BRIDGE GUARDS. 111
CHAPTER XII.
THE PROTECTION OF BRIDGES.
LONG, varied and terrible as the record of bridge disasters
has become, there are, nevertheless, certain very simple and inexpensive
precautions against them, which, altogether too frequently, corporations
do not and will not take. At Ashtabula the bridge gave way. There
was no derailment as there seems to have been at Tariffville.
The sustaining power of a bridge is, of course, a question comparatively
difficult of ascertainment. A fatal weakness in this respect may
be discernable only to the eye of a trained expert. Derailment,
however, either upon a bridge or when approaching it, is in the
vast majority of cases a danger perfectly easy to guard against.
The precautions are simple and they are not expensive, yet, taking
the railroads of the United States as a whole, it may well be
questioned whether the bridges at which they have been taken do
not constitute the exception rather than the rule. Not
112 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
only is the average railroad superintendent accustomed to doing
his work and running his road under a constant pressure to make
both ends meet, which, as he well knows, causes his own daily
bread to depend upon the economies he can effect; but, while he
finds it hard work at best to provide for the multifarious outlays,
long immunity from disaster breeds a species of recklessness even
in the most cautious:and yet the single mishap in a thousand
must surely fall to the lot of some one. Many years ago the terrible
results which must soon or late be expected wherever the consequences
of a derailment on the approaches to a bridge are not securely
guarded against, were illustrated by a disaster on the Great Western
railroad of Canada, which combined many of the worst horrors of
both the Norwalk and the New Hamburg tragedies; more recently
the almost forgotten lesson was enforced again on the Vermont
& Massachusetts road, upon the bridge over the Miller River,
at Athol. The accident last referred to occurred on the 16th of
June, 1870, but, though forcible enough as a reminder, it was
tame indeed in comparison with the Des Jardines Canal disaster,
which is still remembered though it happened so long ago as the
17th of March, 1857.
The Great Western railroad of Canada crossed the canal by a
bridge at an elevation of about sixty feet. At the time of the
accident there were some eighteen feet of water in the canal,
though, as is
THE DES JARDINES CANAL 113
usual in Canada at that season, it was covered by ice some
two feet in thickness. On the afternoon of the 17th of March as
the local accommodation train from Hamilton was nearing the bridge,
its locomotive, though it was then moving at a very slow rate
of speed, was in some way thrown from the track and onto the timbers
of the bridge. These it cut through, and then falling heavily
on the string-pieces it parted them, and instantly pitched headlong
down upon the frozen surface of the canal below, dragging after
it the tender, baggage car and two passenger cars, which composed
the whole train. There was nothing whatever to break the fall
of sixty feet; and even then two feet of ice only intervened between
the ruins of the train and the bottom of the canal eighteen feet
below. Two feet of solid ice will afford no contemptible resistance
to a falling body; the locomotive and tender crushed heavily through
it and instantly sank out of sight. In falling the baggage car
struck a corner of the tender and was thus thrown some ten yards
to one side, and was followed by the first passenger car, which,
turning a somersault as it went, fell on its roof and was crushed
to fragments, but only partially broke through the ice, upon which
the next car fell endwise, and rested in that position. That every
human being in the first car was either crushed or drowned seems
most natural; the only cause for astonishment is found in the
fact that any one should have survived such a catastrophe,a
tumble of sixty feet on ice
114 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
as solid as a rock! Yet of four persons in the baggage car
three went down with it, and not one of them was more than slightly
injured. 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.
There were two circumstances about this disaster worthy of
especial notice. In the first place, as well as can now he ascertained
in the absence of any trustworthy record of an investigation into
causes, the accident was easily preventable. It appears to have
been immediately caused by the derailment of a locomotive, however
occasioned, just as it was entering on a swing draw-bridge. Thrown
from the tracks, there was nothing in the flooring to prevent
the derailed locomotive from deflecting from its course until
it toppled over the ends of the ties, nor were the ties and the
flooring apparently sufficiently strong to sustain it even while
it held to its course. Under such circumstances the derailment
of a locomotive upon any bridge can mean only destruction; it
meant it then,
BRIDGE DERAILMENTS. 115
it means it now; and yet our country is to-day full of bridges
constructed in an exactly similar way. To make accidents from
this cause, if not impossible at least highly improbable, it is
only necessary to make the ties and flooring of all bridges between
the tracks and for three feet on either side of them sufficiently
strong to sustain the whole weight of a train off the track and
in motion, while a third rail, or strong truss of wood, securely
fastened, should be laid down midway between the rails throughout
the entire length of the bridge and its approaches. With this
arrangement, as the flanges of the wheels are on the inside, it
must follow that in case of derailment and a divergence to one
side or the other of the bridge, the inner side of the flange
will come against the central rail or truss just so soon as the
divergence amounts to half the space between the rails, which
in the ordinary gauge is two feet and four inches. The wheels
must then glide along this guard, holding the train from any further
divergence from its course, until it can be checked. Meanwhile,
as the ties and flooring extend for the space of three feet outside
of the track, a sufficient support is furnished by them for the
other wheels. A legislative enactment compelling the construction
of all bridges in this way, coupled with additional provisions
for interlocking of draws with their signals in cases of bridges
across navigable waters, would be open to objection that laws
against dangers of accident by rail have almost invariably proved
ineffective when
116 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
they were not absurd, but in itself, if enforced, it might
not improbably render disasters like those at Norwalk and Des
Jardines terrors of the past.
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