Notes on Railroad Accidents
by Charles Francis Adams · English · Gutenberg #48693 · 422,539 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Notes on Railroad Accidents
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Notes on Railroad Accidents
Author: Charles Francis Adams
Release date: April 12, 2015 [eBook #48693]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48693
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON RAILROAD ACCIDENTS ***
Transcriber's Note:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by
=equal signs=.
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed.
Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where
the missing quote should be placed.
[Illustration: cover]
[Illustration: title page]
NOTES
ON
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.
AUTHOR OF "RAILROADS: THEIR ORIGIN AND PROBLEMS."
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET
COPYRIGHT
1879
By G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I THE DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON 3
II THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS 12
III THE WOLLASTON ACCIDENT 20
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 111
XIII CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS 117
XIV THE REVERE CATASTROPHE 125
XV REAR-END COLLISIONS 144
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 216
XXI THE RAILROAD JOURNEY RESULTING IN
DEATH 230
XXII THE RAILROAD DEATH-RATE 241
XXIII AMERICAN AS COMPARED WITH FOREIGN
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS 250
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 struggling for
American recognition, my sense of the value of which, in connection
with the railroad system, to both the traveling and general public,
I could not easily overstate. These appliances are the MILLER
PLATFORM and BUFFER, the WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE, and the INTERLOCKING
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 throughout 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 1, 1879._
NOTES
ON
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 follows also that the results
which ordinarily flow from the extinguishment of the individual
life are pitiably small. Any person curious to satisfy himself as
to the truth of either or both of these propositions 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 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
consequence 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 interesting. If carried too far it is apt, as
matter for light reading, to become somewhat monotonous; though,
none the less, about these, as about everything 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.
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 accomplished
fact, the eventful 15th 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 return to Liverpool in the afternoon. Their number was
large and they filled eight trains of carriages, 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 locomotive _Northumbrian_, upon
which George Stephenson 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 Parliament 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 exerted 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 arranged that the locomotives
were to replenish their supplies of water. As soon as the trains
had stopped, disregarding every caution against their so doing,
the excited and joyous passengers left their carriages and mingled
together, eagerly congratulating one another upon the unalloyed
success of the occasion. 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 Wellington, 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 having 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 manner 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 between the tracks, the _Rocket_ locomotive--the same
famous _Rocket_ which a year previous had won the five hundred
pounds prize, and by so doing established forever the feasibility
of rapid steam locomotion--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 commotion naturally ensued. In addition to being lame,
Mr. Huskisson seemed also under these circumstances to be quite
agitated, and, instead of quietly standing against the side of the
carriage and allowing the _Rocket_ to pass, he nervously tried to
get around the open carriage door, which was swinging 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 circumstances 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 reënter 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 _Northumbrian_ locomotive was attached,
and in twenty-five minutes was carried to Eccles, a distance of
seventeen 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 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 Commons to
the wool-sack and the Lords. Among the excursionists of the opening
day he had on the 16th, occasion to write a brief note to Macvey
Napier, editor of the _Edinburgh 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 exquisite oratorical skill,
that to read it is still a pleasure. 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 possible for
me to avoid the reflections which crowded 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 melancholy 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 representative!"
Though wholly attributable to his own carelessness, 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 apprehension 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 no 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 it
was proposed to introduce railroads into the Celestial Empire, a
vigorous native protest was fulminated against them, in which, among
other things scarcely less astounding, 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 carriages" (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 considerable obstacles. Even in those melancholy accidents
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 encountered on the
road."
Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson's death, during a period of
over eleven years, railroads enjoyed 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 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 between 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 illustrated 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 happened 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 passengers, 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 carriages were injured, the one at
the end being totally demolished. Though quite a number of the
passengers 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 passengers in them
tumbled about topsy-turvey; nor, as they were securely locked in,
could they even extricate 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 interval of time between them, and are curious
as illustrating very forcibly the peculiar dangers to which those
travelling by rail in the two countries are subjected under almost
precisely similar circumstances. The American accident referred to
was that popularly known on account of its exceptionally harrowing
details as the "Angola horror," of December 18, 1867, while the
English accident was that which occurred at Shipton-on-Cherwell on
December 24, 1874.
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 consequently 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 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 perceptible
to the eye, but in turning round the space between 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
Angola 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 1200 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 violently 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 separated from the train, its roof broke in two transversely;
through the fissure thus made this unfortunate passenger was partly
flung, and it then instantly 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 violently struck on
one of its ends, they were precipitated in an inextricable mass upon
one of the overturned stoves, while the other fell upon them from
above. A position more horrible could hardly be imagined. Few, if
any, were probably killed outright. Some probably were suffocated;
the greatest 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 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 similar
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 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.
Accordingly, 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 passenger carriages and baggage vans, drawn by two
powerful 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 approach 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 something was wrong, and,
most naturally and with the very best of intensions, they instantly
did the very worst thing 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 carriage already off the rails was
crushed under the weight and impetus of those behind it. The train
instantly zig-zagged in every direction under the pressure, the
couplings which connected it together snapping, 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 demolished. In this disaster
thirty-four passengers lost their lives, and sixty-five others,
besides four employés of the company, were injured.
At the time it occurred the Shipton accident was 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 sufficiently 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 between the resisting strength of
car construction and the train-weight momentum to which it may be
subjected 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 directions and at full speed
had come in collision while rounding curves; trains had run into
earth-slides, and had been suddenly stopped by derailment; in every
such case, however, the Westinghouse brake and the Miller car
construction had, when in use, proved equal to the emergency and
the passengers on the trains had escaped uninjured. The American
mechanic had accordingly grown firm in his belief that, so far as
any danger from the crushing of cars was concerned,--unless indeed
they were violently thrown down an embankment or precipitated 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 certain
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.
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 behind the
time assigned for it. Meanwhile a regular freight train had left
Boston, going south and occupying 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 admitted 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 circumstances 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 derangements 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 attempt 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 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 reckless 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
derailment took place. The train-brake was necessarily under the
control of the engineer of the second locomotive, but the danger
signal was immediately 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
Westinghouse in his patents, but at best remained only partially
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 regarded 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 following passenger cars left the rails. The
locomotives, after going a short distance, swung off to the left
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 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
withdraw one of the cars from service for even a single trip. Not a
passenger was hurt. This train consisted of fourteen cars: but at
Wollaston, the fourteen 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 freely
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 locomotives 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 almost 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 explain, all four of the
men in charge of the locomotives, 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 consequently able, as soon
as they could gather themselves up, to take the measures necessary
to extinguish the fires in their locomotives which otherwise would
speedly have spread to the _débris_ of the train. Had they not done
so nothing could have saved the large number of passengers confined
in the shattered cars.
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 same, for between
1836 and 1874 hardly any improvement as respects 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 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 considerable 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 railroad managers. The want
of such a brake and the absence of proper means of communication
between the parts of the train had directly and obviously caused the
murderous destructiveness of the accident. Yet in the investigation
which ensued 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 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
ratio_ of 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.
While, how ever, a disaster like that of December 24, 1874, might
not convince, it did compel: in spite of professed "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 corpses 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 success of
any appliance for this purpose was held to be yet proven. What
further proof would be deemed conclusive did not appear, but the
history of the discussion before and since is not without value.
There is, indeed, something almost ludicrously characteristic 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 distanced; 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 communication 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, in consequence of two accidents to
trains by fires, a circular on this subject 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 of
communication existed."[1] As none of these accidents had resulted
in any considerable number of funerals the railway managers wholly
failed to see the propriety of this circular, or the necessity of
taking 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 instances
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 situation known to the servants of the company in charge of
the train. Recent occurrences also of a criminal nature in passenger
railway trains have excited 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
9th, and was then absorbing the public attention to the almost
entire exclusion of everything else.
[1] The bell-cord in America, notwithstanding the theoretical
objections which have been urged to its adoption in other countries,
has proved such a simple and perfect protection against dangers
from inability 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 falling 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 suffocated, while no less than thirteen others sustained
injuries in jumping from the train.
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 interesting as they were, are too long for incidental
statement; this, however, is not the case with some of the other
occurrences. For instance, the Board of Trade circular was issued on
July 30th; on July 7th, a year earlier, the following took place on
the London & 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,
suspicious visage. Though one of the two gentlemen noticed this
peculiarity as he entered the carriage, 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 carriage, 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 remained 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 name, and struck
him on the forehead, 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 narrow 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 passenger 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 moments, fainted away and fell upon the floor.
The struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, 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
position the two succeeded in holding him, he striking and stabbing
at both of them with his knife, shouting loudly all the time, and
desperately endeavoring to rise and throw them off. They finally,
however, got his knife away from him, and then kept him down until
the train at last drew up at Camdentown station. When the ticket
collector opened the compartment door at that place he found the
four passengers on the floor, the woman senseless 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 appeared 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 statement which had in
it something quite touching; he said that he saw the two gentlemen
talking together, and, as he thought, making motions towards 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 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 forty-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 containing
£17, and began violently to shout and gesticulate. He then tried
to clamber through the window, getting his body and one leg out,
and when his fellow passengers, catching hold of his other leg,
succeeded 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 female shrieks. The
man was suffering from _delirium tremens_.
About a year later, in December, 1865, a similar case occurred
which, however, had in it strong elements of the ludicrous. A
clergyman, laboring under great indignation and excitement, and
without 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 passengers, 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 extraordinary. The poor clergyman,--a
respected incumbent 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 columns of the newspapers,
without producing the slightest effect on the managers of the
railway companies. 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 company
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 although 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 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 compartments who were witnessing
the scene from the windows of the train were indefatigable in
their efforts to attract the attention of the guards by means of
the communication cord, but with no result. For two miles the
unfortunate 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 sufficiently illustrate
this instance of British railroad conservatism, and indicate the
tremendous nature of the pressure which has been required to even
partially force the American bell-cord into use in that country. 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 appearance 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 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-hafted 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
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 struggling
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
remaining 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 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
experience 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 amenable disposition. The Angola disaster has
been referred 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 passengers 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 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.
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 December, a
day which seems to have been peculiarly unfortunate 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 carriage, which happened to
be crowded with passengers, eight of whom were killed on the spot
while 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 railroad accidents resulting in
loss of life, affords a curious 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, everything 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.[2] Accordingly, down to somewhere about the year 1847, when
the practice was finally abolished by act of Parliament, we find in
all cases of English railroad accidents resulting in death, mention
of the deodand assessed by coroner'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 sympathies or the indignation of the
jury. In November, 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 appear to be any circumstances rendering the
corporation 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 employés. As, however, 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 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.
[2] "_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 superstitious 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._
Recurring, however, to the accident of December 24, 1861, the
numerous casualties in that case were due to 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 platforms between 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 vehicles in the train would be enclosed in each other
somewhat like the slides of a partially shut telescope.
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 respects crushing there is little to be said. It is
a mere question of proportions,--resisting strength opposed to
momentum. So long as trains go at great speed it is inevitable that
they will occasionally 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 depend
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,[3] 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.
[3] Ante pp. 18-19.
Telescoping, however, was an incident of crushing, and a peculiarly
American incident, which is not without a certain historical
interest; for the particular 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 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 literally 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 locomotive
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 presently 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.[4] "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
between 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 almost unimproved upon, except by the introduction
of a spring upon which coupler and buffer played. The only other
considerable change made in the earlier days of car construction
was by no means an improvement, inasmuch as it introduced the new
and wholly unnecessary danger of telescoping.
[4] Railroads: their Origin and Problems, p. 49.
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
practical 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 difficulty, 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 uncorrected. 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 induced to abandon those methods.
The two great dangers of telescoping and oscillation were directly
due to this system of car construction and of train coupling,--and
telescoping 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 American 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 different levels; or, if the couplings, as was more
probable, held and the train did not part, the swaying 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 principles. 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 resisting 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 increase the weight and to
perfect the construction of the vehicles to insure all the safety in
this respect of which travel by rail admitted.
Simple as these improvements were, and apparently 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
maintained 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 Miller'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 inventing theoretical
objections to the appliance far exceeded 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 invention was founded,--the principles
of tension, cohesion and direct resistance,--at last forced their
way into general acceptance. The long-urged objection 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
education 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 construction 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 thoroughly 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 construction, 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 wagon was struck, but, a portion of his harness getting 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 dragging 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 railroad 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
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 windows 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 similar 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 approaching 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
embankment, 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 were telescoped and demolished,
and all their unfortunate 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
Brimfield 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 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.
CHAPTER VI.
THE VERSAILLES ACCIDENT.
Going back once more to the early days, a third of a century
since, before yet the periodical recurrence of slaughter had
caused either train-brake or Miller platform to be imagined as
possibilities, before, 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, drowning, 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 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 locomotives
were required to draw it. As it was moving at a high rate of speed
between Bellevue and Meudon, the axle of the foremost of these
two locomotives 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 _débris_. 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 portion of those in them were enabled to extricate themselves, 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 hopelessly 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 injured; 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 holocaust of the most hideous description. Not only did
whole families perish together,--in one case no less than eleven
members of the same family sharing a common fate,--but the remains
of such as were destroyed could neither be identified nor separated.
In one case a female foot was alone recognizable, while in others
the bodies were calcined and and fused into an indistinguishable
mass. The Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to inquire
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 laggard enough in its
adoption of the new invention, and now it seemed for a time as if
the Versailles disaster was to operate as a barrier in the way of
all further railroad development. Persons availed themselves 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 terrible. There were circumstances connected with
it, too, which gave it a sort of moral significance,--contrasting
so suddenly the joyous return from the country _fête_ 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
station 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 station. In those days, as compared with the
present, the cars were but egg-shells, and the shock was terrific.
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 distance 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 accordingly
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 pleasure. Five cars in all were burned, and sixty-six persons
perished; the injured numbered more than a hundred.[5]
[5] A collision very similar to that at Camphill occurred upon the
Erie railway at a point about 20 miles west of Port Jervis on the
afternoon 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
consisting of 50 loaded cars from the hanch took the main line at
Lackawaxen. 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
proceedings. "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 road] 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 employés, 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.
Of this disaster nothing could be said either in excuse or in
extenuation; it was not only one of the worst description, but
it was one of that description the occurrence of which is most
frequent. An excursion train, while running against time on a
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 those which have happened and those
hereafter surely destined to happen,--the full responsibility
does not rest upon the unfortunate or careless subordinate;--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 telegraph 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 experimental
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 similar accidents still from time to time reported.
One occurred near St. Louis, for instance, on July 4, 1879. The
simple fact is that to now operate single-track roads without the
constant aid of the telegraph, as a means of blocking them for every
irregular train, indicates a degree of wanton carelessness, or an
excess of incompetence, for which adequate 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 stupid conservatism of ordinary men when
brought to the consideration of something to which they are not
accustomed. On this very point of controlling 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 reliance 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.[6] 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.
[6] Chapter XIV, XVI.
CHAPTER VII.
TELEGRAPHIC COLLISIONS.
And yet, even with the wires in active use, collisions will
occasionally take place. They have sometimes, indeed, even been
caused by the telegraph, so that railroad officials at two adjacent
stations 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 accuracy, or the delegating to inexperienced subordinates
the work which can be properly performed only by a principal. This
was singularly illustrated in a terrible collision which took place
at Thorpe, between Norwich and Great Yarmouth, on the Great Eastern
Railway in England, on the 10th of September, 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 until it
received permission by the telegraph to proceed. On the evening of
the disaster the express train was somewhat behind its time, and
the inspector 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 proceed.
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 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 drawing the mail train was swept
away as the other locomotive seemed to rush on top of it, while
the carriages of both trains followed until a mound of locomotives
and shattered cars was formed which the descending torrents alone
hindered from becoming a funeral pyre. So sudden was the collision
that the driver of one of the engines did not apparently 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 fortunately, there were
a number of empty cars between the locomotives and the carriages in
which the passengers were seated, and they were utterly demolished;
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; making 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 which the force of the most severe
shock is expended, 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 catastrophe in which they had been
unconscious participants.
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 operator 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 thickened 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
consisted 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
train, knowing that it was behind time, were running 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 locomotives came together before he
reached the ground. The engineer of the east-bound train succeeded
both in reversing his locomotive and in applying his airbrake, 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 uninjured that four hours later, other
locomotives having 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 destinations. So admirably did
Miller's construction serve its purpose in this case, that, while
the superintendent of the road, who happened to be in the rear
sleeping car of one of the trains, merely reported that he "felt the
shock quite sensibly," passengers 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 locomotives, but the flames were speedily
extinguished. Of the train hands three were killed and two injured,
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 carriages were
crushed like nut-shells under it,--the resisting power was equal to
it. The failure of appliances at one point in the operation of the
road was made good by their perfection at another.
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," perhaps 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 Holyhead, the speed was somewhat increased,
two hours and five minutes only being allowed for it. Abergele 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 thirteen carriages
in all, which were occupied, as the carriages of that train usually
were, by a large number 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
Western 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 employé, 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 before 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 outstripped 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
expanse 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. Seeing 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 carriages 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 survivor sustained any injury. There
was no maiming. 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 moment 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, however, 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 locomotive, 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 concurred 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 extraordinary 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 of the carriage,
when a fearful sight met my view. Already the whole of the three
passengers' carriages in front of ours, the vans, and the engine
were enveloped 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 explosion and conflagration. I had actually got out almost
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 conflagration, 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 volumes around the spreading flames."
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 thirteen as those of females, while the sex
of ten others could not be determined. The body of one passenger,
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 collection of
articles found on its site. It included diamonds 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 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 difficult to reach of all the
many sources of danger against which those managing railroads
have unsleepingly to contend:--a somewhat defective discipline,
aggravated by a little not unnatural carelessness. 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 Abergele 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 employés incident to exposure, and the consequent neglect of
precautions on their part, 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, bearing 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 lantern swung, and instantly gave the
signal to apply the brakes. It was too late to avoid the collision;
but what ensued had in it, so far as the engineer was concerned,
an element of the heroic, which his companion, the fireman of the
engine, afterwards described on the witness stand with a directness
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 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 proposed
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
"looking 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 instant bridge, river, locomotive,
cars, and the glittering surface of the ice were wrapped in a sheet
of flame. At the same time the strain proved too severe for the
trestlework, which gave way, precipitating the locomotive, tender,
baggage cars, and one passenger car onto the ice, through which they
instantly crushed and sank deep out of sight beneath the water.
Of the remaining seven cars of the passenger 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 preventable, 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.
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 happened 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, because 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 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
railroads generally follow water-courses, would not infrequently
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 employés. Such does not appear to have been the case at
New Hamburg, 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.
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 derailment 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
completely around and then driven up the slope of the cutting, where
it toppled over like a rearing 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 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 forward ones were in several cases
lifted one on top of the other or forced partly up the slope of
the cutting, whence they fell back again, crushing the passengers
beneath them.
This accident occurred on the 21st of June, 1870; it was very
thoroughly investigated by Captain Tyler on behalf of the Board of
Trade, with the apparent 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 employés 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 perfect human workmanship must ever remain liable, and
this had revealed itself under exactly those conditions which must
involve the most disastrous consequences.
The English accident did, however, establish one thing, if nothing
else; it showed the immeasurable superiority of the system of
investigation pursued in the case of railroad accidents in England
over that pursued in this country. There a trained expert after
the occurrence of each disaster visits the spot and sifts the
affair to the very bottom, locating responsibility and pointing out
distinctly the measures 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
investigations, they are conducted with such an entire disregard of
method and lead to such inadequate conclusions. Indeed, how could it
be otherwise?--The same man never investigates two accidents, 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,
together with the precautions taken by the company, usually and in
this particular case, to test the wheels of freight cars moving
over its road, especially during times of severe cold.--Second,
the conduct of those in charge of the freight train immediately
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 signaling the accident on
the part of those in charge of the disabled train, and how much
time elapsed between the accident and the collision?--Fourth, what,
if any, improved appliances would have enabled 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 responsibility, and very
possibly they were justified in so doing; though it is extremely
questionable whether Captain Tyler would have arrived at a similar
conclusion. There is a strong probability that the investigation
went off, so to speak, on a wholly false issue,--turned on the
draw-bridge frenzy instead of upon the question of care. So far
as the verdict declared that the disaster was due to a collision
between a passenger train and a derailed oil car, and not to the
existence of a draw in the bridge on which it happened to occur, it
was, indeed, entitled to respect, and yet it was on this very point
that it excited the most criticism. Loud commendation was heard
through the press of the Connecticut 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 nuisance. 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 Albany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately better counsels
prevailed, and, as the public recovered its equilibrium, the matter
was allowed to drop.
The Connecticut law in question, however, originated 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 Connecticut, on the 6th of May, 1853.
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 passenger 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 applicant for an engineer's situation. This was his third
trip over the road, as substitute. In approaching the bridge at
Norwalk he apparently wholly neglected 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 immediately 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 appear 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 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 _débris_, and itself partially submerged.
The succeeding or third passenger 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 compartment 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 passengers 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 extricate themselves; indeed, more than
one of the passengers 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 on the Grand Trunk railway of Canada.
In this case a large party of emigrants, over 500 in number and
chiefly Poles, Germans and Norwegians of the better class, had
landed at Quebec and were being forwarded on a special train to
their destination in the West. With their baggage they filled
thirteen cars. The Grand Trunk on the way to Montreal crosses the
Richelieu river at Beloeil 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 inquest, had been systematically
disobeyed, it having 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 became 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 under 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 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 possible. They lay heaped upon one another like sacks, dressed
in the traditional blue clothing of the German people. * * * A
child was got at and removed nine hours after the accident, being
uninjured in its dead mother's arms."
The accident happened at 2 A.M., and before sundown 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 extenuation of which nothing was to
be said. It befell, however, a body of comparatively friendless
emigrants, and excited not a tithe of the painful interest which yet
attaches to the similar accident to the Boston express at Norwalk.
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 signals. 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
entering 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 unreasoning 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 to 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. Precautions against
danger in each case are unquestionably proper and they cannot be
too perfect, but to have recourse to stopping either in the one
case or the other simply reveals an utter ignorance of the great
advance which has been made in railroad signals 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 accidents to night trains.
The machinery by means of which both draws and grade crossings
can be protected, will be referred to in another connection,[7]
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 experience of Massachusetts' roads
have those in charge of locomotives, after stopping and while moving
at a slow rate of speed, actually run themselves into draws with
their eyes open, and afterwards 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 21st 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 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 moving
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 employé 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 employé 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
slightly open so as to disconnect the tracks; thus causing the
derailment of the train, which subsequently plunged over the side
of the bridge. Fortunately the tide was out, or there would have
been a terrible loss of life; as it was, some seventy persons 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.
[7] Chapters XVII and XVIII.
Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive record 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.
Altogether, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, these resulted
in the death of five employés and injury 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
investigation of all the American accidents reported would seem to
be that a statute provision making compulsory 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.
CHAPTER XI.
BRIDGE ACCIDENTS.
Great as were the terrors inspired by the Norwalk 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 lanterns by night,
without any system of alarms or interlocking. 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 accidents at draws have
been comparatively rare and unattended with any considerable loss
of life, it has been far otherwise with the rest of the structures
of which the draw forms a part. Bridge accidents 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 important
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 improved 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. 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 consist chiefly of a
better material, or a more scientific 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 accidents which happened, the one at
Ashtabula, Ohio, on the 29th of December, 1876, and the other at
Tariffville, Connecticut, on the 15th 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 dispute over the
presidential succession, then the subject uppermost in the minds of
all. A blinding northeasterly 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,
considerably behind its time, and had been started only with great
difficulty and with the assistance of four locomotives. 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 darkness 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, being in all two locomotives and eleven cars,
in the order named, containing, as nearly as can be ascertained,
190 human beings, of whom 170 were passengers. 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 abutments. 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 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 forward 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 began at the point where the pressure was
heaviest, under the two locomotives and at the west abutment. 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 locomotive
and the cars immediately behind it off to the left and quite clear
of a straight line drawn between the two abutments; then almost
immediately the other truss gave way and the whole bridge fell, but
in doing so swung slightly to the 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 minutes, 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 helpless, and more yet simply pinned down to watch, in the
possession as full as helpless of all their faculties, the rapid
approach of the flames. The number of those killed outright seems
to have been surprisingly 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 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 immediate 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
belonging 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 forbidding 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 disaster much was said at the time in language most
unnecessarily 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 opposite directions. The strain under which it
yielded was not a particularly severe one, even taken in connection
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 ignorance
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 Angola. 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 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. Meanwhile 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.[8]
[8] The Angola was probably the most impressively horrible of the
many "stove accidents." That which 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.
But a few days more than a year after the Ashtabula 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 examination. All that can be said is that during the
year 1877 no serious accident due to the inherent weakness of any
bridge occcurred on the 70,000 miles of American railroad. Neither,
so far as can be ascertained, 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 returning 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 evidence that its strength had since been
unduly impaired by neglect or exposure. It should, therefore, 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 locomotive 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 crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three
others injured.[9]
[9] Of the same general character with the Tariffville and Ashtabula
accidents were those which occurred on November 1, 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
accident, whether it was occasioned by weakness of the bridge or the
derailment upon it of a freight car.
Naturally the popular inference was at once drawn that this was
a mere repetition of the Ashtabula experience,--that the fearful
earlier lesson had been thrown away on a corporation either
unwilling or not caring to learn. The newspapers far and wide
resounded with ill considered denunciation, 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 superficial 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 weakness 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 useless. 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
substituting for it another which has been the fruitful source of
some of the worst railroad disasters on record.[10]
[10] "The objectionable and dangerous practice also employed on some
railways of assisting trains up inclines by means of pilot engines
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, p. 15._
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 Ashtabula 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 only is the average railroad superintendent accustomed
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 depend 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 disaster 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 16th of
June, 1870, but, though forcible enough as a reminder, it was tame
indeed in comparison with the Des Jardines Canal disaster, which
is still remembered though it happened so long ago as the 17th 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 usual in Canada at that season, it was covered by ice some two
feet in thickness. On the afternoon of the 17th of March as the
local accommodation train from Hamilton was nearing the bridge,
its locomotive, 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 headlong
down upon the frozen surface of the canal below, 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 intervened 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 falling 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 crushed 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 as solid as a rock! Yet of four persons in the baggage
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 passenger 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 exception.
There were two circumstances about this disaster worthy of especial
notice. In the first place, as well as can now be 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 circumstances the derailment of a locomotive
upon any bridge can mean only destruction; it meant it then,
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 sufficiently 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 derailment 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
furnished 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 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.
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 decided weight of opinion has been in favor of the strongest
and closest couplings, so that under no circumstances 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 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.
Accordingly when the locomotive broke through the Des Jardines
bridge, it dragged the rest of the train hopelessly after it. This
certainly would not have happened 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 terrible consequences which have ensued from the
separation 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 perfectly 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 passenger cars, all of
which except the last passed safely over the fractured rail. The
last car was apparently 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 embankment,
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 embankment. 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. Modern improvements have, however, created
safeguards sufficient to prevent the recurrence of other accidents
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 before it could be stopped, although the engineer had
instant notice of it and reversed his locomotive. 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, sixteen 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 14th of April,
1876. The train was a long one, consisting of the locomotive, three
baggage and express, and seven passenger 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 portion 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 description. 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 Helmshere, a station some
fourteen miles north of Manchester, 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 _fête_ at the Bellevue
Gardens in Manchester on the 3d, upon the conclusion of which some
twenty-five hundred persons crowded at once upon the return trains.
Of these there were, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road, three; the
first consisting of fourteen, the second of thirty-one, and the last
of twenty-four carriages: and they were started, with intervals of
ten 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 succeeded 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 immediately
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 to stop them, yet did reduce their
speed; the collision nevertheless was terrific. The force of the
blow, so far as the advancing train was concerned, expended itself
on the locomotive, which was demolished, 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
clambered out of the trains and rushed frantically about, impeding
every effort to clear away the _débris_ 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 out 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 prevent such disasters as those at Abergele or
Helmshere. In these two instances alone the want of them cost
over fifty lives. In railroad mechanics 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.
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 remain a subject for
prayerful meditation to all those who may at any time be entrusted
with the immediate operating of railroads. It was terribly dramatic,
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 calling,
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 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
finding objections than in overcoming them."
[Illustration: map]
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. Between 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 branch was equipped with
but a single track, and was operated wholly by schedule without
any reliance on the telegraph; and, indeed, there were not even
telegraphic offices 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 Saugus branch, as the loop-road was called, began. The
accompanying diagram shows the relative position 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 somewhat 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 always subject to the final test the organization
and discipline of companies and the capacity of superintendents. 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 weakness everywhere which was brought to
light under that sudden stress. During the week ending with that
Saturday evening upon which the disaster occurred 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-meetings upon its
line. The number of passengers going over it had accordingly risen
from about one hundred and ten thousand, the full summer average,
to over one hundred and forty thousand; while instead 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 increase 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 regulations of the road, and need expect
no assistance from headquarters. This, too, in spite of the fact
that, including the Saugus branch, no less than ninety-three of the
entire one hundred and fifteen miles of road operated by the company
were supplied only with a single track. The whole train movement,
both of the main line and of the branches, intricate in the extreme
as it was, thus depended solely on a schedule arrangement and the
watchful intelligence of individual employés. 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 employés 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 travellers which continually blocked it up.
Taken altogether the situation illustrated in a very striking manner
that singular reliance of the corporation on the individuality
and intelligence of its employés, which in another connection is
referred to as one of the most striking characteristics of American
railroad 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 accommodation 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 into the rear of the
accommodation train; but it was indirectly caused by the delays
and irregularity in movement of the two branch trains. It will be
noticed that, according to the schedule, both of the branch trains
should have preceded the accommodation 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 behind its
time, and it was followed forty minutes later, not by the second
branch train, but by the accommodation train, which in its turn was
twenty-five minutes late. Thirteen minutes afterwards the second
Saugus branch train, which should have preceded, 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, however, on this occasion was reduced,
through the delay 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 advance of a fast express train, with an interval
of twenty minutes between them.
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 employé in charge of the signals
and switches there, exercising his common sense, had been in the
custom of moving any delayed 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 employé in charge there had used the branch or other main track
as a siding. On the day of the accident this employé 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 involved
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 remembered, had left
Boston at about seven o'clock, instead 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 confusion 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. Accordingly, when the Boston train
reached the junction 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 development, there was something ludicrous about
the spectacle. Here was a road utterly unable to accommodate its
passengers with cars, while a succession of trains were standing
idle for hours, because a locomotive had broken down ten miles off.
The telegraph 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 immediately 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
express. 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 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 various 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 somewhat as
follows: "The branch train," he should have argued to himself, "is
stopped, and it is stopped because the train which should have left
Lynn at six o'clock has not yet arrived; but, under the 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 afternoon 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 reasoning 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 conductor of the accommodation train was equally persuaded 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 employés along the line,
who, though they noticed 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, driving a mist in from the sea which lay in banks over
the marshes, lifting at times so that distant objects were quite
visible, and then obscuring them in its heavy folds. Consequently it
did not at all follow, 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 another mischance. The tail-lights in use by
the company 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 standing at this station would have been
visible for a very considerable distance down the track in the
direction of Boston, and even on the night of the accident they
were probably visible for a sufficient distance in which to stop
any train approaching at a reasonable rate of speed. Unfortunately
the engineer 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
approaching 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 his 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 between them. The express train was, however, moving
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 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 interval sufficed only to reduce the speed of
the colliding 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 delayed 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 locomotive. One of them who survived
the disaster, though grievously injured, described how he was
carelessly watching a young man standing 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 memory;
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 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 _débris_, 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 locomotive
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 consequently
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 crushed 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 express
train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, 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 destroyed.
This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine persons, and
in more 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 crushing, 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 injuries and for the
protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if
ever, been exceeded. Crushing, sc
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/48693