THE REVERE REVELATION. 153
CHAPTER XVI.
NOVEL APPLIANCES.
THE great peculiarity of the Revere accident, and that
which gave a permanent interest to it, lay in the revelation it
afforded of the degree in which a system had outgrown its appliances.
At every point a deficiency was apparent. The railroads of New
England had long been living on their early reputation, and now,
when a sudden test was applied, it was found that they were years
behind the time. In August, 1871, the Eastern railroad was run
as if it were a line of stagecoaches in the days before the telegraph.
Not in one point alone, but in everything, it broke down under
the test. The disaster was due not to any single cause but to
a combination of causes implicating not only the machinery and
appliances in use by the company, but its discipline and efficiency
from the highest official down to the meanest subordinate. In
the first place the capacity of the road was taxed to the utmost;
it was
154 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
vital, almost, that every wheel should be kept in motion. Yet,
under that very exigency, the wheels stopped almost as a matter
of necessity. How could it be otherwise?Here was a crowded
line, more than half of which was equipped with but a single track,
in operating which no reliance was placed upon the telegraph.
With trains running out of their schedule time and out of their
schedule place, engineers and conductors were left to grope their
way along as best they could in the light of rules, the essence
of which was that when in doubt they were to stand stock still.
Then, in the absence of the telegraph, a block occurred almost
at the mouth of the terminal station; and there the trains stood
for hours in stupid obedience to a stupid rule, because the one
man who, with a simple regard to the dictates of common sense,
was habitually accustomed to violate it happened to be sick. Trains
commonly left a station out of time and out of place; and the
engineer of an express train was sent out to run a gauntlet the
whole length of the road with a simple verbal injunction to look
out for some one before him. Then, at last, when this express
train through all this chaos got to chasing an accommodation train,
much as a hound might course a hare, there was not a pretence
of a signal to indicate the time which had elapsed between the
passage of the two, and employees, lanterns in hand, gaped on
in bewilderment at the awful race, concluding that they could
not at any rate do anything
HARE AND HOUND. 155
to help matters, but on the whole they were inclined to think
that those most immediately concerned must know what they were
about. Finally, even when the disaster was imminent, when deficiency
in organization and discipline had done its worst, its consequences
might yet have been averted through the use of better appliances;
had the one train been equipped with the Westinghouse brake, already
largely in use in other sections of the country, it might and
would have been stopped; or had the other train been provided
with reflecting tail-lights in place of the dim hand-lanterns
which glimmered on its rear platform, it could hardly have failed
to make its proximity known. Any one of a dozen things, every
one of which should have been but was not, ought to have averted
the disaster. Obviously its immediate cause was not far to seek.
It lay in the carelessness of a conductor who failed to consult
his watch, and never knew until the crash came that his train
was leisurely moving along on the time of another. Nevertheless,
what can be said in extenuation of a system under which, at this
late day, a railroad is operated on the principle that each employee
under all circumstances can and will take care of himself and
of those whose lives and limbs are entrusted to his care?
There is, however, another and far more attractive side to
the picture. The lives sacrificed at Revere were not lost in vain.
Seven complete railroad years passed by between that and the Wollaston
156 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
Heights accident of 1878. During that time not less than two
hundred and thirty millions of persons were carried by rail within
the limits of Massachusetts. Of this vast number while only 50,
or about one in each four and a half millions, sustained any injury
from causes beyond their own power to control, the killed were
just two. This certainly was a record with which no community
could well find fault; and it was due more than anything else
to the great disaster of August 26, 1871. More than once, and
on more than one road, accidents occurred which, but for the improved
appliances introduced in consequence of the experience at Revere
could hardly have failed of fatal results. Not that these appliances
were in all cases very cheerfully or very eagerly accepted. Neither
the Miller platform nor the Westinghouse brake won its way into
general use unchallenged. Indeed, the earnestness and even the
indignation with which presidents and superintendents then protested
that their car construction was better and stronger than Miller's;
that their antiquated handbrakes were the most improved brakes,better,
much better, than the Westinghouse; that their crude old semaphores
and targets afforded a protection to trains which no block-system
would ever equal,all this certainly was comical enough,
even in the very shadow of the great tragedy. Men of a certain
type always have protested and will always continue to protest
that they have nothing to learn;
THE LESSON LEARNED. 157
yet, under the heavy burden of responsibility, learn they still
do. They dare not but learn. On this point the figures of the
Massachusetts annual returns between the year 1871 and the year
1878 speak volumes. At the time of the Revere disaster, with one
single honorable exception,that of the Boston & Providence
road,both the atmospheric train-brake and the Miller platform,
the two greatest modern improvements in American car construction,
were practically unrecognized on the railroads of Massachusetts.
Even a year later, but 93 locomotives and 415 cars had been equipped
even with the train-brake. In September, 1873, the number had,
however, risen to 194 locomotives and 709 cars; and another twelve
months carried these numbers up to 313 locomotives
and 997 cars. Finally in 1877 the state commissioners in their
report for that year spoke of the train-brake as having been then
generally adopted, and at the same time called attention to the
very noticeable fact "that the only railroad accident resulting
in the death of a passenger from causes beyond his control within
the state during a period of two years and eight months, was caused
by the failure of a company to adopt this improvement on all its
passenger rolling-stock." The adoption of Miller's method
of car construction had meanwhile been hardly less rapid. Almost
unknown at the time of the Revere catastrophe in September, 1871,
in October, 1873, when returns on the subject were first called
for by the state
158 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
commissioners, eleven companies had already adopted it on 778
cars out of a total number of 1548 reported. In 1878 it had been
adopted by twenty-two companies, and applied to 1685 cars out
of a total of 1792. In other words it had been brought into general
use.
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