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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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 Belœil 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.