CAR-COUPLING. 117
CHAPTER XIII.
CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS.
WHOLLY apart from the derailment, which was the real occasion
of the Des Jardines disaster, there was one other cause which
largely contributed to its fatality, if indeed that fatality was
not in greatest part immediately due to it.
The question as to what is the best method of coupling together
the several individual vehicles which make up every railroad train
has always been much discussed among railroad mechanics. The decided
weight of opinion has been in favor of the strongest and closest
couplings, so that under no circumstances should the train separate
into parts. Taking all forms of railroad accident together, this
conclusion is probably sound. It is, however, at best only a balancing
of disadvantages,a mere question as to which practice involves
the least amount of danger. Yet a very terrible demonstration
that there are two sides to this as to most other questions
118 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
was furnished at Des Jardines. It was the custom on the Great
Western road not only to couple the cars together in the method
then in general use, but also, as is often done now, to connect
them by heavy chains on each side of the centre coupling. Accordingly
when the locomotive broke through the Des Jardines bridge, it
dragged the rest of the train hopelessly after it. This certainly
would not have happened had the modern self-coupler been in use,
and probably would not have happened had the cars been connected
only by the ordinary link and pins; for the train was going very
slowly, and the signal for brakes was given in ample time to apply
them vigorously before the last cars came to the opening, into
which they were finally dragged by the dead weight before them
and not hurried by their own momentum.
On the other hand, we have not far to go in search of scarcely
less fatal disasters illustrating with equal force the other side
of the proposition, in the terrible consequences which have ensued
from the separation of cars in cases of derailment. Take, for
instance, the memorable accident of June 17, 1858, near Port Jervis,
on the Erie railway.
As the express train from New York was running at a speed of
about thirty miles an hour over a perfectly straight piece of
track between Otisville and Port Jervis, shortly after dark on
the evening of that day, it encountered a broken rail. The train
was made up of a locomotive, two baggage cars and five
THE PORT JERVIS DERAILMENT. 119
passenger cars, all of which except the last passed safely
over the fractured rail. The last car was apparently derailed,
and drew the car before it off the track. These two cars were
then dragged along, swaying fearfully from side to side, for a
distance of some four hundred feet, when the couplings at last
snapped and they went over the embankment, which was there some
thirty feet in height. As they rushed down the slope the last
car turned fairly over, resting finally on its roof, while one
of its heavy iron trucks broke through and fell upon the passengers
beneath, killing and maiming them. The other car, more fortunate,
rested at last upon its side on a pile of stones at the foot of
the embankment. Six persons were killed and fifty severely injured;
all of the former in the last car.
In this case, had the couplings held, the derailed cars would
not have gone over the embankment and but slight injuries would
have been sustained. Modern improvements have, however, created
safeguards sufficient to prevent the recurrence of other accidents
under the same conditions as that at Port Jervis. The difficulty
lay in the inability to stop a train, though moving at only moderate
speed, within a reasonable time. The wretched inefficiency of
the old handbrake in a sudden emergency received one more illustration.
The train seems to have run nearly half a mile after the accident
took place before it could be stopped, although the engineer had
instant notice of it and reversed his locomotive.
120 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
The couplings did not snap until a distance -bad been traversed
in which the modern train-brake would have reduced the speed to
a point at which they would have been subjected to no dangerous
strain.
The accident ten years later at Carr's Rock, sixteen miles
west of Port Jervis, on the same road, was again very similar
to the one just described: and yet in this case the parting of
the couplings alone prevented the rear of the train from dragging
its head to destruction. Both disasters were occasioned by broken
rails; but, while the first occurred on a tangent, the last was
at a point where the road skirted the hills, by a sharp curve,
upon the outer side of which was a steep declivity of some eighty
feet, jagged with rock and bowlders. It befell the night express
on the 14th of April, 1876. The train was a long one, consisting
of the locomotive, three baggage and express, and seven passenger
cars, and it encountered the broken rail while rounding the curve
at a high rate of speed. Again all except the last car, passed
over the fracture in safety; this was snapped, as it were, off
the track and over the embankment. At first it was dragged along,
but only for a short distance; the intense strain then broke the
coupling between the four rear cars and the head of the train,
and, the last of the four being already over the embankment, the
others almost instantly toppled over after it and rolled down
the ravine. A passenger on this portion
THE DERAILMENT AT CARR'S ROCK. 121
of the train, described the car he was in "as going over
and over, until the outer roof was torn off, the sides fell out,
and the inner roof was crushed in." Twenty-four persons were
killed and eighty injured; but in this instance, as in that at
Des Jardines, the only occasion for surprise was that there were
any survivors.
Accidents arising from the parting of defective couplings have
of course not been uncommon, and they constitute one of the greatest
dangers incident to heavy gradients; in surmounting inclines freight
trains will, it is found, break in two, and their hinder parts
come thundering down the grade, as was seen at Abergele. The American
passenger trains, in which each car is provided with brakes, are
much less liable than the English, the speed of which is regulated
by brake-vans, to accidents of this description. Indeed, it may
be questioned whether in America any serious disaster has occurred
from the fact that a portion of a passenger train on a road operated
by steam got beyond control in descending an incline. There have
been, however, terrible catastrophes from this cause in England,
and that on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road near Helmshere,
a station some fourteen miles north of Manchester, deserves a
prominent place in the record of railroad accidents.
It occurred in the early hours of the morning of the 4th of
September, 1860. There had been a great fete at the Bellevue
Gardens in Manchester on
122 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
the 3d, upon the conclusion of which some twenty-five hundred
persons crowded at once upon the return trains. Of these there
were, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road, three; the first
consisting of fourteen, the second of thirty-one, and the last
of twenty-four carriages: and they were started, with intervals
of ten minutes between them, at about eleven o'clock at night.
The first train finished its journey in safety. Not so the second
and the third. The Helmshere station is at the top of a steep
incline. This the second train, drawn by two locomotives, surmounted,
and then stopped for the delivery of passengers. While these were
leaving the carriages, a snap as of fractured iron was heard,
and the guards, looking back, saw the whole rear portion of the
train, consisting of seventeen carriages and a brake-van, detached
from the rest of it and quietly slipping down the incline. The
detached portion was moving so slowly that one of the guards succeeded
in catching the van and applying the brakes; it was, however,
already too late. The velocity was greater than the brake-power
could overcome, and the seventeen carriages kept descending more
and more rapidly. Meanwhile the third train had reached the foot
of the incline and begun to ascend it, when its engineer, on rounding
a curve, caught sight of the descending carriages. He immediately
reversed his engine, but before he could bring his train to a
stand they were upon him. Fortunately the van-brakes of the detached
carriages, though insufficient
THE HELMSHERE COLLISION. 123
to stop them, yet did reduce their speed the collision nevertheless
was terrific. The force of the blow, so far as the advancing train
was concerned, expended itself on the locomotive, which was demolished,
while the passengers escaped with a fright. Not so those in the
descending carriages. With them there was nothing to break the
blow, and the two hindmost carriages were crushed to fragments
and their passengers scattered over the line. It was shortly after
midnight, and the excursionists clambered out of the trains and
rushed frantically about, impeding every effort to clear away
the debris and rescue the injured, whose shrieks and cries
were incessant. The bodies of ten persons, one of whom had died
of suffocation, were ultimately taken out from the wreck, and
twenty-two others sustained fractures of limbs.
At Des Jardines the couplings were too strong; at Port Jervis
and at Helmshere they were not strong enough; at Carr's Rock they
gave way not a moment too soon. "There are objections to
a plenum and there are objections to a vacuum," as Dr. Johnson
remarked," but a plenum or a vacuum it must be." There
are no arguments, however, in favor of putting railroad stations
or sidings upon an inclined plane, and then not providing what
the English call "catch-points" or "scotches"
to prevent such disasters as those at Abergele or Helmshere. In
these two instances alone the want of them cost over fifty lives.
In railroad mechanics
124 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
there are after all some principles susceptible of demonstration.
That vehicles, as well as water, will run down hill may be classed
among them. That these principles should still be ignored is hardly
less singular than it is surprising.
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