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CHAPTER. PAGE.

I THE DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON 3

II THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS 12

V TELESCOPING AND THE MILLER PLATFORM 43

VI THE VERSAILLES ACCIDENT 58

X THE NORWALK ACCIDENT 89

XX THE BATTLE OF THE BRAKES 216

PREFACE

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

During my term of public service, also, there have been four appliances, either introduced into use or now struggling for American recognition, my sense of the value of which, in connection with the railroad system, to both the traveling and general public, I could not easily overstate. These appliances are the MILLER PLATFORM and BUFFER, the WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE, and the INTERLOCKING and ELECTRIC SIGNAL SYSTEMS. To bring these into more general use through reports on railroad accidents as they occurred was one great aim with me throughout my official life. I am now not without hopes that the printing of this volume may tend to still further familiarize the public with these inventions, and thus hasten their more general adoption.

C. F. A. JR.

NOTES

RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.

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

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

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

THE DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON.

Though wholly attributable to his own carelessness, the death of so prominent a character as Mr. Huskisson, on such an occasion, could not but make a deep impression on the public mind. The fact that the dying man was carried seventeen miles in twenty-five minutes in search of rest and medical aid, served rather to stimulate the vague apprehension which thereafter for a time associated itself with the new means of transportation, and converted it into a dangerous method of carriage which called for no inconsiderable display of nerve on the part of those using it. Indeed, as respects the safety of travel by rail there is an edifying similarity between the impressions which prevailed in England forty-five years ago and those which prevail in China now; for, when as recently as 1875 it was proposed to introduce railroads into the Celestial Empire, a vigorous native protest was fulminated against them, in which, among other things scarcely less astounding, it was alleged that "in all countries where railroads exist they are considered a very dangerous mode of locomotion, and, beyond those who have very urgent business to transact, no one thinks of using them."

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

Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson's death, during a period of over eleven years, railroads enjoyed a remarkable and most fortunate exemption from accidents. During all that time there did not occur a single disaster resulting in any considerable loss of life; an immunity which seems to have been due to a variety of causes. Those early roads were, in the first place, remarkably well and thoroughly built, and were very cautiously operated under a light volume of traffic. The precautions then taken and the appliances in use would, it is true, strike the modern railroad superintendent as both primitive and comical; for instance, they involved the running of independent pilot locomotives in advance of all night passenger trains. Through all the years between 1830 and 1841, nevertheless, not a single really serious railroad disaster had to be recorded. This happy exemption was, however, quite as much due to good fortune as to anything else, as was well illustrated in the first accident at all serious in its character, which occurred,--an accident in its every circumstance, except loss of life, almost an exact parallel to the famous Revere disaster which happened nearly forty years later in Massachusetts. It chanced on the Manchester & Liverpool Railway on December 23, 1832. The second-class morning train had stopped at the Rainhill station to take in passengers, when those upon it heard through the dense fog another train, which had left Manchester forty-five minutes later, coming towards them at a high rate of speed. When it first became visible it was but one hundred and fifty yards off, and a collision was inevitable. Those in charge of the stationary train, however, succeeded in getting it under a slight headway, and in so much diminished the shock of the collision; but, notwithstanding, the last five carriages were injured, the one at the end being totally demolished. Though quite a number of the passengers were cut and bruised, and several were severely hurt, one only, strange to say, was killed.

THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS.

On the day of the Angola accident the eastern bound express train over the Lake Shore road, as it was then called, consisted of a locomotive, four baggage, express and mail cars, an emigrant and three first-class passenger coaches. It was timed to pass Angola, a small way station in the extreme western part of New York, at 1.30 P.M., without stopping; but on the day in question it was two hours and forty-five minutes late, and was consequently running rapidly. A third of a mile east of the station there is a shallow stream, known as Big Sister creek, flowing in the bottom of a ravine the western side of which rises abruptly to the level of the track, while on the eastern side there is a gradual ascent of some forty or fifty rods. This ravine was spanned by a deck bridge of 160 feet in length, at the east end of which was an abutment of mason work some fifty feet long connecting with an embankment beyond. It subsequently appeared that the forward axle in the rear truck of the rear car was slightly bent. The defect was not perceptible to the eye, but in turning round the space between the flanges of the wheels of that axle varied by three-fourths of an inch. As long as the car was travelling on an unbroken track, or as long as the wheels did not strike any break in the track at their narrowest point, this slight bend in the axle was of no consequence. There was a frog in the track, however, at a distance of 600 feet east of the Angola station, and it so happened that a wheel of the defective axle struck this frog in such a way as to make it jump the track. The rear car was instantly derailed. From the frog to the bridge was some 1200 feet. With the appliances then in use the train could not be stopped in this space, and the car was dragged along over the ties, swaying violently from side to side. Just before the bridge was reached the car next to the last was also thrown from the track, and in this way, and still moving at considerable speed, the train went onto the bridge. It was nearly across when the last car toppled off and fell on the north side close to the abutment. The car next to the rear, more fortunate, was dragged some 270 feet further, so that when it broke loose it simply slid some thirty feet down the embankment. Though this car was badly wrecked, but a single person in it was killed. His death was a very singular one. Before the car separated from the train, its roof broke in two transversely; through the fissure thus made this unfortunate passenger was partly flung, and it then instantly closed upon him.

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

This was a case of derailment aggravated by fire. It is safe to say that with the improved appliances since brought into use, it would be most unlikely to now occur under precisely the same circumstances on any well-equipped or carefully operated road. Derailments, of course, by broken axles or wheels are always possible, but the catastrophe at Angola was primarily due to the utter inability of those on the train to stop it, or even greatly to check its speed within any reasonable distance. Before it finally stood still the locomotive was half a mile from the frog and 1,500 feet from the bridge. Thus, when the rear cars were off the track, the speed and distance they were dragged gave them a lateral and violently swinging motion, which led to the final result. Though under similar circumstances now this might not happen, there is no reason why, circumstances being varied a little, the country should not again during any winter day be shocked by another Angola sacrifice. Certainly, so far as the danger from fire is concerned, it is an alarming fact that it is hardly less in 1879 than it was in 1867. This accumulative horror is, too, one of the distinctive features of American railroad accidents. In other countries holocausts like those at Versailles in 1842 and at Abergele in 1868 have from time to time taken place. They are, however, occasioned in other ways, and, as their occurrence is not regularly challenged by the most risky possible of interior heating apparatus, are comparatively infrequent. The passenger coaches used on this side of the Atlantic, with their light wood-work heavily covered with paint and varnish, are at best but tinder-boxes. The presence in them of stoves, hardly fastened to the floor and filled with burning wood and coal, involves a degree of risk which no one would believe ever could willingly be incurred, but for the fact that it is. No invention yet appears to have wholly met the requirements of the case. That they will be met, and the fearful possibility which now hangs over the head of every traveller by rail, that he may suddenly find himself doomed without possibility of escape to be roasted alive, will be at least greatly reduced hardly admits of question.

Turning now from the American to the English accident, it is singular to note how under very similar circumstances much the same fatality resulted from wholly different causes. It happened on the day immediately preceding Christmas, and every train which at that holiday season leaves London is densely packed, for all England seems then to gather away from its cities to the country hearths. Accordingly, the ten o'clock London express on the Great Western Railway, when it left Oxford that morning, was made up of no less than fifteen passenger carriages and baggage vans, drawn by two powerful locomotives and containing nearly three hundred passengers. About seven miles north of Oxford, as the train, moving at a speed of some thirty to forty miles an hour, was rounding a gentle curve in the approach to the bridge over the little river Cherwell, the tire of one of the wheels of the passenger coach next behind the locomotive broke, throwing it off the track. For a short distance it was dragged along in its place; but almost immediately those in charge of the locomotives noticed that something was wrong, and, most naturally and with the very best of intensions, they instantly did the very worst thing which under the circumstances it was in their power to do,--they applied their brakes and reversed their engines; their single thought was to stop the train. With the train equipped as it was, however, had these men, instead of crowding on their brakes and reversing their engines, simply shut off their steam and by a gentle application of the brakes checked the speed gradually and so as to avoid any strain on the couplings, the carriages would probably have held together and remained upon the road-bed. Instead of this, however, the sudden checking of the two ponderous locomotives converted them into an anvil, as it were, upon which the unfortunate leading carriage already off the rails was crushed under the weight and impetus of those behind it. The train instantly zig-zagged in every direction under the pressure, the couplings which connected it together snapping, and the carriages, after leaving the rails to the right and left and running down the embankment of about thirteen feet in height, came to a stand-still at last, several of them in the reverse order from that which they had held while in the train. The first carriage was run over and completely destroyed; the five rear ones were left alone upon the road-bed, and of these two only were on the rails; of the ten which went down the embankment, two were demolished. In this disaster thirty-four passengers lost their lives, and sixty-five others, besides four employ?s of the company, were injured.

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

On this point of the resisting power of modern car construction, indeed, it seemed as if a result had been reached which did away with the danger of longitudinal crushing. Between 1873 and 1878 a series of accidents had occurred on the American roads of which little was heard at the time for the simple reason that they involved no loss of life,--they belonged in the great category of possible disasters which might have happened, had they not been prevented. Trains going in opposite directions and at full speed had come in collision while rounding curves; trains had run into earth-slides, and had been suddenly stopped by derailment; in every such case, however, the Westinghouse brake and the Miller car construction had, when in use, proved equal to the emergency and the passengers on the trains had escaped uninjured. The American mechanic had accordingly grown firm in his belief that, so far as any danger from the crushing of cars was concerned,--unless indeed they were violently thrown down an embankment or precipitated into an abyss,--the necessary resisting strength had been secured and the problem practically solved. That such was not the case in America in 1878 any more than in England in 1875, except within certain somewhat narrow limits, was unexpectedly proven by a disaster which occurred your face. Let me hear it, I pray."

Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.

"I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city! How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'"

"But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr. Livingstone?"

Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.

"Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body alert.

"Yes," he said, "I have."

He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging down the river.

Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open. Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.

"You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity.

"I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china, and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so drew and held Hanaud's eyes.

Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and crossed once more to the window.

"Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr. Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you, too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his shoulders in astonishment.

"Yes," said Ricardo.

"He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?" Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man. It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago, turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?"

"No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?"

Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and brown.

"Look!" he said. "What is that?"

Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.

"It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus."

Hanaud nodded.

"It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name."

"What name?" asked Ricardo.

"Mescal."

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