Railway accident

“ We have always thought that, except to lawyers and railway carriage and locomotive builders, railway accidents were great misfortunes, but it is evident we were wrong and we hasten to acknowledge our error. Speaking on Thursday with a respectable broker about the heavy damages (£2,000) given the day before on account of the Tottenham accident against the Eastern Counties Company in the Court of Exchequer, he observed, “It is rather good when these things happen as it moves the stock. ”

“ Being struck or run over by a train while standing or walking on the track is the largest single cause of “railway accidents.” Workmen are killed and injured in this way, both while on duty and when going to and from their work; passengers, with or without right, go in front of trains at stations and at highway crossings at grade level; and trespassers are killed and injured in large numbers on railways everywhere, at and near stations, at crossings, and out on the open road, where they have no shadow of right. ”

“ The question of the liability of railway companies in the event of personal accident through parcels falling from a rack in the compartments of passenger trains has been raised in the Midlands. In December last, a tailor named Round was travelling from Dudley to Stourbridge, and, on the train being drawn up at Round Oak Station, a hamper was jerked from the racks and fell with such force as to cause him serious injury. ”

“ Of course it must be admitted that, taken as a whole, the dangers incident to railway travelling are materially greater in America than in any country of Europe. Still the destruction of life and limb is nothing frightful,—the wonder rather is that so few are hurt. Perhaps you will not believe it, yet the truth of the fact remains, that in the year 1874, throughout the whole of Massachusetts, but one passenger was killed on the cars through an accident to which his own carelessness did not contribute ”

“ One of the greatest drawbacks in the railway service lies in the risks of accident. The extent of these risks is shown by the General Report of the Board of Trade on Accidents on Railways of the United Kingdom during 1910. ”

“ This picture of carnage and blood and death reminded me of something which I had read a fortnight ago—statistics of railway accidents compiled by the United States Government, wherein the appalling fact was set forth that on our 200,000 miles of railway we annually kill 10,000 persons outright and injure 80,000. The war-ships in the air suggested the railway horrors, and three nights afterward the railway horrors suggested my dream. ”

“ Both cars rushed down several feet, and then ran off the rails. Each car contained seventy passengers, and of these fifteen were killed and injured. Ten bodies, mangled beyond recognition, were taken from the wreckage. Most of the victims were women.
At home there is the disastrous Liverpool Electric Overhead Railway fire of December 23rd, 1901. The trains are run on the multiple control principle, a motor at each end, and the accident was due to a defect in the rear one. ”

“ BENEFITS CONFERRED ON TRAIN MEN BY GOOD BRAKES.
To the traveling public the air-brake has proved a source of satisfaction by assuring exemption from accidents, but its greatest blessing has been conferred upon train men. Being the greatest sufferers from railway accidents, their risks of life and limb are greatly reduced; and the agonizing helplessness that used to be so often experienced with trains that could not be stopped in time to avoid a disaster, is almost unknown on our well-managed roads. Mind has become victor in its conflict with matter. ”

“ Our half century's experience with railroads is full of various instruction. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has occupied himself with the lessons of railroad casualties. He has investigated them officially in Massachusetts, and studied them elsewhere, and he has made a little volume which he modestly calls "Notes on Railway Accidents," but which is the first digest of information we have regarding great railway disasters, their causes, and the progress of security in this mode of travel. ”

“ It is an undoubted fact that many accidents are occasioned by the breaking of springs, axles, and tires of vehicles. These may be traced to the following causes—namely, violent shunting, bad joints in the rails, the great length and weight of trains, and fast travelling. I have had many opportunities of witnessing the violent manner in which shunting is often performed, and I am sure that this occasions very many railway accidents. ”

“ Level crossings are each year a very fertile cause of accidents, and to them no fewer than fifty-nine of the deaths of 1876 must be apportioned. We come now, however, to that which is undoubtedly a fact of the utmost gravity, namely, that thirty-eight passengers were killed and 1279 injured from causes over which they had no control, upon the railways of Great Britain.
In 1874, a Royal Commission was issued at the request of parliament to inquire into the causes and cure of railway accidents in Great Britain. For two years and a half the Commissioners pursued their labours ”

“ Not a soul survived to tell the circumstances of the catastrophe—the most dramatic and one of the most disastrous in the annals of railway accidents in this country. But subsequent inquiry left no doubt that, in the original scheme of the structure, sufficient allowance had not been made for the tremendous pressure put upon it by the currents of air scouring through this funnel of the Firth ”

“ The Evidence adduced before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on railway accidents in 1858, from which the foregoing extracts have been made, has led the committee to the conclusion, that accidents on railways arise from three causes—inattention of servants ”

“ Railway accidents have always been a great source of anxiety to the managers, and the shocks received by the public when great loss of life occurs from such causes deepen the interest which the general community feels in the means taken to avoid these distressing occurrences. ”

“ No person, not in the last car of the accommodation train was killed, and one only was seriously injured. Of those in the last car more than half lost their lives; many instantly by crushing, others by inhaling the scalding steam which poured forth from the locomotive boiler into the wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted frightful injuries. Indeed, for the severity of injuries and for the protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if ever, been exceeded. Crushing, scalding and burning did their work together. ”

“ 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 company a forcible hint to look closer to the condition of its embankment, a deodand of one hundred pounds was levied on the locomotive and tender. ”

“ The fact that no passenger is killed in train accidents is more or less adventitious, but a reduction in the number injured testifies to a reduction in the opportunities for fatalities.
During the past ten years the average of passengers injured in train accidents on British railroads has been 580, which, considering the difference in the units of risk, is 100% higher than the above record for 159,657 miles of American railway in 1909. ”

“ When one reflects upon the destructive energy which is contained in a swiftly moving train, and sees its effects in a wreck; when he understands how many minute mechanical details, and how many minds and hands must work together in harmony to insure its safe arrival at its destination, he must marvel at the safety of railroad travel. In the year 1887, the passengers killed in train accidents in the United States were 207; those injured were 916. The employees killed were 406, and injured 890. ”

“ More than a hundred people had gone to death in the crash of two thundering passenger trains in Colorado, a crash that had been due to the failure of an engineer to heed the plainest of signals. Two train wrecks in northern England had taken a toll of life almost as great, and there were reports of many other crashes from various parts of earth. In every one the accident had been due to the inexplicable failure of the human element, the failure of dispatcher or switchman or engineer to perform the duty that habit should have made automatic. ”

“ A vague but deeply rooted conviction commonly prevails that the railroad has created a new danger; that because of it the average human being's hold on life is more precarious than it was. The first point-blank, bald statement to the contrary would accordingly strike people in the light not only of a paradox, but of a somewhat foolish one. Investigation, nevertheless, bears it out. The fact is that when a railroad accident comes, it is apt to come in such a way as to leave no doubt whatever in relation to it. ”

“ Our tail-piece conveys a very good idea of the sharp curve, and also of the gradient. Although many of the carriages were smashed, only the driver was killed, and possibly, had he stuck to his engine, his life might have been spared.
Some of the passengers, as is generally the case in railway disasters, had marvellous escapes. One gentleman, who was sitting reading, suddenly felt the carriage give a lurch and then roll over and over down the embankment, while he was tossed violently about, till it crashed into another, when the superstructure was torn from its foundations. ”

“ Fire-escapes have been a means, under Divine Providence, of saving many lives from destruction in houses on fire. [69]
Distressing and harassing as railway and other accidents are in this country, their number and frequency in the United States are utterly appalling. Of accidents to American railway trains in 1866, there were 82, by which 115 persons were killed and 607 were wounded. “This,” says the writer from whom the foregoing information is derived, “is an improvement over 1865, when there were 183 railroad accidents, killing 335 persons outright, and wounding 1,427 others.” ”

“ Accidents to workmen in marshalling, shunting, distributing and running trains, engines and cars, may be taken as the most important class, after train accidents, because this work is necessary and important and yet involves considerable hazard. On British railways the duty of the companies to provide all practicable safeguards and to educate and caution the servants may he said to have been faithfully performed, and the accident totals must be taken as being somewhat near the “irreducible minimum”—unless some of the infirmities of the human mind can be cured. ”

“ The interlocking apparatus, however, makes it impossible that one track should be open except when the other is closed. An accident, therefore, can happen only through the wilful carelessness of the engineer in charge of a train;—and in the face of wilful carelessness laws are of no more avail than signals. If a man in control of a locomotive wishes to bring on a collision he can always do it. ”

“ The danger of sudden accidental death or maiming is constant and great, and the bare record of the numerous cases is acutely suggestive of inexpressible suffering; but, strange to say, it does not worry the average brakeman much. Though probably a thousand trainmen are killed in this country every year, and four or five thousand injured, by collisions and derailments, in coupling cars, falling off trains, striking low overhead bridges, and from other causes, not one brakeman, from what he sees in his own experience, realizes the danger very vividly. ”

“ What is the average length of the railroad journey resulting in death by accident to a prudent traveler?—What is the average length of one resulting in some personal injury to him?—These are two questions which interest every one. Few persons, probably, start upon any considerable journey, implying days and nights on the rail, without almost unconsciously taking into some consideration the risks of accident. Visions of collision, derailment, plunging through bridges, will rise unbidden. ”

“ The engineer and fireman, and the occupants of the second passenger car, were less fortunate. The former were found crushed under the locomotive at the bottom of the canal; while of the latter ten were killed, and not one escaped severe injury. Very rarely indeed in the history of railroad accidents have so large a portion of those on the train lost their lives as in this case, for out of ninety persons sixty perished, and in the number was included every woman and child among the passengers, with a single exception. ”

“ We should bear in mind that it is not the great train accidents that make the large majority of the total deaths and injuries on the railroads of this country, about which so much is said in the public press, but it is the little cases that are unheralded in the press, or in the courts, that make the totals so large ”

“ It is emergencies of this description, periodically occurring on every railroad, which always subject to the final test the organization and discipline of companies and the capacity of superintendents. A railroad in quiet times is like a ship in steady weather; almost anybody can manage the one or sail the other. It is the sudden stress which reveals the undeveloped strength or the hidden weakness; and the truly instructive feature in the Revere accident lay in the amount of hidden weakness everywhere which was brought to light under that sudden stress. ”