12 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
CHAPTER II.
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
"THE ANGOLA HORROR." 13
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
14 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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 STOVE PERIL. 15
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
16 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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
SHIPTON-ON-CHERWELL. 17
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 roadbed, 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 employees of
the company, were injured.
At the time it occurred the Shipton accident was
18 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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
MOMENTUM vs. RESISTING STRENGTH. 19
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.
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