
tramways, and such like, and he felt it would not be well 
to stand by and allow this to be done." 

All of which was not only to the point, but finely 
calculated to show the American inventors and 
agents who were present the nice and mutually 
respectful manner in which such discussions were 
carried on by all Englishmen. 

Though the avowed adhesion of Sir Henry Tyler 
to the Westinghouse was a most important move 
in the war of the brakes, it did not prove a decisive 
one. The complete control of the field was too 
valuable a property to be yielded in deference to 
that, or any other name without a struggle ; and, so to 
speak, there were altogether too many irrs and outs 
to the conflict. Back door influences had every- 
where to be encountered. The North Western, for 
instance, is the most important of the railway com- 
panies of the United Kingdom. The locomotive 
superintendent of that company was the part in- 
ventor and proprietor of an emergency brake which 
had been extensively adopted by it on its rolling 
stock, but which wholly failed to meet the re- 



224 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

quiremenfs laid down in its circular by the Board 
of Trade. Immediately after issuing that circular 
the Board of Trade called the attention of the 
company to this fact in connection with an ac- 
cident which had recently occurred, and in very 
emphatic language pointed out that the brakes in 
question could not " in any reasonable sense of 
the word be called continuous brakes," and that it 
was clear that the circular requirements were " not 
complied with by the brake-system of the Lon- 
don & North Western Railway Company ;" in case 
that company persisted in the use of that brake, 
the secretary of the Board wen! on to say, " in the 
event of a casualty occurring, which an efficient 
system of brakes might have prevented, a heavy 
personal responsibility will rest upon those who are 
answerable for such neglect." This was certainly 
language tolerably direct in its import. As such it 
was calculated to cause those to whom it was ad- 
dressed to pause in their action. The company, 
however, treated it with a superb disregard, all the 
more contemptuous because veiled in language of 
deferential civility. They then quietly went on ap- 
plying their locomotive superintendent's emergency 
brake to their equipment, until on the 3Oth of June, 
1879, they returned no less than 2,052 carriages 
fitted with it ; that being by far the largest number 
* returned by any one company in the United King- 
dom. 

A more direct challenge to the Board of Trade 



A DIRECT CHALLENGE. 22$ 

and to Parliament could not easily have been de- 
vised. To appreciate how direct it was, it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind that in its circular of Au- 
gust 30, 1877, in which the requirements of a satis- 
factory train-brake were laid down, the Board of 
Trade threw out to the companies the very signifi- 
cent hint, that they " would do well to reflect that 
if a doubt should arise that from a conflict of inter- 
est or opinion, or from any other cause, they [the 
companies] are not exerting themselves, it is obvious 
that they will call down upon themselves an inter- 
ference which the Board of Trade, no less than the 
companies, desire to avoid." In his general report 
on the accidents of the year 1877, the successor of 
Captain Tyler expressed the opinion that " suffici- 
ent information and experience would now appear 
to be available, and the time is approaching when 
the railway companies may fairly be expected to 
come to a decision as to which of the systems of 
continuous brakes is best calculated to fulfil the 
requisite conditions, and is most worthy of general 
adoption." At the close of another year, however, 
the official returns seemed to indicate that, while 
but a sixth part of the passenger locomotives and a 
fifth part of the carriages in use on' the railroads of 
the United Kingdom were yet equipped with con- 
tinuous brakes at all, a concurrence of opinion in 
favor of any one system was more remote than 
ever. During the six months ending December 
31, 1878, but 127 additional locomotives out of 



226 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

about 4000, and 1,200 additional carriages out of 
some 32,000 were equipped; of which 70 locomo- 
tives and 530 carriages had been equipped with 
the Smith vacuum, which in three most important 
respects failed to comply with the Board of Trade 
requirements. Under these circumstances the Board 
of Trade was obviously called upon either to with- 
draw from the position it had taken, or to invite 
that " interference '* in its support to which in its 
circular of August, 1877 it had so portentously re- 
ferred. It decided to do the latter, and in March, 
1879 * ne government gave an intimation in the 
House of Lords that early Parliamentary action 
was contemplated. As it is expressed, the rail- 
way companies are to " be relieved of their inde- 
cision." 

In Great Britian, therefore, the long battle of the 
brakes would seem to be drawing to its close. The 
final struggle, however, will be a spirited one, and 
one which Americans will watch with considerable 
interest, for it is in fact a struggle between two 
American brakes, the Westinghouse and the Smith 
vacuum. Of the 907 locomotives hitherto equip- 
ped with the continuous brakes no less than 819 are 
equipped with one or the other of these American 
patents, besides over 4,464 of the 9,919 passenger 
carriages. The remaining 3,857 locomotives and 
30,000 carriages are the prize of victory. As the 
score now stands the vacuum brake is in almost ex- 
actly twice the use of its more scientific rival. 



THE BA LANCE OF AD VANTA GS. 227 

The weight of authority and -experience, and the 
requirements of the Board of Trade, are, however, 
on the opposite side. 

As deduced from the European scientific tests and 
the official returns, the balance of advantages would 
seem to be as follows : In favor of the vacuum 
are its superficial simplicity, and possible economy 
in first cost : In favor of the Westinghouse auto- 
matic are its superior quickness in application, .tjie 
greater rapidity in its stopping power, the m0re 
durable nature of its materials, the smaller cost in 
renewal, its less liability to derangement, and above 
all its self-acting adjustment. The last is the point 
upon which the final issue of the struggle must 
probably turn. The use of any train-brake which 
is not automatic in its action, as has already been 
pointed out, involves in the long run disaster, and 
ultimate serious disaster. The mere fact that the 
brake is generally so reliable, that ninety-nine 
times out of the hundred it works perfectly, sim- 
ply makes disaster certain by the fatal confidence it 
inspires. Ninety-nine times in a hundred the brake 
proves reliable ; nine times in the remaining ten of 
the thousand, in which it fails, a lucky chance averts 
disaster ; but the thousandth time will assuredly 
come, as it did at Communipaw and on the New 
York Elevated railway, and, much the worst of all 
yet, at Wollaston. Soon or late the use of non- 
automatic continuous brakes will most assuredly, if 
they are not sooner abandoned, be put an end to 



228 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

by the occurrence of some not-to-be forgotten cat- 
astrophe of the first magnitude, distinctly traceable 
to that cause. Meanwhile that automatic brakes 
are complicated and sometimes cause inconvenience 
in their operation is most indisputable. This is an 
objection, also, to which they are open in common 
with most of the riper results of human ingenuity ; 
but, though sun-dials are charmingly simple, we 
do not, therefore, discard chronometers in their 
favor ; neither do we insist on cutting our harvests 
with the scythe, because every man who may be 
called upon to drive a mowing machine may not 
know how to put one together. But what Sir 
Henry Tyler has said in respect to this oldest and 
most fallacious, as well as most wearisome, of ob- 
jections covers the whole ground and cannot, be 
improved upon. After referring to the fact that 
simplicity in construction and simplicity in working 
were two different things, and that, almost invari- 
ably, a certain degree of complication in construc- 
tion is necessary to secure simplicity in working, 
after pointing this out he went on to add that, 

" Simplicity as regards the application of railway brakes 
is not obtained by the system now more commonly 
employed of brake-handles to be turned by different men 
in different parts of the train ; but is obtained when, by 
more complicated construction an engine-driver is able 
easily in an instant to apply ample brake-power at pleas- 
ure with more or less force to every wheel of his train ; 
is obtained when, every time an engine-driver starts, or 
attempts to start his train, the brake itself informs him if 



TRUE SIMPLICITY DEFINED. 

it is out of order ; and is still more obtained when, on 
the occasion of an accident and the separation of a 
coupling, the brakes will unfailingly apply themselves on 
every wheel of the train without the action of the engine- 
driver or guards, [brakemen], and before even they have 
time to realize the necessity for it. This is true sim- 
plicity in such a case, and that system of continuous 
brakes which best accomplishes such results in the short- 
est space of time is so far preferable to all others." 



230 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE RAILROAD JOURNEY RESULTING IN DEATH. 

ONE day in May, 1847, as the Queen of Belgium 
was going from Verviers to Brussels by rail, the 
train in which she was journeying came into col- 
lision with another train going in the opposite 
direction. There was naturally something of a 
panic, and, as royalty was not then accustomed to 
being knocked about with railroad equality, some of 
her suite urged the queen to leave the train and to 
finish her journey by carnage. The contempor- 
aneous court reporter then went on to say, in that 
language which is so peculiarly his own, " But her 
Majesty, as courageously as discreetly, declined to 
set that example of timidity, and she proceeded to 
Brussels by the railway." In those days a very ex- 
aggerated idea was universally entertained of the 
great danger incident to travel by rail. Even then, 
however, had her Majesty, who was doubtless a very 
sensible woman, happened to be familiar with the 



THE DA YS OF STAGE COACHES. 2$l 

statistics of injuries received by those traveling res- 
pectively by rail and by carnage, she certainly never 
on any plea of danger would have been induced to 
abandon her railroad train in order to trust herself 
behind horse-flesh. By pursuing the course urged 
upon her, the queen would have multiplied her 
chances of accident some sixty fold. Strange as the 
statement sounds even now, such would seem to 
have been the fact. In proportion to the whole 
number carried, the accidents to passengers in " the 
good old days of stage-coaches " were, as compared 
to the present time of the railroad dispensation, 
about as sixty to one. This result, it is true, cannot 
be verified in the experience either of England or 
of this country, for neither the English nor we pos- 
sess any statistics in relation to the earlier period ; 
but they have such statistics in France, stretching 
over the space of more than forty years, and as re- 
liable as statistics ever are. If these French statis- 
tics hold true in New England, and considering the 
character of our roads, conveyances, and climate, 
their showing is more likely to be in our favor than 
against us, if they simply hold true, leaving us to 
assume that stage-coach traveling was no less safe 
in Massachusetts than in France, then it would fol- 
low that to make the dangers of the rail of the pres- 
ent day equal to those of the highway of half a 
century back, some eighty passengers should annu- 
ally be killed and some eleven hundred injured 
within the limits of Massachusetts alone. These 



232 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

figures, however, represent rather more than fifty 
times the actual average, and from them it would 
seem to be not unfair to conclude that, notwith- 
standing the great increase of population and the 
yet greater increase in travel during the last half- 
century, there were literally more persons killed and 
injured each year in Massachusetts fifty years ago 
through accidents to stage-coaches than there are 
now through accidents to railroad trains. 

The first impression of nine out of ten persons in 
no way connected with the operations of railroads 
would probably be found to be the exact opposite 
to this. A vague but deeply rooted conviction com- 
monly prevails that the railroad has created a new 
danger; that because of it the average human 
being's hold on life is more precarious than it was. 
The first point-blank, bald statement to the contrary 
would accordingly strike people in the light not only 
of a paradox, but of a somewhat foolish one. In- 
vestigation, nevertheless, bears it out. The fact is 
that when a railroad accident comes, it is apt to 
come in such a way as to leave no doubt whatever 
in relation to it. It is heralded like a battle or an 
earthquake ; it fills columns of the daily press with 
the largest capitals and the most harrowing details, 
and thus it makes a deep and lasting impression on 
the minds of many people. When a multitude of 
persons, traveling as almost every man now daily 
travels himself, meet death in such sudden and such 
awful shape, the event smites the imagination. Peo- 



ACCIDENTS THEN AND NOW. 233 

pie seeing it and thinking of it, and hearing and 
reading of it, and of it only, forget of how infrequent 
occurrence it is. It was not so in the olden time. 
Every one rode behind horses, if not in public then 
in private conveyances, and when disaster came it 
involved but few persons and was rarely accompanied 
by circumstances which either struck the imagina- 
tion or attracted any great public notice. In the 
first place, the modern newspaper, with its perfect 
machinery for sensational exaggeration, did not then 
exist, having itself only recently come in the train 
of the locomotive ; and, in the next place, the circle 
of those included in the consequences of any disas- 
ter was necessarily small. It is far otherwise now. 
For weeks and months the vast machinery moves 
along, doing its work quickly, swiftly, safely ; no one 
pays any attention to it, while millions daily make 
use of it. It is as much a necessity of their lives as 
the food they eat and the air they breathe. Sud- 
denly, somehow, and somewhere, at Versailles, at 
Norwalk, at Abergele, at New Hamburg, or at Re- 
vere, at some hitherto unfamiliar point upon an in- 
significant thread of the intricate iron web, an ob- 
struction is encountered, a jar, as it were, is felt, and 
instantly, with time for hardly an ejaculation or a 
thought, a multitude of human beings are hurled 
into eternity. It is no cause for surprise that such 
an event makes the community in which it happens 
catch its breadth ; neither is it unnatural that people 
should think more of the few who are killed, of 



234 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

whom they hear so much, than of the myriads who 
are carried in safety and of whom they hear nothing. 
Yet it is well to bear in mind that there are two sides 
to that question also, and in no way could this fact 
be more forcibly brought to our notice than by the 
assertion, borne out by all the statistics we possess, 
that, irrespective of the vast increase in the number 
of those who travel, a greater number of passengers 
in stage-coaches were formerly each year killed or 
injured by accidents to which they in no way con- 
tributed through their own carelessness, than are 
now killed under the same conditions in our railroad 
cars. In other words, the introduction of the mod- 
ern railroad, so far from proportionately increasing 
the dangers of traveling, has absolutely diminished 
them. It is not, after all, the dangers but the safety 
of the modern railroad which should excite our 
special wonder. 

What is the average length of the railroad jour- 
ney resulting in death by accident to a prudent 
traveler ? What is the average length of one re- 
sulting in some personal injury to him ? These are 
two questions which interest every one. Few per- 
sons, probably, start upon any considerable journey, 
implying days and nights en the rail, without al- 
most unconsciously taking into some consideration 
the risks of accident. Visions of collision, derail- 
ment, plunging through bridges, will rise unbidden. 
Even the old traveler who has enjoyed a long im- 
munity is apt at times, with some little apprehen- 



AFFECT A TION IN STA TISTICS. 235 

sion, to call to mind the musty adage of the pitcher 
and the well, and to ask himself how much longer 
it will be safe for him to rely on his good luck. A 
hundred thousand miles, perhaps, and no accident 
yet ! Surely, on every doctrine of chances, he now 
owes to fate an arm or a leg ; perhaps a life. 
The statistics of a long series of years enable us, 
however, to approximate with a tolerable degree of 
precision to an answer to these questions, and the 
answer is simply astounding; so astounding, in 
fact, that, before undertaking to give it, the ques- 
tion itself ought to be stated with all possible 
precision. It is this; Taking all persons who as 
passengers travel by rail, and this includes all 
dwellers in civilized countries, what number of 
journeys of the average length are safely accom- 
plished, to each one which results in the death 
or injury of a passenger from some cause over 
which he had no control ? The cases of death or 
injury must be confined to passengers, and to those 
of them only who expose themselves to no un- 
necessary risk. 

When approaching a question of this sort, statis- 
ticians are apt to assume for their answers an ap- 
pearance of mathematical accuracy. It is needless 
to say that this is a mere affectation. The best re- 
sults which can be arrived at are, after all, mere 
approximations, and they also vary greatly year by 
year. The body of facts from which conclusions are 
to be deduced must cover not only a definite area 



236 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

of space, but also a considerable lapse of time. 
Even Great Britain, with its 17,000 miles of track 
and its hundreds of millions of annual passenger 
journeys, shows results which, one year with another, 
vary strangely. For instance, during the four years 
anterior to 1874, but one passenger was killed, 
upon an average, to each 11,000,000 carried; while 
in 1874 the proportion, under the influence of a 
succession of disasters, suddenly doubled, rising to 
one in every 5,500,000; and then again in 1877, a 
year of peculiar exemption, it fell off to one in every 
50,000,000. The percentage of fatal casualties to 
the whole number carried was in 1847-9 ^ ve fold 
what it was in 1878. If such fluctuations reveal 
themselves in the statistics of Great Britain, those 
met with in the narrower field of a single state in 
this country might well seem at first glance to set 
all computation at defiance. During the ten years, 
for example, between 1861 and 1870, about 
200,000,000 passengers were returned as carried on 
the Massachusetts roads, with 135 cases of injury to 
individuals. Then came the year of the Revere 
disaster, and out of 26,000,000 carried, no less than 
115 were killed or injured. Seven years of compar- 
ative immunity then ensued, during which, out of 
240,000,000 carried, but two were killed and forty-five 
injured. In other words, through a period of ten 
years the casualties were approximately as one to 
1,500,000; then during a single year they, rose to 
.one in 250,000, or a seven-fold increase; and then 



THE A T ORMAL AVERAGE. 

through a period of seven years they diminished to 
one in 3,400,000, a decrease of about ninety per 
cent. 

Taking, however, the very worst of years, the 
year of the Revere disaster, which stands unparal- 
leled in the history of Massachusetts, it will yet 
be found that the answer to the question as to 
the length of the average railroad journey result- 
ing in death or in injury will be expressed, not in 
thousands nor in hundreds of thousands of miles, 
but in millions. During that year some 26,000,000 
passenger journeys were made within the limits of 
the state, and each journey averaged a distance of 
about 13 miles. It would seem, therefore, that, 
even in that year, the average journey resulting in 
death was 11,000,000 miles, while that resulting 
either in death or personal injury was not less 
than 3,300,000. 

The year 1871, however, represented by no 
means a fair average. On the contrary, it indi- 
cated what may fairly be considered an excessive 
degree of danger, exciting nervous apprehensions 
in the breasts of those even who were not consti- 
tutionally timid. To reach what may be consider- 
ed a normal average, therefore, it would be more 
proper to include a longer period in the computa- 
tion. Take, for instance, the nine years, 1871-79, 
during which alone has any effort been made to 
reach statistical accuracy in respect to Massachusetts 
railroad accidents. During those nine years, speak- 



238 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

ing in round numbers and making no pretence 
at anything beyond a general approximation, some 
303,000,000 passenger journeys of 13 miles each 
have been made on the railroads and within the 
state. Of these 51 have resulted in death and 308 
in injuries to persons from causes over which they 
had no control. The average distance, therefore, 
traveled by all, before death happened to any 
one, was about 80,000,000 miles, and that travelled 
before any one was either injured or killed was 
about 10,800,000. 

The Revere disaster of 1871, however, as has 
been seen, brought about important changes in the 
methods of operating the railroads of Massachu- 
setts. Consequently the danger incident to railroad 
traveling was materially reduced ; and in the next 
eight years (1872-9) some 274,000,000 passenger 
journeys were made within the limits of the state. 
The Wollaston disaster of October, 1878, was in- 
cluded in this period, during which 223 persons 
were injured and 21 were killed. The average 
journey for these years resulting in any injury to a 
passenger was close upon 15,000,000 miles, while 
that resulting in death was 170,000,000. 

But it may fairly be asked, What, after all, do 
these figures mean ? They are, indeed, so large as 
to exceed comprehension ; for, after certain compar- 
atively narrow limits are passed the practical infinite 
is approached, and the mere adding of a few more 
ciphers after a numeral conveys no new idea. On 



WHA T THE STA TISTICS MEAN. 239 

the contrary, the piling up of figures rather tends to 
weaken than to strengthen a statement, for to many 
it suggests an idea of ridiculous exaggeration. In- 
deed, when a few years ago a somewhat similar 
statement to that just made was advanced in an 
official report, a critic undertook to expose the 
fallacy of it in the columns of a daily paper by re- 
ferring to a case within the writer's own observation 
in which a family of three persons had been killed 
on their very first journey in a railroad car. It is 
not, of course, necessary to waste time over such a 
criticism as this. Railroad accidents continually 
take place, and in consequence of them people are 
killed and injured, and of these there may well be 
some who are then making their first journey by 
rail ; but in estimating the dangers of railroad travel- 
ing the much larger number who are not killed or 
injured at all must likewise be taken into considera- 
tion. Any person as he may be reading this page in 
a railroad car may be killed or injured through some 
accident, even while his eye is glancing over the fig- 
ures which show how infinitesimal his danger is ; but 
the chances are none the less as a million to one 
that any particular reader will go down to his grave 
uninjured by any accident on the rail, unless it be 
occasioned by his or her own carelessness. 

Admitting, therefore, that ill luck or hard fortune 
must fall to the lot of certain unascertainable per- 
sons, yet the chances of incurring that ill fortune 
are so small that they are not materially increased 



240 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

by any amount of traveling which can be accom- 
plished within the limits of a human life. So far 
from exhausting a fair average immunity from acci- 
dent by constant traveling, the statistics of Massa- 
chusetts during the last eight years would seem to 
indicate that if any given person were born upon a 
railroad car, and remained upon it traveling 500 
miles a day all his life, he would, with average good 
fortune, be somewhat over 80 years of age before 
he would be involved in any accident resulting in 
his death or personal injury, while he would attain 
the highly respectable age of 930 years before be- 
ing killed. Even supposing that the most excep- 
tional average of the Revere year became usual, 
a man who was killed by an accident at 70 years of 
age should, unless he were fairly to be accounted 
unlucky, have accomplished a journey of some 440 
miles every day of his life, Sundays included, 
from the time of his birth to that of his death ; 
while even to have brought him within the fair lia- 
bility of any injury at all, his daily journey should 
have been some 120 miles. Under the conditions 
of the last eight years his average daily journey 
through the three score years and ten to entitle him 
to be killed in an accident at the end of them 
would be about 600 miles. 



STATISTICS OF VITALITY. 24! 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE RAILROAD DEATH RATE. 

IN connection with the statistics of railroad 
casualties it is not without interest to examine 
the general vital statistics of some considerable 
city, for they show clearly enough what a large de- 
gree of literal truth there was in the half jocose 
proposition attributed to John Bright, that the 
safest place in which a man could put himself 
was inside a first-class railroad carriage of a train 
in full motion. Take the statistics of Boston, for 
instance, for the year 1878. During the four years 
1875-8, it will be remembered, a single passenger 
only was killed on the railroads of Massachusetts 
in consequence of an accident to which he by his 
own carelessness in no way contributed.* The 
average number of persons annually injured, not 
fatally, during those years was about five. 

* This period did not include the Wollaston disaster, as the Massa- 
chusetts railroad year closes on the last day of September. The 
Wollaston disaster occurred on the 8th of October, 1878, and was 
accordingly included in the next railroad year. 



242 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS, 

Yet during the year 1878, excluding all cases of 
mere injury of which no account was made, no 
less than 53 persons came to their deaths in Boston 
from falling down stairs, and 37 more from falling 
out of windows ; seven were scalded to death in 
1878 alone. In the year 1874 seventeen were killed 
by being run over by teams in the streets, while 
the pastime of coasting was carried on at a cost of 
ten lives more. During the five years 1874-8 there 
were more persons murdered in the city of Boston 
alone than lost their lives as passengers through the 
negligence of all the railroad corporations in the 
whole state of Massachusetts during the nine years 
1871-8; though in those nine years were included 
both the Revere and the Wollaston disasters, the 
former of which resulted in the death of 29, and 
the latter of 21 persons. Neither are the compara- 
tive results here stated in any respect novel or pe- 
culiar to Massachusetts. Years ago it was officially 
announced in France that people were less safe in 
their own houses than while traveling on the rail- 
roads; and, in support of this somewhat startling 
proposition, statistics were produced showing four- 
teen cases of death of persons remaining at home 
and there falling over carpets, or, in the case of fe- 
males, having their garments catch fire, to ten deaths 
on the rail. Even the game of cricket counted 
eight victims to the railroad's ten. 

It will not, of course, be inferred that the cases 
of death or injury to passengers from causes beyond 



CASUALTIES TO EMPLOYEES. 243 

their control include by any means all the casualities 
involved in the operation of the railroad system. 
On the contrary, they include but a very small por- 
tion of them. The experience of the Massachusetts 
roads during the seven years between September 
30, 1871, and September 30, 1878, may again be 
cited in reference to this point. During that time 
there were but 52 cases of injury to passengers 
from causes over which they had no control, but in 
connection with the entire working of the railroad 
system no less than 1,900 cases of injury were re- 
ported, of which i, 008 were fatal; an average of 144 
deaths a year. Of these cases, naturally, a large 
proportion were employes, whose occupation not 
only involves much necessary risk, but whose famil- 
iarity with risk causes them always to incur it even 
in the most unnecessary and foolhardy manner. 
During the seven years 293 of them were killed and 
375 were reported as injured. Nor is it supposed 
that the list included by any means all the cases of 
injury which occurred. About one half of the acci- 
dents to employes are occasioned by their falling 
from the trains when in motion, usually from freight 
trains and in cold weather, and from being crushed 
between cars while engaged in coupling them 
together. From this last cause alone an average 
of 27 casualties are annually reported. One fact, 
however, will sufficiently illustrate how very diffi- 
cult it is to protect this class of men from danger, 
or rather from themselves. As is well known, on 



244 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

freight trains they are obliged to ride on the tops of 
the cars ; but these are built so high that their roofs 
come dangerously near the bottoms of the highway 
bridges, which cross the track sometimes in close 
proximity to each other. Accordingly many un- 
fortunate brakemen were killed by being knocked 
off the trains as they passed under these bridges. 
With a view to affording the utmost possible pro- 
tection against this form of accident, a statute was 
passed by the Massachusetts legislature compelling 
the corporations to erect guards at a suitable dis- 
tince from every overhead bridge which was less 
than eighteen feet in the clear above the track. 
These guards were so arranged as to swing lightly 
across the tops of the cars, giving any one standing 
upon them a sharp rap, warning him of the danger 
he was in. This warning rap, however, so annoyed 
the brakemen that the guards were on a number of 
the roads systematically destroyed as often as they 
were put up ; so that at last another law had to be 
passed, making their destruction a criminal offense. 
The brakemen themselves resisted the attempt to 
divest their perilous occupation of one of its most 
insidious dangers. 

In this respect, however, brakemen differ in no 
degree from the rest of the community. On all 
hands railroad accidents seem to be systematically 
encouraged, and 'the wonder is that the list of cas- 
ualities is not larger. In Massachusetts, for instance, 
even in the most crowded portions of the largest 



CHALLENGING DANGER. 245 

cities and towns, not only do the railroads cross the 
highways at grade, but whenever new thoroughfares 
are laid out the people of the neighborhood almost 
invariably insist upon their crossing the railroads at 
a grade and not otherwise. Not but that, upon 
theory and in the abstract, every one is opposed to 
grade-crossings ; but those most directly concerned 
always claim that their particular crossing is excep- 
tional in character. In vain do corporations protest 
and public officials argue ; when the concrete case 
arises all neighborhoods become alike and strenu- 
ously insist on their right to incur everlasting danger 
rather than to have the level of their street broken. 
During the last seven years to September 30, 1878; 
191 persons have been injured, and 98 of them fa- 
tally injured, at these crossings in Massachusetts, 
and it is certain as fate that the number is destined 
to annually increase. What the result in a remote 
future will be, it is not now easy to forecast. One 
thing only would seem certain : the time will come 
when the two classes of traffic thus recklessly made 
to cross each other will at many points have to 
be separated, no matter at what cost to the com- 
munity which now challenges the danger it will then 
find itself compelled to avoid. 

The heaviest and most regular cause of death and 
injury involved in the operation of the railroad sys- 
tem yet remains to be referred to ; and again it is 
recklessness which is at the root of it, and this time 
recklessness in direct violation of law. The railroad 



246 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

tracks are everywhere favorite promenades, and ap- 
parently even resting-places, especially for those 
who are more or less drunk. In Great Britain physi- 
cal demolition by a railroad train is also a somewhat 
favorite method of committing suicide, and that, too, 
in the most deliberate and cool-blooded manner. 
Cases have not been uncommon in which persons 
have been seen to coolly lay themselves down in 
front of an advancing train, and very neatly effect 
their own decapitation by placing their necks across 
the rail. In England alone, during the last seven 
years, there have been no less than 280 cases of 
death reported under the head of suicides, or an 
average of 40 each year, the number in 1878 rising 
to 60. In America these cases are not returned in 
a class by themselves. Under the general head of 
accidents to trespassers, however, that is, accidents 
to men, women and children, especially the latter, 
illegally lying, walking, or playing on the tracks 
or riding upon the cars, under this head are regu- 
larly classified more than one third of all the cas- 
ualties incident to working the Massachusetts rail- 
roads. During the last seven years these have 
amounted to an aggregate of 724 cases of injury, no 
less than 494 of which were fatal. Of course, very 
many other cases of this description, which were not 
fatal, were never reported. And here again the 
recklessness of the public has received further illus- 
tration, and this time in a very unpleasant way. 
Certain corporations operating roads terminating in 



TRESPASSERS. 

Boston endeavored at one time to diminish this 
slaughter by enforcing the laws against walking on 
railroad tracks. A few trespassers were arrested and 
fined, and then the resentment of those whose 
wonted privileges were thus interfered with began 
to make itself felt. Obstructions were found placed 
in the way of night trains. The mere attempt to 
keep people from risking their lives by getting in 
the way of locomotives placed whole trains full of 
passengers in imminent jeopardy. 

Undoubtedly, however, by far the most effective 
means of keeping railroad tracks from becoming 
foot-paths, and thus at once putting an end to the 
largest item in the grand total of the expenditure of 
life incident to the operation of railroads, is that 
secured by the Pennsylvania railroad as an unin- 
tentional corollary to its method of ballasting 
That superb organization, every detail of whose 
wonderful system is a fit subject for study to all 
interested in the operation of railroads, has a road- 
way peculiar to itself. A principal feature in this is 
a surface of broken stone ballast, covering not only 
the space between the rails, but also the interval 
between the tracks as well as the road-bed on the 
outside of each track for a distance of some three 
feet. It resembles nothing so much as a newly 
macadamized highway. That, too, is its permanent 
condition. To walk on the sharp and uneven edges 
of this broken stone is possible, with a sufficient 
expenditure of patience and shoe-leather ; but cer- 



248 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

tainly no human being would ever walk there from 
preference, or if any other path could be found. Not 
only is it in itself, as a system of ballasting, looked 
upon as better than any other, but it confounds the 
tramp. Its systematic adoption in crowded, sub- 
urban neighborhoods would, therefore, answer a 
double purpose. It would secure to the corpora- 
tions permanent road-beds exclusively for their own 
use, and obviate the necessity of arrests or futile 
threats to enforce the penalties of the law against 
trespassers. It seems singular that this most obvious 
and effective way of putting a stop to what is both 
a nuisance and a danger has not yet been resorted 
to by men familiar with the use of spikes and 
broken glass on the tops of fences and walls. 

Meanwhile, taken even in its largest aggregate, 
the loss of life incident to the working of the rail- 
road system is not excessive, nor is it out of propor- 
tion to what might reasonably be expected. It is 
to be constantly borne in mind, not only that the 
railroad performs a great function in modern life, 
but that it also and of necessity performs it in a very 
dangerous way. A practically irresistible force 
crashing through the busy hive of modern civili- 
zation at a wild rate of speed, going hither and 
thither, across highways and by-ways and along a 
path which is in itself a thoroughfare, such an 
agency cannot be expected to work incessantly and 
yet never to come in contact with the human frame. 
Naturally, however, it might be a very car of 



ARE THE CASUALTIES EXCESSIVE? 249 

gernaut. Is it so in fact ? To demonstrate that it is 
not, it is but necessary again to recur to the compar- 
ison between the statistics of railroad accidents and 
those which necessarily occur in the experience of 
all considerable cities. "Take again those of Boston 
and of the railroad system of Massachusetts. These 
for the purpose of illustration are as good as any, 
and in their results would only be confirmed in the 
experience of Paris as compared with the railroad 
system of France, or in that of London as compared 
with the railroad system of Great Britain. During 
the eight years between September 30, 1870, and 
September 30, 1878, the entire railroad system of 
Massachusetts was operated at a cost of 1,165 lives, 
apart from all cases of injury which did not prove 
fatal. The returns in this respect also may be 
accepted as reasonably accurate, as the deaths were 
all returned, though the cases of merely personal 
injury probably were not. The annual average was 
146 lives. During the ten years, 1868-78, 2,587 
cases of death from accidental causes, or 259 a year, 
were recorded as having taken place in the city of 
Boston. In other words, the annual average of 
deaths by accident in the city of Boston alone ex- 
ceeds that consequent on running all the railroads 
of the state by eighty per cent. Unless, therefore, 
the railroad system is to be considered as an excep- 
tion to all other functions of modern life, and as 
such is to be expected to do its work without injury 
to life or limb, this showing does not .constitute a 
very heavy indictment against it. 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

AMERICAN AS COMPARED WITH FOREIGN RAILROAD 
ACCIDENTS. 

UP to this point, the statistics and experience of 
Massachusetts only have been referred to. This is 
owing to the fact that the railroad returns of that 
state are more carefully prepared and tabulated than 
are those of any other state, and afford, therefore, 
more satisfactory data from which to draw conclu- 
sions. The territoral area from which the statistics 
are in this case derived is very limited, and it yet 
remains to compare the results deduced from them 
with those derived from the similar experience of 
other communities. This, however, is not an easy 
thing to do ; and, while it is difficult enough as res- 
pects Europe, it is even more difficult as respects 
America taken as a whole. This last fact is es- 
pecially unfortunate in view of the circumstance 
that, in regard to railway accidents, the United 
States, whether deservedly or not, enjoy a most 
undesirable reputation. Foreign authorities have a 



ARBITRARY COMPUTATIONS. 2 $ l 

way of referring to our " well-known national dis- 
regard of human life," with a sort of compla- 
cency, at once patronizing and contemptuous, which 
is the reverse of pleasing. Judging by the tone 
of their comments, the natural inference would 
be that railroad disasters of the worst description 
were in America matters of such frequent occur- 
rence as to excite scarcely any remark. As will 
presently be made very apparent, this impression, 
for it is only an impression, can, so far as the 
country as a whole is concerned, neither be proved 
nor disproved, from the absence of sufficient data 
from which to argue. As respects Massachusetts, 
however, and the same statement may perhaps 
be made of the whole belt of states north of the 
Potomac and the Ohio, there is no basis for it. 
There is no reason to suppose that railroad travel- 
ing is throughout that region accompanied by any 
peculiar or unusual degree of danger. 

The great difficulty, just referred to, in comparing 
the results deduced from equally complete statistics 
of different countries, lies in the variety of the arbi- 
trary rules under which the computations in making 
them up are effected. As an example in point, take 
the railroad returns of Great Britain and those of 
Massachusetts. They are in each case prepared 
with a great deal of care, and the results deduced 
from them may fairly be accepted as approximately 
correct. As respects accidents, the number of 
cases of death and of personal injury are annually 



RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

reported, and with tolerable completness, though in 
the latter respect there is. probably in both cases 
room- for improvement. The whole comparison 
turns, however, on the way in which the entire 
number of passengers annually carried is computed. 
In Great Britain, for instance, in 1878, these were 
returned, using round numbers only, at 565,000,000, 
and in Massachusetts at 34,000,000. By dividing 
these totals by the number of cases of death and 
injury reported as occurring to passengers from 
causes beyond their control, we shall arrive appa- 
rently at a fair comparative showing as to the relative 
safety of railroad traveling in the two communities. 
The result for that particular year would have been 
that while in Great Britain one passenger in each 
23,500, ooo was killed, and one in each 481,600 in- 
jured from causes beyond their control, in Massa- 
chusetts none were killed and only one in each 
14,000,000 was in any way injured. Unfortunately, 
however, a closer examination reveals a very great 
error in the computation, affecting every compara- 
tive result drawn from it. In the English returns 
no allowance whatever is made for the very large 
number of journeys made by season-ticket or com- 
mutation passengers, while in Massachusetts, on the 
contrary, each person of this class enters into the 
grand total as making two trips each day, 156 trips 
on each quarterly ticket, and 626 trips on each an- 
nual. Now in 1878 more than 418,000 holders of 
season tickets were returned by the railway com- 



SEA SON- TICKE T PA SSA GES. 2$$ 

panics of Great Britain. How many of these were 
quarterly and how many were annual travelers, does 
not appear. If they were all annual travelers, no 
less than 261,000,000 journeys should be added to the 
565,000,000 in the returns, in order to arrive at an 
equal basis for a comparison between the foreign 
and the American roads : this method, however, 
would be manifestly inaccurate, so it only remains, 
in the absence of all reliable data, and for the pur- 
pose of comparison solely, to strike out from the 
Massachusetts returns the 8,320,727 season-ticket 
passages, which at once reduces by over 3,000,000 
the number of journeys to each case of injury. As 
season-ticket passengers do travel and are exposed 
to danger in the same degree as trip-ticket passen- 
gers, no result is approximately accurate which 
leaves them out of the computation. At present, 
however, the question relates not to the positive 
danger or safety of traveling by rail, but to its relat- 
ive danger in different communities. 

Allowance for this discrepancy can, however, 
be made by adding to the English official results 
an additional nineteen per cent., that, according to 
the returns of 1877 and 1878, being the proportion 
of the season-ticket to other passengers on the 
roads of Great Britain. Taking then the Board of 
Trade returns for the eight years 1870-7, it will be 
found that during this period about one passenger 
in each 14,500,000 carried in that country has been 
killed in railroad accidents, and about one in each 



254 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

436,000 injured. This may be assumed as a fair 
average for purpose of comparison, though it ought 
to be said that in Great Britain the percentage of 
casualties to passengers shows a decided tendency 
to decrease, and during the years 1877-8 the per- 
centages of killed fell from one in 15,000,000 to one 
in 38,000,000 and those of injured from one in 
436,000 to one in 766,000. The aggregates from 
which these results are deduced are so enormous, 
rising into the thousands of millions, that a certain 
degree of reliance can be placed on them. In the 
case of Massachusetts, however, the entire period 
during which the statistics are entitled to the slight- 
est weight includes only eight years, 1872-9, and 
offers an aggregate of but 274,000,000 journeys, or 
but about forty per cent, of those included in the 
British returns of the single year 1878. During 
these years the killed in Massachusetts were one 
in each 13,000,000 and the injured one in each 1,230, 
OOO ; or, while the killed in the two cases were very 
nearly in the same proportion, respectively one in 
14.5, and one in 13, speaking in millions, the Brit- 
ish injured were really three to one of the Massa- 
chusetts. 

The equality as respects the killed in this compari- 
son, and the marked discrepancy as respects the in- 
jured is calculated at first sight to throw doubts on 
the fullness of the Massachusetts returns. There 
seems no good reason why the injured should in the 
one case be so much more numerous than in the other. 



THIRD- CLA SS PA SSENGERS. 

This, however, is susceptible on closer examination 
of a very simple and satisfactory explanation. In 
case of accident the danger of sustaining slight per- 
sonal injury is not so great in Massachusetts as in 
Great Britain. This is due to the heavier and more 
solid construction of the American passenger 
coaches, and their different interior arrangement. 
This fact, and the real cause of the large number 
of slightly injured, " shaken " they call it, in the 
English railroad accidents is made very apparent in 
the following extract from Mr. Calcroft's report for 
1877 ;- 

" It is no doubt a fact that collisions and other acci- 
dents to railway trains are attended with less serious con- 
sequences in proportion to the solidity of construction of 
passenger carriages. The accomodation and internal 
arrangements of third-class carriages, however, especially 
those used in ordinary trains, are defective as regards 
safety and comfort, as compared with many carriages of 
the same class on foreign railways. The first-class pas- 
senger, except when thrown against his opposite compan- 
ion, or when some luggage falls upon him, is generally 
saved from severe contusion by the well-stuffed or padded 
linings of the carriages ; whilst the second-class and third- 
class passenger is generally thrown with violence against 
the hard wood-work. If the second and third-class car- 
riages had a high padded back lining, extending above 
the head of the passenger, it would probably tend to les- 
son the danger to life and limb which, as the returns of 
accidents show, passengers in carriages of this class are 
much exposed to in train accidents." * 

* General Report to the Boaid of Trade upon the accidents -which 
have occiirred on the Railways of the United Kingdom during tht 
year 1877. p. 37. 



2 $6 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

In 1878 the passenger journeys made in the 
second and third class carriages of the United 
Kingdom were thirteen to one of those made 
in first class carriages ; or, expressed in millions, 
there were but 41 of the latter to 523 of the former. 
There can be very little question indeed that if, dur- 
ing the last ten years, thirteen out of fourteen of the 
passengers on Massachusetts railroads had been car- 
ried in narrow compartments with wooden seats and 
unlined sides the number of those returned as 
slightly injured in the numerous accidents which 
occurred would have been at least three-fold larger 
than it was. If it had not been ten-fold larger it 
would have been surprising. 

The foregoing comparison, relates however, simply 
to passengers killed in accidents for which they 
are in no degree responsible. When, however, the 
question reverts to the general cost in life and 
limb at which the railroad systems are worked and 
the railroad traffic is carried on to the entire com- 
munities served, the comparison is less favorable to 
Massachusetts. Taking the eight years of 18718, 
the British returns include 30,641 cases of injury, 
and 9,1 13 of death ; while those of Massachusetts for 
. the same years included 1,165 deaths, with only 
1,044 cases of injury; in the one case a total of 
39,745 casualties, as compared with 2,209 m tne 
other. It will, however be noticed that while in the 
British returns the cases of injury are nearly three- 
fold those of death, in the Massachusetts returns 



GRADE-CROSSINGS AND TRESPASSERS. 

the deaths exceed the cases of injury. This fact in 
the present case cannot but throw grave suspicion 
on the completeness of the Massachusetts returns. 
As a matter of practical experience it is well known 
that cases of injury almost invariably exceed those 
of death, and the returns in which the disproportion 
is greatest, if no sufficient explanation presents itself, 
are probably the most full and reliable. Taking, 
therefore, the deaths in the two cases as the better 
basis for comparison, it will be found that the roads 
of Great Britain in the grand result accomplished 
seventeen-fold the work of those of Massachusetts 
with less than eight times as many casualties ; had 
the proportion between the results accomplished and 
the fatal injuries inflicted been maintained, but 536 
deaths instead of 1,165 would have appeared in the 
Massachusetts returns. The reason of this differ- 
ence in result is worth looking for, and fortunately 
the statistical tables are in both cases carried suffi- 
ciently into detail to make an analysis possible ; and 
this analysis, when made, seems to indicate very 
clearly that while, for those directly connected with 
the railroads, either as passengers or as employes, 
the Massachusetts system in its working involves 
relatively a less degree of danger than that of Great 
Britain, yet for the outside community it involves 
very much more. Take, for instance, the two heads 
of accidents ^at grade-crossings and accidents to tres- 
passers, which have been already referred to. In 
Great Britain highway grade-crossings are discour- 



258 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

aged. In Massachusetts they are practically insisted 
upon. The results of the policy pursued may in 
each case be read with sufficient distinctness in the 
bills of mortality. During the years 1872-7, of 
1,929 casualties to persons on the railroads of Mass- 
achusetts, no less than 200 occurred at highway 
grade crossings. Had the accidents of this descrip- 
tion in Great Britain been equally numerous in pro- 
portion to the larger volume of the traffic of that 
country, they would have resulted in over 3,000 
cases of death or personal injury ; they did in fact 
result in 586 such cases. In Massachusetts, again, 
to walk at will on any part of a railroad track is 
looked upon as a sort of prescriptive and inalienable 
right of every member of the community, irrespect- 
ive of age, sex, color, or previous condition of ser- 
vitude. Accordingly, during the six years referred 
to, this right was exercised at the cost of life or limb 
to 591 persons, one in four of all the casualties 
which occurred in connection with the railroad sys- 
tem. In Great Britain the custom of using the 
tracks of railroads as a foot-path seems to exist, but, 
so far from being regarded as a right, it is practiced 
in perpetual terror of the law. Accordingly, instead 
of some 9,000 cases of death or injury from this 
cause during these six years, which would have 
been the proportion under like conditions in Mass- 
achusetts, the returns showed only 2,379. These 
two are among the most constant and fruitful causes 
of accident in connection with the railroad system 



FOOD FOR LEGISLATIVE THOUGHT. 259 

of America. In great Britain their proportion to 
the whole number of casualties which take place is 
scarcely a seventh part of what it is in Massachusetts. 
Here they constitute very nearly fifty per cent, of all 
the accidents which occur; there they constitute 
but a little over seven. There is in this comparison 
a good deal of solid food for legislative thought, if 
American legislators would but take it in ; for this 
is one matter the public policy in regard to which 
can only be fixed by law. 

When we pass from Great Britain to the conti- 
nental countries of Europe, the difficulties in the 
way of any fair comparison of results become 
greater and greater. The statistics do not enter 
sufficiently into detail, nor is the basis of com- 
putation apparent. It is generally conceded that, 
where a due degree of caution is exercised by 
the passenger, railroad traveling in continental 
countries is attended with a much less degree of 
danger than in England. When we come to the 
returns, they hardly bear out this conclusion ; 
at least to the degree commonly supposed. Take 
France, for example. Nowhere is human life more 
carefully guarded than in that country ; yet their 
returns show that of 866,000,000 passengers trans- 
ported on the French railroads during the eleven 
years 1859-69, no less than 65 were killed and 1,285 
injured from causes beyond their control ; or one in 
each 13,000,000 killed as compared with one in 
10,700,000 in Great Britain; and one in every 



260 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

674,000 injured as compared with one in each 
330,000 in the other country. During the single 
year 1859, about 111,000,000 passengers were car- 
ried on the French lines, at a general cost to the 
community of 2,416 casualties, of which 295 were 
fatal. In Massachusetts, during the four years 
1871-74, about 95,000,000 passengers were carried, 
at a reported cost of 1,158 casualties. This show- 
ing might well be considered favorable to Massa- 
chusetts did not the single fact that her returns in- 
cluded more than twice as many deaths as the 
French, with only a quarter as many injuries, make 
it at once apparent that the statistics were at fault. 
Under these circumstances comparison could only 
be made between the numbers of deaths reported ; 
which would indicate that, in proportion to the 
work done, the railroad operations of Massachusetts 
involved about twice and a half more cases of in- 
jury to life and limb than those of the French ser- 
vice. As respects Great Britain the comparison is 
much more favorable, the returns showing an almost 
exactly equal general death-rate in the two countries 
in proportion to their volumes of traffic ; the vol- 
ume of Great Britain being about four times that 
of France, while its death-rate by railroad accidents 
was as 1,100 to 295. 

With the exception of Belgium, however, in which 
country the returns cover only the lines operated by 
the state, the basis hardly exists for a useful com- 
parison between the dangers of injury from accident 



THE A ME RICA N DATA. 26 1 

on the continental railroads and on those of Great 
Britain and America. The several systems are oper- 
ated on wholly different principles, to meet the 
needs of communities between whose modes of life 
and thought little similarity exists. The conti- 
nental trains are far less crowded than either the 
English or the American, and, when accidents oc- 
cur, fewer persons are involved in them. The 
movement, also, goes on under much stricter regula- 
tion and at lower rates of speed, so that there is a 
grain of truth in the English sarcasm that on a Ger- 
man railway " it almost seems as if beer-drinking 
at the stations were the principal business, and 
traveling a mere accessory." 

Limiting, therefore, the comparison to the railroads 
of Great Britain, it remains to be seen whether the 
evil reputation of the American roads as respects ac- 
cidents is wholly deserved. Is it indeed true that 
the danger to a passenger's life and limbs is so much 
greater in this country than elsewhere ? Locally, 
and so far as Massachusetts at least is concerned, it 
certainly is not. How is it with the country taken 
as a whole ? The lack of all reliable statistics as re- 
spects this wide field of inquiry has already been re- 
ferred to. We have no trustworthy data. We do 
not know with accuracy even the number of miles 
of road operated ; much less the number of passen- 
gers annually carried. As respects accidents, and 
the deaths and injuries resulting therefrom, some 
information may be gathered from a careful and very 



262 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

valuable, because the only, record which has been 
preserved during the last six years in the columns of 
the Railroad Gazette. It makes, of course, no pre- 
tence at either official accuracy or fullness, but it is 
as complete probably as circumstances will permit 
of its being made. During the five years 1874-8 
there have been included in this record 4,846 acci- 
dents, resulting in 1,160 deaths and 4,650 cases of 
injury ; being an average of 969 accidents a year, 
resulting in 232 deaths and 930 cases of injury. 
These it will be remembered are casualties directly 
resulting either to passengers or employes from train 
accidents. No account is taken of injuries sustained 
by employes in the ordinary operation of the roads, 
or by members of the community not passengers. 
In Massachusetts the accidents to passengers and 
employe's constitute one-half of the whole, but a 
very small portion of the injuries reported as sus- 
tained by either passengers or employes are the con- 
sequence of train accidents, not one in three in the 
case of passengers or one in seven in that of em- 
ploye's. In fact, of the 2,350 accidents to persons 
reported in Massachusetts in the nine years 1870-8, 
but 271, or less than twelve per cent., belonged to 
the class alone included in the reports of the Rail- 
road Gazette. In England during the four years 
1874-7 the proportion was larger, being about twenty- 
five instead of twelve per cent. For America at 
large the Massachusetts proportion is undoubtedly 
the most nearly correct, and the probabilities would 



UNIVERSITY }] 



GUESSING A T STA TISTICS. 263 

seem to be that the annual average of injuries to per- 
sons incident to operating the railroads of the United 
States is not less than 10,000, of which at least 1,200 
are due to train accidents. Of these about two- 
thirds may be set down as sustained by passengers, 
or, approximately, 800 a year. 

It remains to be ascertained what proportion this 
number bears to the whole number carried. There 
are no reliable statistics on this head any more than 
on the other. Nothing but an approximation of the 
most general character is possible. The number of 
passengers annually carried on the roads of a few of 
the states is reported with more or less accuracy, 
and averaging these the result would seem to indi- 
cate that there are certainly not more than 350,000,- 
OOO passengers annually carried on the roads of all 
the states. There is something barbarous about 
such an approximation, and it is disgraceful that at 
this late day we should in America be forced to es- 
timate the passenger movement on our railroads in 
much the same way that we guess at the population 
of Africa. Such, however, is the case. We are in 
in this respect far in the rear of civilized commu- 
nities. Taking, however, 350,000,000 as a fair ap- 
proximation to our present annual passenger move- 
ment, it will be observed that it is as nearly as may 
be half that of Great Britain. In Great Britain, in 
1878, there were 1,200 injuries to passengers from 
accidents to trains, and 675 in 1877. The average 
of the last eight years has been 1,226. If, therefore, 



264 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

the approximation of 800 a year for America is at 
all near the truth, the percentage would seem to be 
considerably larger than that arrived at from the sta- 
tistics of Great Britain. Meanwhile it is to be noted 
that while in Great Britain about 25 cases of injury 
are reported to each one of death, in America but 
four cases are reported to each death a discrepancy 
which is extremely suggestive. Perhaps, however, 
the most valuable conclusion to be drawn from 
these figures is that in America we as yet are abso- 
lutely without any reliable railroad statistics on this 
subject at all. 

Taken as a whole, however, and under the most 
favorable showing, it would seem to be a matter of 
fair inference that the dangers incident to railroad 
traveling are materially greater in the United States 
than in any country of Europe. How much greater 
is a question wholly impossible to answer. So that 
when a statistical writer undertakes to show, as one 
eminent European authority has done, that in a 
given year on the American roads one passenger in 
every 286,179 was killed, and one in every 90,737 
was injured, it is charitable to suppose that in re- 
gard to America only is he indebted to his imagina- 
tion for his figures. 

Neither is it possible to analyze with any satisfac- 
tory degree of precision the nature of the accidents 
in the two countries, with a view to drawing infer- 
ences from them. Without attempting to do so it 
may be said that the English Board of Trade re- 



CA USES OF A CCIDEN TS. 265 

ports for the last five years, 1874-8, include inquiries 
into 755 out of 11,585 accidents, the total number 
of every description reported as having taken place. 
Meanwhile the Railroad Gazette contains mention 
of 4,846 reported train accidents which occurred 
in America during the same five years. Of these 
accidents, 1,310 in America and 81 in Great Britain 
were due to causes which were either unexplained 
or of a miscellaneous character, or are not common 
to the systems of the two countries. In so far as 
the remainder admitted of classification, it was 
somewhat as follows : 

GREAT BRITAIN. AMERICA. 

Accidents due to 

Defects in permanent way 13 per cent. 24 per cent. 

" " rolling-stock - 10 " " 8 " " 
Misplaced switches - - 16 " " 14 " " 
Collisions 

Between trains going in 

opposite directions - 3 " " 18 " " 

Between trains following 

each other - 5 " " 30 " " 

At railroad grade crossings* 0.6 " " 3 " " 

At junctions - - 1 1 " " 

At stations or sidings within 

fixed stations - 40 " " 6 

Unexplained - - 2 " " 

* During these five years there were in Great Britain four cases of 
collision between locomotives or trains at level crossings of one rail- 
road by another ; in America there were 79. The probable cause of 
this discrepancy has already been referred to (ante pp. 194-7). 



266 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

The above record, though almost valueless for 
any purpose of exact comparison, reveals, it will 
be noticed, one salient fact. Out of 755 English 
accidents, no less than 406 came under the head of 
collisions whether head collisions, rear collisions, 
or collisions on sidings or at junctions. In other 
words, to collisions of some sort between trains 
were due considerably more than half (54 per cent.) 
of the accidents which took place in Great Britain, 
while only 88, or less than 13 per cent, of the whole, 
were due to derailments from all causes. In America 
on the other hand, while of the 3,763 accidents re- 
corded, 1,324, or but one-third part (35 per cent.) 
were due to collisions, no less than 586, or 24 per 
cent., were classed under the head of derailments, 
due to defects in the permanent way. During the 
the six years 1873-8 there were in all 1698 cases of 
collision of every description between trains re- 
ported as occurring in America to 1495 in the 
United Kingdom ; but while in America the derail- 
ments amounted to no less than 4016, or more than 
twice the collisions, in the United Kingdom they 
were but 817, or a little more than half their num- 
ber. It has already been noticed that the most dis- 
astrous accidents in America are apt to occur on 
bridges, and Ashtabula and Tariffville at once sug- 
gest themselves. This is not the case in Great 
Britain. Under the heading of " Failures of Tun- 
nels, Bridges, Viaducts or Culverts," there were re- 
turned in that country during the six years 1873-8 



THE COST OF ACCIDENTS. 26? 

only 29 accidents in all ; while during the same time 
in America, under the heads of broken bridges or 
tressels and open draws, the Gazette recorded no less 
than 165. These figures curiously illustrate the dif- 
erent manner in which the railroads of the two 
countries have been constructed, and the different 
circumstances under which they are operated. The 
English collisions are -distinctly traceable to con- 
stant overcrowding ; the American derailments and 
bridge accidents to inferior construction of our road- 
beds. 

Finally, what of late years has been done to di- 
minish the dangers of the rail ? What more can be 
done ? Few persons realize what a tremendous 
pressure in this respect is constantly bearing down 
upon those whose business it is to operate railroads. 
A great accident is not only a terrible blow to the 
pride and prestige of a corporation, not only does it 
practically ruin the unfortunate officials involved in 
it, but it entails also portentous financial conse- 
quences. Juries proverbially have little mercy for 
railroad corporations, and, when a disaster comes, 
these have practically no choice but to follow the 
scriptural injunction to settle with their adversaries 
quickly. The Revere catastrophe, for instance, cost 
the railroad company liable on account of it over 
half a million of dollars ; the Ashtabula accident over 
$600,000 ; the Wollaston over $300,000. A few years 
ago in England a jury awarded a sum of $65,000 for 
damages sustained through the death of a single in- 



268 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

dividual. During the five years, 1867-71, the rail- 
road corporations of Great Britain paid out over 
$11,000,000 in compensation for damages occasioned 
by accidents. In view, merely, of such money conse- 
quences of disaster, it would be most unnatural did 
not each new accident lead to the adoption of bet- 
ter appliances to prevent its recurrence.* 

To return, however, to the subject of railroad ac- 
cidents, and the final conclusion to be drawn from 
the statistics which have been presented. That con- 
clusion briefly stated is that the charges of reckless- 
ness and indifference so generally and so widely 
advanced against those managing the railroads can- 
not for an instant be sustained. After all, as was 
said in the beginning of the present volume, it 
is not the danger but the safety of the railroad 
which should excite our special wonder. If any 

* The other side of this proposition has been argued with much 
force by Mr. William Gait in his report as one of the Royal Com- 
mission of 1874 on Railway Accidents. Mr. Gait's individual report 
bears date February 5, 1877, and in it he asserts that, as a matter of 
actual experience, the principle of self-interest on the part of the 
railway conjpanies has proved a wholly insufficient safeguard against 
accidents. However it may be in theory, he contends that, taking 
into consideration the great cost of the appliances necessary to insure 
safety to the public on the one side, and the amount of damages in- 
cident to. a certain degree of risk on the other side, the possible 
saving in expenditure to the companies by assuming the risk far ex- 
ceeds the loss incurred by an occasional accident. The companies 
become, in a word, insurers of their passengers , the premium 
being found in the economies effected by not adopting improved ap- 
pliances of recognized value, and the losses being the damages in- 
curred in case of accident. He treats the whole subject at great 
length and with much knowledge and ability. His report is a most 
valuable compendium for those who are^in favor of a closer govern- 
ment supervision over railroads as a means of securing an increased 
safety from accident. 



AND YET IT IS SAFE! 269 

one doubts this, it is very easy to satisfy himself 
of the fact, that .is, if by nature he is gifted 
with the slightest spark of imagination. It is but 
necessary to stand once on the platform of a way- 
station and to look at an express train dashing 
by. There are few sights finer ; , few better cal- 
culated to quicken the pulse. It is most striking 
at night. The glare of the head-light, the rush 
and throb of the locomotive, the connecting rod 
and driving-wheels of which seem instinct with 
nervous life, the flashing lamps in the cars, and the 
final whirl of dust in which the red tail-lights vanish 
almost as soon as they are seen, all this is well cal- 
culated to excite our admiration ; but the special 
and unending cause for wonder is how, in case of 
accident, anything whatever is left of the train. 
As it plunges into the darkness it would seem to 
be inevitable that something must happen, and 
that, whatever happens, it must necessarily involve 
both the train and every one in it in utter and 
irremediable destruction. Here is a body weighing 
in the neighborhood of two hundred tons, moving 
over the face of the earth at a speed of sixty feet 
a second and held to its course only by two slender 
lines of iron rails ; and yet it is safe ! We have 
seen how when, half a century ago, the possibility of 
something remotely like this was first discussed, a 
writer in the British Quarterly earned for himself a 
lasting fame by using the expression that " We 
should as soon expect people to suffer themselves 



2/0 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS. 

to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet 
rockets, as to trust themselves to the mercy of 
such a machine, going at such a rate ; " while Lord 
Brougham exclaimed that " the folly of seven hund- 
red people going fifteen miles an hour, in six trains, 
exceeds belief." At the time they wrote, the 
chances were ninety-nine in a hundred that both 
reviewer and correspondent were right ; and yet, 
because reality, not for the first nor the last time, saw 
fit to outstrip the wildest flights of imagination, the 
former at least blundered, by being prudent, into 
an immortality of ridicule. The thing, however, is 
still none the less a miracle because it is with us 
matter of daily observation. That, indeed, is the 
most miraculous part of it. At all hours of the day 
and of the night, during every season of the year, 
this movement is going on. It never wholly stops. 
It depends for its even action on every conceivable 
contingency, from the disciplined vigilance of thou- 
sands of employes to the condition of the atmos- 
phere, the heat of an axle, or the strength of a 
nail. The vast machine is in constant motion, 
and the derangement of a single one of a myriad 
of conditions may at any moment occasion one of 
those inequalities of movement which are known 
as accidents. Yet at the end of the year, of the 
hundreds of millions of passengers fewer have lost 
their lives through these accidents than have been 
murdered in cold blood. Not without reason, 
therefore, has it been asserted that, viewing at 



A CREDITABLE MONUMENT. 2/1 

once the speed, the certainty, and the safety with 
which the intricate movement of modern life is 
carried on, there is no more creditable monument 
to human care, human skill, and human foresight 
than the statistics of rairoad accidents. 



INDEX. 273 



INDEX. 



Abergele, accident at. 72. 

Accidents, railroad, about stations, 166. 

at highway crossings, 165. 

level railroad crossings, 94, 165, 245, 258. 
aggravated by English car construction and stoves, 14, 41, 

106, 255. 

comments on early, 9. 
damages paid for certain, 267. 
due to bndges, 99, 206, 266. 
broken tracks, 166. 
car couplings, 117. 
collisions, 265. 

derailments, 13, 16, 23, 54, 79, 84. 
in Great Britain, 266. 

America, 266. 
draw-bridges, 82, 266. 
fire in train, 31. 
oil-tanks, 72. 
oscillation, 50. 
telegraph, 66. 
telescoping, 43. 
want of bell-cords, 32. 

brake power, 12, 119. 

increased safety resulting from, 2, 29, 135, 205. 
precautions against early, 10. 
statistics of, in America, 263. 
Belgium, 260. 
France, 260. 

Great Britain, 236, 252, 257, 263. 
Massachusetts, 232-60. 
general, 228-70. 



2/4 INDEX. 

List of Accidents specially described or referred to ; 
Abergele August 20, 1868, 72. 
Angola^ December 18, 1867, 12. 
Ashtabula, December 29, 1876, 100. 
Brainerd, July 27, 1875, 108. 
Brimfiela, October, 1874, 56. 
Bristol, March 7, 1865, 150. 
Carr's Rock, April 14, 1867, 120. 
Camphill, July 17, 1856, 61. 
Charlestoivn Bridge, November 21, 1862, 95. 
Claypole, June 21, 1870, 85. 
Communipaw Ferry, November n. 1876. 207. 
Croydon Tunnel, August 25, 1861, 146. 
Des Jardines Canal, March 17, 1857, 112. 
Foxboro, July 15, 1872, 53. 

Franklin Street, New York city, June, 1879, 207. 
Gasconade River, November i, 1855, 108. 
On Great Western Railway of Canada, October, 1856, 55. 
On Great Western Railway of England, December 

24, 1841, 43. 

Heeley, November 22. 1876, 209. 
Helmshire, September 4, 1860, 121. 
On Housatonic Railroad, A ugust 16, 1865, 151. 
Huskisson, William, death of, September 15, 1830, 5. 
Lackawaxen, July 15, 1864, 63. 
Morpeth, March 25, 1877, 209. 
New Hamburg, February 6, 1871, 78. 
Noriualk, May 6, 1853, 89. 
Penruddock, September 2, 1870, 143. 
Port Jervis, June 17, 1858, 118. 
Prospect, N. Y., December 24, 1872, 106. 
Rainhill, December 23, 1832, 10. 
Randolph, October 13, 1876, 24. 
Revere, August 26, 1871, 125. 
Richelieu River, June 29, 1864, 91. 
Shipton, December 24, 1874, 16. 
Shrewsbury River, A ugust 9, 1877, 96. 



INDEX. 2/5 

Tarijffville \ January 15, 1878, 107. 

Thorpe, September 10, 1874, 66. 

Tyrone, April 4, 1875, 69. 

Versailles, May 8, 1842, 58. 

Weliuyn Tunnel, June 10, 1866, 149. 

Wemyss Bay Junction, December 14, 1878, 313. 

Wollaston, October 8, 1878, 20. 



American railroad accidents, statistics of, 97, 260-6. 
locomotive engineers, intelligence of, 159. 
method of handling traffic, extravagance of, 182. 

Angola, accident at, 12, 201, 218. 

Ashtabula, accident at, 100, 267. 

Assaults in English railroad carriages, 32, 35, 38. 

Automatic electric block, 159, 

reliability of, 168, 
objections to, 174. 
train-brake, essentials of, 219. 

necessity for, 202, 227. 

Bell-cord, need of any, questioned, 29. 
accidents from want ot, 31. 
assaults, etc., in absence of, 32-41. 
Beloeil, Canada, accident at, 92. 
Block system, American, 165. 

automatic electric, 159. 

objections to, 174. 
cost of English, 165. 
English, why adopted, 162. 

accident in spite of, 145. 
ignorance of, in America, 160. 
importance of. 145. 

Boston, passenger travel to and from, 183. 
possible future station in, 198. 
some vital .statistics of. 241, 249. 
Boston & Albany railroad, accident on, 56. 

Boston station of, 183. 
Boston & Maine railroad, accident on, 96. 
Boston & Providence railroad, accident on, 53. 

Boston station of, 183. 
Brainerd, accident at, 108. 



2/6 INDEX. 

Brakes, original and improved, 200. 
the battle of the, 216. 
true simplicity in, 228. 
inefficiency of hand, 201, 204. 

emergency, 202. 

necessity of automatic, continuous, 202, 227. 
See Train-brake. 

Bridge accidents, 98, 266. 

Bridges, insufficient safeguards at, 98. 

protection of, m. 

Bridge-guards, destroyed by brakemen, 244. 
Bristol, accident at, 150. 

Brougham, Lord, comments on death of Mr. Huskisson, 7, 270. 
Buffalo, Correy & Pittsburg railroad, accident on, 106. 
Burlington & Missouri River railroad, accident on, 70. 
Butler, B. F., on Revere accident, 142. 
Calcoft, Mr., extract from reports of, 196, 255. 

Caledonian railway, accident on, return of brake stoppages by, 211. 
Camden & Amboy railroad, accident on, 151. 
Car construction, American and English, 255. 
Carr's Rock, accident at, 120. 
Central Railroad of New Jersey, accident on, 96. 
Charlestown bridge, accident on, 95. 
Claypole accident, 83. 
Collisions, head, 61-2. 

in America, 265. 

Great Britain, 265. 
occasioned by use of telegraph, 66. 
rear-end, 144-52. 

Communipaw Ferry, accident at, 207. 
Cannon Street Station in London, traffic at, 163, 183, 194. 
Connecticut law respecting swing draw-bridges, 82, 94, 193. 
Connecticut Western railroad, accident on, 107. 
Conservatism, British railroad, 29. 

American railroad, 41, 52, 65, 161, 205. 
Coupling, accidents due to, 117. 

the original, 49. 
Crossings, level, of railways, accidents at, 165. 

need of interlocking apparatus at, 195. 
stopping trains at, 95, 195. 



INDEX. 277 



Croydon Tunnel collision, 146. 
Deodand, 43. 

Derailments, accidents from, 13, 16, 23, 54, 79, 84. 
statistics of, 265. 

Des Jardines Canal accident, 112. 

Draw-bridge accidents, 82, 97, 114. 

stopping as a safeguard against, 95. 
need of interlocking apparatus at, 195. 

Eames vacuum brake, 208. 
Eastern railroad, accident on, 125, 

Economy, cost of a small, 174. 

at risk of accident, 268. 



Employes railroad, casualties to, 243. 
Engineering, on American inventions, 221. 
English railways, train movement on, 162, 194. 
Erie railroad, accidents on, 63, 118, 120. 
France, statistics of accidents in, 259. 

panic produced in, by Verseilles accident, 60. 
Franklin Street, New York city, accident at, 207. 
Gait, William, report by, on accidents, 268. 
Gasconade river accident, 108. 
Germany, railroad accidents in, 261. 
Grand Trunk railway, accident on, 91. 
Great Eastern railway, accident on, 66. 
Great Northern railway, accidents on, 84, 149. 
Great Western railway, accidents on, 16, 43, 112. 

of Canada, accidents on, 31, 112. 

Hall's system of electric signals, 168. 

Harrison, T. E., extract from letter of, 210. 

Heeley, accident at, 209. 

Helmshire accident, 121. 

Highway crossings at level, accidents at, 165, 170, 244, 258. 

interlocking at, 195. 
Housatonic railroad, accident on, 151. 
Hudson River railroad, accident on, 78. 
Huskisson, William, death of, 3, 200. 
Inclines, accidents upon, 74, no, 121. 



2/8 INDEX. 

Interlocking, chapter relating to, 182. 
at draw-bridges, 97, 195. 

level crossings, 195. 
practical simplicity of, 189. 
use made of in England, 192. 
Investigation of accidents, no systematic, in America, 86. 

English, 85. 

Lake Shore railroad, accident on, n. 

Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad, accident on, 100. 
Lancashire & Yorkshire railroad, accident on, 121. 
Legislation against accidents, futility of 94, 109. 
as regards use of telegraphs, 64. 

interlocking at draws, 97. 

level crossings m 97. 
London passenger traffic, 162, 183. 
London & Brighton railway, accident on, 145. 
London & North Western railway, assaults on, 32, 38. 

accidents on, 72, 143. 
train brake used by, 222. 
Manchester & Liverpool railway, accidents on, 10, n, 45. 

opening of, 3. 
Massachusetts, statistics of accidents in, 156, 232-60. 

train-brakes in use in, 157, 214. 
Metropolitan Elevated railroad, accident on, 207. 

interlocking apparatus used by, 196. 
Midland railway, accident on, 209. 

protests against interlocking, 192. 
Miller's Platform and Buffer, chapter on, 49-57. 

accidents avoided by, 19, 53, 56, 70. 
in Massachusetts, 157. 

Mohawk Valley railroad, pioneer train on, 48. 
Morpeth, accident at, 209. 

Murders, number of, compared with the killed by railroad accidents, 242. 
New York City, passenger travel of, 184. 
New York, Providence & Boston railroad, accident on, 106. 
New York & New Haven railroad, accident on, 89. 
Newark, brake trials at, in 1874, 217. 
North Eastern railway, accident in, 209. 

brake trials on, 218. 
returns of brake-stoppages by, 211. 
Northern Pacific railroad, accident on, 108. 



INDEX. 279 

Norwalk accident, 89. 

Oil-tank accidents, 72, 150. 

Old Colony railroad accidents on, 20, 24, 174. 

Oscillation, accidents occasioned by, 50. 

Pacific railroad of Missouri, accident on, 108. 

Pennsylvania railroad, ballasting of, 248. 

English block in use on, 164. 

Penruddock, accident at, 143. 

Phillips, Wendell, on Revere accident, 141. 

Port Jervis accident, 118, 202, 218. 

Quarterly Review of 1825, article in, 199, 269. 

Railroad Gazette^ records of accidents kept by, 261. 

Rear-end collisions in America, 144, 151. 

Europe, 143. 
necessity of protection against, 159. 

Revere accident, 125, 172. 

improvements caused by, 153. 

lessons taught by, 159. 

meeting in consequence of, 161, 205. 

Richelieu River, accident at, 92. 

Shipton accident, 16, 216. 

Shrewsbury River draw, accident at, 96. 

Smith's vacuum brake, 208, 220, 226. 

popularity of in Great Britain, 220, 226. 
compared with Westinghouse, 218, 227. 

Statistics of railroad accidents, 230-70. 

Stopping trains, an insufficient safeguard at draw-bridges and level crossings, 

94 97> J 95- 

Stage-coach travelling, accidents in, 231. 
Stoves in case of accidents, 15, 41, 106. 
Suicides on railroads, 246. 
Tariffville accident, 107. 
Telegraph, accidents occasioned by use of, 66. 

use of, should be made compulsory, 64. 
Telegraphic signals, chapter on, 159. 
Telescoping, accidents from, 43. 
Thorpe, collision at, 67, 172. 



280 INDEX. 

Train-brake, chapters on, 199, 216. 

Board of Trade specifications relating to, 219. 
doubts concerning, 28. 
failures of, to work, in Great Britain, an. 
introduced on English roads, 29, 216. 
kinds of, used in Massachusetts, 157. 214. 
Sir Henry Tyler on, 222, 228. 
want of, occasioned Shipton accident, 19, 216. 
Trespassers on railroads, accidents to, 245. 

means of preventing, 245, 258. 
Tunnels, collisions in, 146, 149. 

Tyler, Captani H. W., investigated Claypole accident, 85. 
on Penruddock accident, 143. 

train-brakes, 222, 228. 
extracts from reports by, 192, 194, 228. 
Union Safety Signal Company, 168. 
United States, accidents In, 261. 

no investigation of, 86. 

Vermont & Massachusetts railroad, accident on, 112. 
Versailles, the, accident of 1842, 58. 

Wellington, Duke of, at Manchester & Liverpool opening, 3. 
Welwyn Tunnel, accident in, 149. 
Wemyss Bay Junction, accident at, 212. 
Westinghouse brake, chapter on, 199. 

accidents avoided by, 19, 209. 

in Newark, experiments, 217. 

objections urged against, 176. 

stoppages by, occasioned by triple valve, su 

use of, in Great Britain, 226. 

Massachusetts, 157, 214. 
Wollaston accident, 18, 20, 155, 172, 227. 




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