Notes on Railroad Accidents

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.

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.