MAY 6, 1853. 89
CHAPTER X.
THE NORWALK ACCIDENT.
THE railroad at Norwalk crosses a small inlet of Long Island
Sound by means of a draw-bridge, which is approached from the
direction of New York around a sharp curve. A ball at the mast-head
was in 1853 the signal that the draw was open and the bridge closed
to the passage of trains. The express passenger train for Boston,
consisting of a locomotive and two baggage and five passenger
cars, containing about one hundred and fifty persons, left New
York as usual at eight o'clock that morning. The locomotive was
not in charge of its usual engine-driver but of a substitute named
Tucker; a man who some seven years before had been injured in
a previous collision on the same road, for which he did not appear
to have been in any way responsible, but who had then given up
his position and gone to California, whence he had recently returned
and was now again an applicant for an engineer's situation. This
was his
90 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
third trip over the road, as substitute. In approaching the
bridge at Norwalk he apparently wholly neglected to look for the
draw-signal. He was running his train at about the usual rate
of speed, and first became aware that the draw was open when within
four hundred feet of it and after it had become wholly impossible
to stop the train in time. He immediately whistled for brakes
and reversed his engine, and then, without setting the brake on
his tender, both he and the fireman sprang off and escaped with
trifling injuries. The train at this time did not appear to be
moving at a speed of over fifteen miles an hour. The draw was
sixty feet in width; the water in the then state of the tide was
about twelve feet deep, and the same distance below the level
of the bridge. Although the speed of the train had been materially
reduced, yet when it came to the opening it was still moving with
sufficient impetus to send its locomotive clean across the sixty
foot interval and to cause it to strike the opposite abutment
about eight feet below the track; it then fell heavily to the
bottom. The tender lodged on top of the locomotive, bottom up
and resting against the pier, while on top of this again was the
first baggage car. The second baggage car, which contained also
a compartment for smokers, followed, but in falling was canted
over to the north side of the draw in such a way as not to be
wholly submerged, so that most of those in it were saved. The
first passenger car next plunged into
THE BELOEIL DRAW-BRIDGE. 91
the opening; its forward end crushed in, as it fell against
the baggage car in front of it, while its rear end dropped into
the deep water below; and on top of it came the second passenger
car, burying the passengers in the first beneath the debris,
and itself partially submerged. The succeeding or third passenger
car, instead of following the others, broke in two in the middle,
the forward part hanging down over the edge of the draw, while
the rear of it rested on the track and stayed the course of the
remainder of the train. Including those in the smoking compartment
more than a hundred persons were plunged into the channel, of
whom forty-six lost their lives, while some thirty others were
more or less severely injured. The killed were mainly among the
passengers in the first car; for, in falling, the roof of the
second car was split open, and it finally rested in such a position
that, as no succeeding car came on top of it, many of those in
it were enabled to extricate themselves; indeed, more than one
of the passengers in falling were absolutely thrown through the
aperture in the roof, and, without any volition on their part,
were saved with unmoistened garments.
Shocking as this catastrophe was, it was eclipsed in horror
by another exactly similar in character, though from the peculiar
circumstances of the case it excited far less public notice, which
occurred eleven years later on the Grand Trunk railway of Canada.
In this case a large party of emigrants, over 500 in number and
chiefly Poles, Germans and
92 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
Norwegians of the better class, had landed at Quebec and were
being forwarded on a special train to their destination in the
West. With their baggage they filled thirteen cars. The Grand
Trunk on the way to Montreal crosses the Richelieu river at Beloeil
by an iron bridge, in the westernmost span of which was a draw
over the canal, some 45 feet below it. Both by law and under the
running rules of the road all trains were to come to a dead stand
on approaching the bridge, and to proceed only when the safety
signal was clearly discerned. This rule, however, as it appeared
at the subsequent inquest, had been systematically disobeyed,
it having been considered sufficient if the train was "slowed
down." In the present case, howeverthe night of June
29, 1864,though the danger signal was displayed and in full
sight for a distance of 1,600 feet, the engine-driver, unfamiliar
with the road and its signals, failed to see it, and, without
slowing his train even, ran directly onto the bridge. He became
aware of the danger when too late to stop. The draw was open to
permit the passage of a steamer with six barges in tow, one of
which was directly under the opening. The whole train went through
the draw, sinking the barge and piling itself up in the water
on top of it. The three last cars, falling on the accumulated
wreck, toppled over upon the west embankment and were thus less
injured than the others. The details of the accident were singularly
distressing. "As soon as possible a strong cable was
JUNE 29, 1864. 93
attached to the upper part of the piling, and by this means
two cars, the last of the ill-fated train, were dragged onto the
wharf under the bridge. Their removal revealed a horrible sight.
A shapeless blue mass of hands and heads and feet protruded among
the splinters and frame-work, and gradually resolved itself into
a closely-packed mass of human beings, all ragged and bloody and
dinted from crown to foot with blue bruises and weals and cuts
inflicted by the ponderous iron work, the splinters and the enormous
weight of the train.
* * * A great many of the dead had evidently been asleep; the
majority of them had taken off their boots and coats in the endeavor
to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They Jay heaped
upon one another like sacks, dressed in the traditional blue clothing
of the German people. * * * A child was got at and removed nine
hours after the accident, being uninjured in its dead mother's
arms."
The accident happened at 2 AM, and before sundown of
the next day 86 bodies had been taken out of the canal; others
were subsequently recovered, and yet more died from their hurts.
The injured were numbered by hundreds. It was altogether a disaster
of the most appalling description, in extenuation of which nothing
was to be said. It befell, however, a body of comparatively friendless
emigrants, and excited not a tithe of the painful interest which
yet attaches to the similar accident to the Boston express at
Norwalk.
94 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
These terrible disasters were both due, not alone to the carelessness
of the two engine-drivers, but to the use of a crude and inadequate
system of signals. It so happened, however, that the legislature
of Connecticut was unfortunately in session at the time of the
Norwalk disaster, and consequently the public panic and indignation
took shape in a law compelling every train on the railroads of
that state to come to a dead stand-still before entering upon
any bridge in which there was a draw. This law is still in force,
and from time to time, as after the New Hamburg catastrophe, an
unreasoning clamor is raised for it in other states. In point
of fact it imposes a most absurd, unnecessary and annoying delay
on travel, and rests upon the Connecticut statute book a curious
illustration of what usually happens when legislators undertake
to incorporate running railroad regulations into the statutes-at-large.
It is of a par with another law, which has for more than twenty-five
years been in force in Connecticut's sister state of Massachusetts,
compelling in all cases where the tracks of different companies
cross each other at a level the trains of each company to stop
before reaching the crossing, and then to pass over it slowly.
The danger of collision at crossings is undoubtedly much greater
than that of going through open draws. Precautions against danger
in each case are unquestionably proper and they cannot be too
perfect, but to have recourse to stopping either in the one case
or
AN INADEQUATE PROTECTION. 95
the other simply reveals an utter ignorance of the great advance
which has been made in railroad signals and the science of interlocking.
In both these cases it is, indeed, entitled to just about the
same degree of respect as would be a proposal to recur to pioneer
engines as a means of preventing accidents to night trains.
The machinery by means of which both draws and grade crossings
can be protected, will be referred to in another connection,*
meanwhile it is a curious fact that neither at grade crossings
nor at draws has the mere stopping of trains proved a sufficient
protection. Several times in the experience of Massachusetts'
roads have those in charge of locomotives, after stopping and
while moving at a slow rate of speed, actually run themselves
into draws with their eyes open, and afterwards been wholly unable
to give any satisfactory explanation of their conduct. But the
insufficiency of stopping as a reliable means of prevention was
especially illustrated in the case of an accident which occurred
upon the Boston & Maine railroad on the morning of the 21st
of November, 1862, when the early local passenger train was run
into the open draw of the bridge almost at the entrance to the
Boston station. 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
* Chapters XVII and XVIII.
96 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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. At the rate at which the
train was moving the resistance thus offered was sufficient to
stop it, though, even as it was, no less than six persons lost
their lives and a much larger number were more or less injured.
Here all the precautions imposed by the Connecticut law were taken,
and served only to reveal the weak point in it. The accident was
due to the neglect of the corporation in not having the draw and
its system of signals interlocked in such a way that the movement
of the one should automatically cause a corresponding movement
of the other; and this neglect in high quarters made it possible
for a careless employee to open the draw on a particularly dark
and foggy morning, while he forgot at the same time to shift his
signals. An exactly similar instance of carelessness on the part
of an employee resulted in the derailment of a train upon the
Long Branch line of the Central Road of New Jersey at the Shrewsbury
river draw on August 9, 1877. In this case the safety signal was
shown while the draw fastening had been left unsecured. The jar
of the passing train threw the draw slightly open so as to disconnect
the tracks; thus causing the derailment of the train, which subsequently
INTERLOCKING 97
plunged over the side of the bridge. Fortunately the tide was
out, or there would have been a terrible loss of life; as it was,
some seventy persons were injured, five of whom subsequently died.
This accident also, like that on the Boston & Maine road in
1862, very forcibly illustrated the necessity of an interlocking
apparatus. The safety signal was shown before the draw was secured,
which should have been impossible.
Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive record of this
or any other class of railroad accidents occurring in America,
but during the six years 1873-8 there occurred twenty-one cases
of minor disaster at draws, three only of them to passenger trains.
Altogether, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, these resulted
in the death of five employees and injury to one other. No passenger
was hurt. In Great Britain not a single case of disaster of any
description has been reported as occurring at a drawbridge since
the year 1870, when the present system of official Board of Trade
reports was begun. The lesson clearly to be drawn from a careful
investigation of all the American accidents reported would seem
to be that a statute provision making compulsory the interlocking
of all draws in railroad bridges with a proper and infallible
system of signals might have claims on the consideration of an
intelligent legislature; not so an enactment which compels the
stopping of trains at points where danger is small, and makes
no provision as respects other points where it is great.
Table of Contents
| Contents Page
|