Train accident

“ 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. ”

“ 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 most remarkable railway accident on record happened some years ago on the North-Western road between London and Liverpool. A gentleman and his wife were travelling in a compartment alone, when—the train going at the rate of forty miles an hour—an iron rail projecting from a car on a side-track cut into the carriage and took the head of the lady clear off, and rolled it into the husband’s lap. He subsequently sued the company for damages, and created great surprise in court by giving his age at thirty-six years, although his hair was snow white. ”

“ Whenever an accident happens to any train on which passengers are carried, whether collision or derailment, of whatever nature, on main line or siding, or within the yard limits where trains are reconstructed, conductors must take down the name and address of every passenger on the train, and ascertain from the passenger, and note opposite his or her name, what injury, if any, they received. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Occasionally we have an accident in which trespassers are killed or injured while walking or playing on the tracks, which might be avoided by greater care and watchfulness to discover their danger, by warning them of the approaching train, either by continuous sounding of the whistle, by slowing up, or by stopping when you have reason to think they do not know a train is coming, especially on the double track when trains are moving on both tracks. The most heartrending of them all are injuries to children, and, sometimes, to women. ”

“ A motorist who routinely travels on a highway that parallels the railroad tracks for some distance and normally sees trains at that time of the morning testified that she observed "...one train...going a lot faster than some I had normally seen before." The motorist, who estimated that the highway was about 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 mile from the tracks, also testified that the train was engulfed in what she assumed to be smoke, which she described as light blue in color. The helper brakeman testified that after the helper engineer placed the brakes in emergency. ”

“ I have been assured by men familiar with the history of steam navigation that the casualties are not more numerous in proportion to the numbers travelling, than on American railways.
The reason why an accident on the water is more dreadful than on land is twofold. In the first place, the number of persons killed or wounded in a railway accident is always a small percentage of those on the train. ”

“ 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 [96] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Amtrak Train 66 Exits—The collision destroyed the two-unit locomotive (272 and 366) of Amtrak train 66. However, the locomotive engineer's side of the cab was intact on unit 272, and both the locomotive engineer and apprentice engineer were evacuated from that side. (See figure 5) The head end material handling car (1551) and the baggage car (1217) held no passengers or crew. Coach car 21248 derailed and was leaning at a 40-degree angle. The exit doors were jammed shut at one end and destroyed at the other end. The emergency windows on the sides offered the only possible exits. ”

“ An ordinary goods train is made up of several kinds of trucks, some empty, some loaded, many of them unequally loaded, all of them subject to heavy work and rough handling, and more likely to give trouble than the higher class vehicle, the passenger carriage. The breaking down or derailment of one or two goods trucks on a line of rails close alongside the fast passenger rails, would in all probability so foul and obstruct the passenger line as to cause a very serious accident to an express train which could not be stopped in time. ”

“ The locomotive engineer stated that the MBTA train 906 was almost stopped on track 1, moving about 5 to 10 mph, at the time of the accident He was standing at the controls in the cab, felt the collision, and was knocked to the floor Not knowing exactly what had happened, he made an emergency radio call to the dispatcher. ”

“ The number of servants killed in train accidents is the next in importance. The safety of passengers is, indeed, the first care of the railway manager; but the employés, exposed to many risks from which the passengers are protected, must be looked after. On the British railways the men who run the trains are safeguarded very efficiently, and the collisions and derailments which are serious enough to do injury to the trainmen or the engine men are really rare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On farther inquiry we learn that our accident is believed to be no accident at all, but the work of “train wreckers,” who have removed the rails, and are no doubt lurking in the surrounding wilds, biding their time to swoop down and rob the train—a little game they are rather fond of playing in this part of the country. ”

“ Railroad
the means by which the shipping weights were determined for the shipment of the trona laden hopper cars; the dispatching of locomotives without operable dynamic brakes on mountain gradients; the information received by the road engineer regarding the weight of the train and the number of operable dynamic brakes; the communication between the road and helper engineers regarding the operation of the train, and communication with the dispatcher; the engineer’s training program, which did not adequately address emergency situations ”

“ If the second and third-class carriages had a high padded back lining, extending above the head of the passenger, it would probably tend to lesson the danger to life and limb which, as the returns of accidents show, passengers in carriages of this class are much exposed to in train accidents. ”

“ For America at large the Massachusetts proportion is undoubtedly the most nearly correct, and the probabilities would [263] seem to be that the annual average of injuries to persons incident to operating the railroads of the United States is not less than 10,000, of which at least 1,200 are due to train accidents. ”

“ These it will be remembered are casualties directly resulting either to passengers or employés from train accidents. No account is taken of injuries sustained by employés in the ordinary operation of the roads, or by members of the community not passengers. In Massachusetts the accidents to passengers and employés constitute one-half of the whole, but a very small portion of the injuries reported as sustained by either passengers or employés are the consequence of train accidents,—not one in three in the case of passengers or one in seven in that of employés. ”

“ These train-workers who are so little seen by the travelling public—baggagemen, mail clerks and express messengers alike, ride in the most hazardous part of the equipment, the extreme forward cars of the train. Read the list of train accidents, involving loss of life, and in nine cases out of ten you will find that these have headed the list of killed or injured. There work is hard, their hours long, their pay modest. They form a silent brigade of the industrial army that is always close to the firing line. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many a time only the keen watchfulness of an engine-driver, or his assistant, the fireman, saved a train from dashing into some gravel heap, beneath which the rails were buried, or from plunging into some yawning opening from which a culvert or small bridge had been washed out. Nor with all this watchfulness did the trains always get through in safety. Sometimes a bit of track, that looked all right, would suddenly sink beneath the weight of a passing train into a quagmire that had been formed beneath it, and then would follow the pitiful scenes of a railroad wreck. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Train wrecking is not to be taken into account as a danger incident to the ordinary operation of a railroad. Carelessness or momentary inadvertence, or, most dangerous of all, that recklessness—that unnecessary assumption of risk somewhere or at some time, which is almost inseparable from a long immunity from disaster—these are the great sources of peril most carefully to be guarded against. The complicated and unceasing train movement depends upon many thousand employés, all of whom make mistakes or assume risks sometimes;—and did they not do so they would be either more or less than men. ”