82 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
DRAW-BRIDGE DISASTERS.
It is difficult to see how on double track roads, where the
occurrence of an accident on one line of tracks is always liable
to instantly "foul" the other line, it is possible to
guard against contingencies like that which occurred at New Hamburg.
At the time, as is usual in such cases, the public indignation
expended itself in vague denunciation of the Hudson River Railroad
Company, because the disaster happened to take place upon a bridge
in which there was a draw to permit the passage of vessels. There
seemed to be a vague but very general impression that draw-bridges
were dangerous things, and, because other accidents due to different
causes had happened upon them, that the occurrence of this accident,
from whatever cause, was in itself sufficient evidence of gross
carelessness. The fact was that not even the clumsy Connecticut
rule, which compels the stopping of all trains before entering
on any
THE "FOULING" OF TRACKS. 83
draw-bridge, would have sufficed to avert the New Hamburg disaster,
for the river was then frozen and the draw was not in use, so
that for the time being the bridge was an ordinary bridge; and
not even in the frenzy of crude suggestions which invariably succeeds
each new accident was any one ever found ignorant enough to suggest
the stopping of all trains before entering upon every bridge,
which, as railroads generally follow watercourses, would not infrequently
necessitate an average of one stop to every thousand feet or so.
Only incidentally did the bridge at New Hamburg have anything
to do with the disaster there, the essence of which lay in the
sudden derailment of an oil car immediately in front of a passenger
train running in the opposite direction and on the other track.
Of course, if the derailment had occurred long enough before the
passenger train came up to allow the proper signals to be given,
and this precaution had been neglected, then the disaster would
have been due, not to the original cause, but to the defective
discipline of the employees. Such does not appear to have been
the case at New Hamburg, nor was that disaster by any means the
first due to derailment and the throwing of cars from one track
in front of a train passing upon the other; nor will it be the
last. Indeed, an accident hardly less destructive, arising from
that very cause, had occurred only eight months previous in England,
and resulted in eighteen deaths and more than fifty cases of injury.
84 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
A goods train made up of a locomotive and twenty-nine wagons
was running at a speed of some twenty miles an hour on the Great
Northern road, between Newark and Claypole, about one hundred
miles from London, when the forward axle under one of the wagons
broke. As a result of the derailment which ensued the train became
divided, and presently the disabled car was driven by the pressure
behind it out of its course and over the interval, so that it
finally rested partly across the other track. At just this moment
an excursion train from London, made up of twenty-three carriages
and containing some three hundred and forty passengers, came along
at a speed of about thirty-five miles an hour. It was quite dark,
and the engineer of the freight train waved his arm as a signal
of danger; one of the guards, also, showed a red light with his
hand lantern, but his action either was not seen or was misunderstood,
for without any reduction of speed being made the engine of the
excursion train plunged headlong into the disabled goods wagon.
The collision was so violent as to turn the engine aside off the
track and cause it to strike the stone pier of a bridge near by,
by which it was flung completely around and then driven up the
slope of the cutting, where it toppled over like a rearing horse
and fell back into the roadway. The tender likewise was overturned;
but not so the carriages. They rushed along holding to the track,
and the side of each as it passed was ripped and
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. 85
torn by the projecting end of the goods wagon. Of the twenty-three
carriages and vans in the train scarcely one escaped damage, while
the more forward ones were in several cases lifted one on top
of the other or forced partly up the slope of the cutting, whence
they fell back again, crushing the passengers beneath them.
This accident occurred on the 21st of June, 1870; it was very
thoroughly investigated by Captain Tyler on behalf of the Board
of Trade, with the apparent conclusion that it was one which could
hardly have been guarded against. The freight cars, the broken
axle of which occasioned the disaster, did not belong to the Great
Northern company, and the wheels of the train had been properly
examined by viewing and tapping at the several stopping-places;
the flaw which led to the fracture was, however, of such a nature
that it could have been detected only by the removal of the wheel.
It did not appear that the employees of the company had been guilty
of any negligence; and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the accident was due to one of those defects to which the
results of even the most perfect human workmanship must ever remain
liable, and this had revealed itself under exactly those conditions
which must involve the most disastrous consequences.
The English accident did, however, establish one thing, if
nothing else; it showed the immeasurable superiority of the system
of investigation pursued
86 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
in the case of railroad accidents in England over that pursued
in this country. There a trained expert after the occurrence of
each disaster visits the spot and sifts the affair to the very
bottom, locating responsibility and pointing out distinctly the
measures necessary to guard against its repetition. Here the case
ordinarily goes to a coroner's jury, the findings of which as
a rule admirably sustain the ancient reputation of that august
tribunal, It is absolutely sad to follow the course of these investigations,
they are conducted with such an entire disregard of method and
lead to such inadequate conclusions. Indeed, how could it be otherwise?
The same man never investigates two accidents, and, for the one
investigation he does make, he is competent only in his own esteem.
Take the New Hamburgh accident as an example. Rarely has any
catastrophe merited a more careful investigation, and few indeed
have ever called forth more ill-considered criticism or crude
suggestions. Almost nothing of interest respecting it was elicited
at the inquest, and now no reliable criticism can be ventured
upon it. The question of responsibility in that case, and of prevention
thereafter, involved careful inquiry into at least four subjects:First,
the ownership and condition of the freight car, the fractured
axle of which occasioned the disaster, together with the precautions
taken by the company, usually and in this particular case, to
test the wheels of freight cars moving over its road, especially
THE DRAW-BRIDGE FRENZY. 87
during times of severe cold.Second, the conduct of those
in charge of the freight train immediately preceding and at the
time of the accident; was the fracture of the axle at once noticed
and were measures taken to stop the train, or was the derailment
aggravated by neglect into the form it finally took?Third,
was there any neglect in signaling the accident on the part of
those in charge of the disabled train, and how much time elapsed
between the accident and the collision?Fourth, what, if
any, improved appliances would have enabled those in charge of
either train to have averted the accident? and what, if any, defects
either in the rules or the equipment in use were revealed?
No satisfactory conclusion can now be arrived at upon any of
these points, though the probabilities are that with the appliances
since introduced the train might have been stopped in time. In
this case, as in that at Claybridge, the coroner's jury returned
a verdict exonerating every one concerned from responsibility,
and very possibly they were justified in so doing; though it is
extremely questionable whether Captain Tyler would have arrived
at a similar conclusion. There is a strong probability that the
investigation went off, so to speak, on a wholly false issue,turned
on the draw-bridge frenzy instead of upon the question of care.
So far as the verdict declared that the disaster was due to a
collision between a passenger train and a derailed oil car, and
not to the existence of a draw in the bridge
88 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS
on which it happened to occur, it was, indeed, entitled to
respect, and yet it was on this very point that it excited the
most criticism. Loud commendation was heard through the press
of the Connecticut law, which had been in force for twenty years,
and, indeed, still is in force there, under which all trains are
compelled to come to a full stop before entering on any bridge
which has a draw in it,a law which may best be described
as a useless nuisance. Yet the grand jury of the Court of Oyer
and Terminer of New York city even went so far as to recommend,
in a report made by it on the 23d of February, I871,sixteen
days after the accident,the passage by the legislature then
in session at Albany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately
better counsels prevailed, and, as the public recovered its equilibrium,
the matter was allowed to drop.
The Connecticut law in question, however, originated in an
accident which at the time had startled and shocked the community
as much even as that at Versailles did before or that at Abergele
has since done. It occurred to an express train on the New York
& New Haven road at Norwalk, in Connecticut, on the 6th of
May, 1853.
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