Mr. C. F. Adams, remarks:—“Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson’s
death, during the period of over eleven years, railroads enjoyed a
remarkable and most fortunate exemption from accidents. During all that
time there did not occur a single disaster resulting in any considerable
loss of life. This happy exemption was probably due to a variety of
causes. Those early roads were in the first place, remarkably well and
thoroughly built, and were very cautiously operated under a light volume
of traffic. The precautions then taken and the appliances in use would,
it is true, strike the modern railroad superintendent as both primitive
and comical; for instance, they involve the running of independent pilot
locomotives in advance of all night passenger trains, and it was, by the
way, on a pioneer locomotive of this description, on the return trip of
the excursion party from Manchester after the accident to Mr. Huskisson,
that the first recorded attempt was made in the direction of our present
elaborate system of night signals. On that occasion obstacles were
signalled to those in charge of the succeeding trains by a man on the
pioneer locomotive, who used for that purpose a bit of lighted tarred
rope. Through all the years between 1830 and 1841, nevertheless, not a
single serious railroad disaster had to be recorded. Indeed, the
luck—for it was nothing else—of these earlier times was truly amazing.
Thus on this same Liverpool and Manchester road, as a first-class train
on the morning of April 17, 1836, was moving at a speed of some thirty
miles an hour, an axle broke under the first passenger carriage, causing
the whole train to leave the rails and throwing it down the embankment,
which at that point was twenty feet high. The carriages were rolled
over, and the passengers in them turned topsy-turvy; nor, as they were
securely locked in, could they even extricate themselves when at last the
wreck of the train reached firm bearings. And yet no one was killed.”