THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS.
On the day of the Angola accident the eastern bound express train
over the Lake Shore road, as it was then called, consisted of a
locomotive, four baggage, express and mail cars, an emigrant and
three first-class passenger coaches. It was timed to pass Angola, a
small way station in the extreme western part of New York, at 1.30
P.M., without stopping; but on the day in question it was two hours
and forty-five minutes late, and was consequently running rapidly.
A third of a mile east of the station there is a shallow stream,
known as Big Sister creek, flowing in the bottom of a ravine the
western side of which rises abruptly to the level of the track,
while on the eastern side there is a gradual ascent of some forty
or fifty rods. This ravine was spanned by a deck bridge of 160
feet in length, at the east end of which was an abutment of mason
work some fifty feet long connecting with an embankment beyond.
It subsequently appeared that the forward axle in the rear truck
of the rear car was slightly bent. The defect was not perceptible
to the eye, but in turning round the space between the flanges of
the wheels of that axle varied by three-fourths of an inch. As long
as the car was travelling on an unbroken track, or as long as the
wheels did not strike any break in the track at their narrowest
point, this slight bend in the axle was of no consequence. There was
a frog in the track, however, at a distance of 600 feet east of the
Angola station, and it so happened that a wheel of the defective
axle struck this frog in such a way as to make it jump the track.
The rear car was instantly derailed. From the frog to the bridge was
some 1200 feet. With the appliances then in use the train could not
be stopped in this space, and the car was dragged along over the
ties, swaying violently from side to side. Just before the bridge
was reached the car next to the last was also thrown from the track,
and in this way, and still moving at considerable speed, the train
went onto the bridge. It was nearly across when the last car toppled
off and fell on the north side close to the abutment. The car next
to the rear, more fortunate, was dragged some 270 feet further, so
that when it broke loose it simply slid some thirty feet down the
embankment. Though this car was badly wrecked, but a single person
in it was killed. His death was a very singular one. Before the
car separated from the train, its roof broke in two transversely;
through the fissure thus made this unfortunate passenger was partly
flung, and it then instantly closed upon him.
The other car had fallen fifty feet, and remained resting on its
side against the abutment with one end inclined sharply downward. It
was mid-winter and cold, and, as was the custom then, the car was
heated by two iron stoves, placed one at each end, in which wood was
burned. It was nearly full of passengers. Naturally they all sprang
from their seats in terror and confusion as their car left the
rails, so that when it fell from the bridge and violently struck on
one of its ends, they were precipitated in an inextricable mass upon
one of the overturned stoves, while the other fell upon them from
above. A position more horrible could hardly be imagined. Few, if
any, were probably killed outright. Some probably were suffocated;
the greatest number were undoubtedly burned to death. Of those in
that car three only escaped; forty-one are supposed to have perished.
This was a case of derailment aggravated by fire. It is safe to say
that with the improved appliances since brought into use, it would
be most unlikely to now occur under precisely the same circumstances
on any well-equipped or carefully operated road. Derailments, of
course, by broken axles or wheels are always possible, but the
catastrophe at Angola was primarily due to the utter inability of
those on the train to stop it, or even greatly to check its speed
within any reasonable distance. Before it finally stood still the
locomotive was half a mile from the frog and 1,500 feet from the
bridge. Thus, when the rear cars were off the track, the speed
and distance they were dragged gave them a lateral and violently
swinging motion, which led to the final result. Though under similar
circumstances now this might not happen, there is no reason why,
circumstances being varied a little, the country should not again
during any winter day be shocked by another Angola sacrifice.
Certainly, so far as the danger from fire is concerned, it is an
alarming fact that it is hardly less in 1879 than it was in 1867.
This accumulative horror is, too, one of the distinctive features
of American railroad accidents. In other countries holocausts like
those at Versailles in 1842 and at Abergele in 1868 have from time
to time taken place. They are, however, occasioned in other ways,
and, as their occurrence is not regularly challenged by the most
risky possible of interior heating apparatus, are comparatively
infrequent. The passenger coaches used on this side of the Atlantic,
with their light wood-work heavily covered with paint and varnish,
are at best but tinder-boxes. The presence in them of stoves,
hardly fastened to the floor and filled with burning wood and coal,
involves a degree of risk which no one would believe ever could
willingly be incurred, but for the fact that it is. No invention yet
appears to have wholly met the requirements of the case. That they
will be met, and the fearful possibility which now hangs over the
head of every traveller by rail, that he may suddenly find himself
doomed without possibility of escape to be roasted alive, will be at
least greatly reduced hardly admits of question.
Turning now from the American to the English accident, it is
singular to note how under very similar circumstances much the same
fatality resulted from wholly different causes. It happened on the
day immediately preceding Christmas, and every train which at that
holiday season leaves London is densely packed, for all England
seems then to gather away from its cities to the country hearths.
Accordingly, the ten o'clock London express on the Great Western
Railway, when it left Oxford that morning, was made up of no less
than fifteen passenger carriages and baggage vans, drawn by two
powerful locomotives and containing nearly three hundred passengers.
About seven miles north of Oxford, as the train, moving at a speed
of some thirty to forty miles an hour, was rounding a gentle curve
in the approach to the bridge over the little river Cherwell, the
tire of one of the wheels of the passenger coach next behind the
locomotive broke, throwing it off the track. For a short distance
it was dragged along in its place; but almost immediately those in
charge of the locomotives noticed that something was wrong, and,
most naturally and with the very best of intensions, they instantly
did the very worst thing which under the circumstances it was in
their power to do,--they applied their brakes and reversed their
engines; their single thought was to stop the train. With the train
equipped as it was, however, had these men, instead of crowding on
their brakes and reversing their engines, simply shut off their
steam and by a gentle application of the brakes checked the speed
gradually and so as to avoid any strain on the couplings, the
carriages would probably have held together and remained upon the
road-bed. Instead of this, however, the sudden checking of the two
ponderous locomotives converted them into an anvil, as it were, upon
which the unfortunate leading carriage already off the rails was
crushed under the weight and impetus of those behind it. The train
instantly zig-zagged in every direction under the pressure, the
couplings which connected it together snapping, and the carriages,
after leaving the rails to the right and left and running down the
embankment of about thirteen feet in height, came to a stand-still
at last, several of them in the reverse order from that which they
had held while in the train. The first carriage was run over and
completely destroyed; the five rear ones were left alone upon the
road-bed, and of these two only were on the rails; of the ten which
went down the embankment, two were demolished. In this disaster
thirty-four passengers lost their lives, and sixty-five others,
besides four employés of the company, were injured.
At the time it occurred the Shipton accident was the subject
of a good deal of discussion, and both the brake system and
method of car construction in use on English roads were sharply
criticised. It was argued, and apparently with much reason, that
had the "locomotives and cars been equipped with the continuous
train-brakes so generally in use in America, the action of the
engine drivers would have checked at the same instant the speed of
each particular car, and probably any serious accident would have
been averted." Yet it required another disaster, not so fatal as
that at Shipton-on-Cherwell but yet sufficiently so, to demonstrate
that this was true only in a limited degree,--to further illustrate
and enforce the apparently obvious principle that, no matter how
heavy the construction may be, or what train-brake is in use, to
insure safety the proportion between the resisting strength of
car construction and the train-weight momentum to which it may be
subjected must be carefully preserved.
On this point of the resisting power of modern car construction,
indeed, it seemed as if a result had been reached which did away
with the danger of longitudinal crushing. Between 1873 and 1878 a
series of accidents had occurred on the American roads of which
little was heard at the time for the simple reason that they
involved no loss of life,--they belonged in the great category of
possible disasters which might have happened, had they not been
prevented. Trains going in opposite directions and at full speed
had come in collision while rounding curves; trains had run into
earth-slides, and had been suddenly stopped by derailment; in every
such case, however, the Westinghouse brake and the Miller car
construction had, when in use, proved equal to the emergency and
the passengers on the trains had escaped uninjured. The American
mechanic had accordingly grown firm in his belief that, so far as
any danger from the crushing of cars was concerned,--unless indeed
they were violently thrown down an embankment or precipitated into
an abyss,--the necessary resisting strength had been secured and the
problem practically solved. That such was not the case in America
in 1878 any more than in England in 1875, except within certain
somewhat narrow limits, was unexpectedly proven by a disaster which
occurred at Wollaston near Boston, on the Old Colony road, upon the
evening of October 8, 1878.