TELESCOPING AND THE MILLER PLATFORM.
The period of exemption from wholesale railroad slaughters referred
to in a previous chapter and which fortunately marked the early days
of the system, seems to have lasted some eleven years. The record of
great catastrophes opened on the Great Western railway of England,
and it opened also, curiously enough, upon the 24th of December, a
day which seems to have been peculiarly unfortunate in the annals
of that corporation, seeing that it was likewise the date of the
Shipton-on-Cherwell disaster. Upon that day, in 1841, a train, while
moving through a thick fog at a high rate of speed, came suddenly
in contact with a mass of earth that had slid down upon the track
from the slope of the cutting. Instantly the whole rear of the train
was piled up on the top of the first carriage, which happened to
be crowded with passengers, eight of whom were killed on the spot
while seventeen others were more or less injured. The coroner's
jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and at the same time,
as if to give the corporation a forcible hint to look closer to the
condition of its roadway, a "deodand" of one hundred pounds was
levied on the locomotive and tender. This practice, by the way,
of levying a deodand in cases of railroad accidents resulting in
loss of life, affords a curious illustration of how seldom those
accidents must have occurred. The mere mention of it now as ever
having existed sounds almost as strange and unreal as would an
assertion that the corporations had in their earlier days been wont
to settle their differences by wager of battle. Like the wager of
battle, the deodand was a feature of the English common law derived
from the feudal period. It was nothing more nor less than a species
of fine, everything through the instrumentality of which accidental
death occurred being forfeited to the crown; or, in lieu of the
thing itself, its supposed money value as assessed by a coroner's
jury.[2] Accordingly, down to somewhere about the year 1847, when
the practice was finally abolished by act of Parliament, we find in
all cases of English railroad accidents resulting in death, mention
of the deodand assessed by coroner's juries on the locomotives.
These appear to have been arbitrarily fixed, and graduated in amount
as the circumstances of the particular accident seemed to excite
in greater or less degree the sympathies or the indignation of the
jury. In November, 1838, for instance, a locomotive exploded on
the Manchester & Liverpool road, killing its engineer and fireman:
and for this escapade a deodand of twenty pounds was assessed upon
it by the coroner's jury; while upon another occasion, in 1839,
where the locomotive struck and killed a man and horse at a street
crossing, the deodand was fixed at no less a sum than fourteen
hundred pounds, the full value of the engine. Yet in this last
case there did not appear to be any circumstances rendering the
corporation liable in civil damages. The deodand seems to have been
looked upon as a species of rude penalty imposed on the use of
dangerous appliances,--a sharp reminder to the corporations to look
closely after their locomotives and employés. As, however, accidents
increased in frequency it became painfully apparent that "crowner's
'quest law" was not in any appreciable degree better calculated to
command the public respect in the days of Victoria than in those of
Elizabeth, and the ancient usage was accordingly at last abolished.
Certainly the position of railroad corporations would now be even
more hazardous than it is, if, after every catastrophe resulting
in death, the coroner's jury of the vicinage enjoyed the power of
arbitrarily imposing on them such additional penalty not exceeding
the value of a locomotive, in addition to all other liabilities, as
might seem to it proper under the circumstances of the case.
[2] "_Deodand._ By this is meant whatever personal chattel is
the immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature:
which is forfeited to the king, to be applied to pious uses, and
distributed in alms by his high almoner; though formerly destined
to a more superstitious purpose. * * * Wherever the thing is in
motion, not only that part which immediately gives the wounds
(as the wheel which runs over his body,) but all things which
move with it and help to make the wound more dangerous, (as the
cart and loading, which increase the pressure of the wheel) are
forfeited."--_Blackstone, Book I, Chap. 8, XVI._
Recurring, however, to the accident of December 24, 1861, the
numerous casualties in that case were due to the crushing of the
rolling stock which was not strong enough to resist the shock of
the sudden stop. Under these circumstances the light, short English
carriages rode over each other and were broken to pieces; under
similar circumstances the longer and heavier cars then in use in
America would have "telescoped;" that is, the platforms between the
cars would have been broken off and the forward end of each car
riding slightly up on its broken coupling would have shot in over
the floor of the car before it, sweeping away the studding and other
light wood-work and crushing stoves, seats and passengers into one
inextricable mass, until, if the momentum was sufficiently great,
the several vehicles in the train would be enclosed in each other
somewhat like the slides of a partially shut telescope.
Crushing in other countries and telescoping in America were formerly
the greatest, if not the worst, dangers to which travel by rail
was liable. As respects crushing there is little to be said. It is
a mere question of proportions,--resisting strength opposed to
momentum. So long as trains go at great speed it is inevitable that
they will occasionally be brought to a dead-stand by running upon
unexpected obstacles. The simple wonder is that they do this so
infrequently. When, however, now and again, they are thus brought
to a dead-stand the safety of the passenger depends and can depend
on nothing but the strength of the car in which he is sitting as
measured by the force of the shock to which it is subjected. This
matter has already been referred to in connection with the Shipton
and Wollaston accidents,[3] the last of which was a significant
reminder to all railroad managers that no matter how strongly or
with how careful a regard to scientific principles cars may be
constructed, just so long as they are made by human hands it is easy
to load on weight sufficient, when combined with only a moderate
momentum, to crush them into splinters.
[3] Ante pp. 18-19.
Telescoping, however, was an incident of crushing, and a peculiarly
American incident, which is not without a certain historical
interest; for the particular feature in car construction which
led directly to it and all its attendant train of grisly horrors
furnishes a singular and instructive illustration of the gross
violations of mechanical principles into which practical, as opposed
to educated, mechanics are apt constantly to fall,--and in which,
when once they have fallen, they steadily persist. The original
idea of the railroad train was a succession of stage coaches chained
together and hauled by a locomotive. The famous pioneer train of
August 9, 1831, over the Mohawk Valley road was literally made up
in this way, the bodies of stage coaches having been placed on
trucks, which "were coupled together with chains or chain-links,
leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive
started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk
the passengers, who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches,
out from under their hats, and in stopping they came together with
such force as to send them flying from their seats." On this trip,
it will be remembered, the train presently came to a stop, when
the passengers upon it, with true American adaptability, set their
wits at once to the work of devising some means of remedying the
unpleasant jerks.[4] "A plan was soon hit upon and put in execution.
The three links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their
utmost tension, a rail, from a fence in the neighborhood, was placed
between each pair of cars and made fast by means of the packing yarn
from the cylinders." Here was the incipient idea of couplers and
buffers improvised by practical men, and for a third of a century
it remained almost unimproved upon, except by the introduction
of a spring upon which coupler and buffer played. The only other
considerable change made in the earlier days of car construction
was by no means an improvement, inasmuch as it introduced the new
and wholly unnecessary danger of telescoping.
[4] Railroads: their Origin and Problems, p. 49.
The original passenger cars, however frail and light they may have
been, were at least, when shackled together in a train, continuous
in their bearings on each other,--that is, their sills and floor
timbers were all on a level and in line, so that, if the cars were
suddenly pressed together, they met in such a way as to resist the
pressure to the extent of their resisting power, and the floor
of one did not quietly slide under or over that of another. The
bodies of these cars were about thirty-two inches from the rails.
This was presently found to be too low. In raising the bodies
of the cars, however, the mechanics of those days encountered a
practical difficulty. The couplings of the cars built on the new
model were higher than those of the old. They at once met, and,
as they thought, no less ingeniously then successfully overcame
this difficulty, by placing the couplings and draw-heads of their
new cars below the line of the sills. This necessitated putting
the platform which sustained the coupling also beneath the sills,
and in doing that they disregarded, without the most remote
consciousness of the fact, a fundamental law of mechanics. With a
possible pressure, both sudden and heavy to be resisted, the line
of resistance was no longer the line of greatest strength. During
thirty years this stupid blunder remained uncorrected. It was as
if the builders during that period had from force of habit insisted
upon always using as supports pillars which were curved or bent
instead of upright. At the close of those thirty years also the
railroad mechanics had become so thoroughly educated into their
false methods that it took yet other years and a series of frightful
disasters, the significance of which they seemed utterly unable to
take in, before they could be induced to abandon those methods.
The two great dangers of telescoping and oscillation were directly
due to this system of car construction and of train coupling,--and
telescoping and oscillation were probably the cause of one-half at
least of the loss of life and the injuries to persons incident to
the first thirty years of American railroad experience. The badly
built and loosely connected coaches of every train going at any
considerable rate of speed used then to swing and roll about and
hammer against each other after a fashion which made the infrequent
occurrence of serious disaster the only fair subject for surprise.
In case of a sudden stoppage or partial derailment, the train
stopped or went on, not as a whole, but as a succession of parts,
while the low platforms and slack couplings fearfully increased
the danger;--for, if the train held together, the cars in stopping
were likely to break off the platforms, making of what remained of
them a sort of inclined plane over which the car-bodies rode into
each other at different levels; or, if the couplings, as was more
probable, held and the train did not part, the swaying and swinging
of the loosely connected cars was almost sure to throw them from
the track and break them in pieces. The invention through which
this difficulty was at last overcome, simple and obvious as it was,
is fairly entitled, so far as America at least is concerned, to be
classed among the four or five really noticeable advances which
have of late years been made in railroad appliances. It contributed
unmistakably and essentially to the safety of every traveller. Known
as the Miller platform and buffer, from the name of the inventor,
it was, like all good work of the sort, a simple and intelligent
recurrence to correct mechanical principles. Miller went to work to
construct cars in such a way as to cause them to come in contact
with each other in the line of their greatest resisting power, while
in coupling them together in trains he introduced both tension and
compression;--that is he, in plain language, brought the ends of
the heavy longitudinal floor timbers of the separate cars exactly
on a line and directly bearing on each other, and then forced them
against each other until the heavy spring buffers which played
on those floor timbers were compressed, when the couplers sprung
together and the train then stood practically one solid body from
end to end. It could no more swing or crush than a single car could
swing or crush. It then only remained to increase the weight and to
perfect the construction of the vehicles to insure all the safety in
this respect of which travel by rail admitted.
Simple as these improvements were, and apparently obvious as the
mechanical principles on which they were based now seem, the
opposition for years offered to them by practical master-mechanics
and railroad men would have been ludicrous had it not been
exasperating. There was hardly a railroad in the country whose
officers did not insist that their method of construction was
exceptional, it was true, but far better than Miller's. It was
maintained that the slack couplings were necessary in order to
enable the locomotives to start the trains,--that a train made up
without the slack, on Miller's plan, could not be set in motion,
and that if it was set in motion it must twist apart at every sharp
curve etc. The ingenuity displayed in thus inventing theoretical
objections to the appliance far exceeded that required for inventing
it, and indeed no one who has not had official experience of it
can at all realize the objecting capacity of the typical practical
mechanic whose conceit as a rule is measured by his ignorance,
while his stupidity is unequalled save by his obstinacy. Even when
Miller's invention for one reason or another was not adopted, the
principles upon which that invention was founded,--the principles
of tension, cohesion and direct resistance,--at last forced their
way into general acceptance. The long-urged objection that the
thing was practically impossible was slowly abandoned in face of
the awkward but undeniable fact that it was done every day, and
many times a day. Consequently, as the result of much patient
arguing, duly emphasized by the regular recurrence of disaster,
it is not too much to assert that for weight, resisting power,
perfection of construction and equipment and the protection they
afford to travellers, the standard American passenger coach is now
far in advance of any other. As to comfort, convenience, taste
in ornamentation, etc., these are so much matters of habit and
education that it is unnecessary to discuss them. They do not affect
the question of safety.
A very striking illustration of the vast increase of safety secured
through this improved car construction was furnished in an accident,
which happened in Massachusetts upon July 15, 1872. As an express
train on the Boston & Providence road was that day running to Boston
about noon and at a rate of speed of some forty miles an hour, it
came in contact with a horse and wagon at a grade crossing in the
town of Foxborough. The train was made up of thoroughly well-built
cars, equipped with both the Miller platform and the Westinghouse
train-brake. There was no time in which to check the speed, and it
thus became a simple question of strength of construction, to be
tested in an unavoidable collision. The engine struck the wagon, and
instantly destroyed it. The horse had already cleared the rails when
the wagon was struck, but, a portion of his harness getting caught
on the locomotive, he was thrown down and dragged a short distance
until his body came in contact with the platform of a station close
to the spot of collision. The body was then forced under the cars,
having been almost instantaneously rolled and pounded up into a
hard, unyielding mass. The results which ensued were certainly
very singular. Next to the locomotive was an ordinary baggage and
mail car, and it was under this car, and between its forward and
its hind truck, that the body of the horse was forced; coming then
directly in contact with the truck of the rear wheels, it tore it
from its fastenings and thus let the rear end of the car drop upon
the track. In falling, this end snapped the coupling by its weight,
and so disconnected the train, the locomotive going off towards
Boston dragging this single car, with one end of it bumping along
the track. Meanwhile the succeeding car of the train had swept over
the body of the horse and the disconnected truck, which were thus
brought in contact with its own wheels, which in their turn were
also torn off; and so great was the momentum that in this way all of
the four passenger cars which composed that part of the train were
successively driven clean off their rolling gear, and not only did
they then slide off the track, but they crossed a railroad siding
which happened to be at that point, went down an embankment three or
four feet in height, demolished a fence, passed into an adjoining
field, and then at last, after glancing from the stump of a large
oak-tree, they finally came to a stand-still some two hundred feet
from the point at which they had left the track. There was not in
this case even an approach to telescoping; on the contrary, each car
rested perfectly firmly in its place as regarded all the others, not
a person was injured, and when the wheel-less train at last became
stationary the astonished passengers got up and hurried through the
doors, the very glass in which as well as that in the windows was
unbroken. Here was an indisputable victory of skill and science over
accident, showing most vividly to what an infinitesimal extreme the
dangers incident to telescoping may be reduced.
The vast progress in this direction made within twenty years can,
however, best perhaps be illustrated by the results of two accidents
almost precisely similar in character, which occurred, the one on
the Great Western railroad of Canada, in October, 1854, the other
on the Boston & Albany, in Massachusetts, in October, 1874. In the
first case a regular train made up of a locomotive and seven cars,
while approaching Detroit at a speed of some twenty miles an hour,
ran into a gravel train of fifteen cars which was backing towards
it at a speed of some ten miles an hour. The locomotive of the
passenger train was thrown completely off the track and down the
embankment, dragging after it a baggage car. At the head of the
passenger portion of the train were two second-class cars filled
with emigrants; both of these were telescoped and demolished,
and all their unfortunate occupants either killed or injured. The
front of the succeeding first-class car was then crushed in, and a
number of those in it were hurt. In all, no less than forty-seven
persons lost their lives, while sixty others were maimed or severely
bruised. So much for a collision in October, 1854. In October, 1874,
on the Boston & Albany road, the regular New York express train,
consisting of a locomotive and seven cars, while going during the
night at a speed of forty miles an hour, was suddenly, near the
Brimfield station, thrown by a misplaced switch into a siding upon
which a number of platform freight cars were standing. The train was
thoroughly equipped, having both Miller platform and Westinghouse
brake. The six seconds which intervened, in the darkness, between
notice of displacement and the collision did not enable the engineer
to check perceptibly the speed of his train, and when the blow came
it was a simple question of strength to resist. The shock must
have been tremendous, for the locomotive and tender were flung off
the track to the right and the baggage car to the left, the last
being thrown across the interval between the siding and the main
track and resting obliquely over the latter. The forward end of the
first passenger coach was thrown beyond the baggage car up over
the tender, and its rear end, as well as the forward end of the
succeeding coach, was injured. As in the Foxborough case, several
of the trucks were jerked out from under the cars to which they
belonged, but not a person on the train was more than slightly
bruised, the cars were not disconnected, nor was there even a
suggestion of telescoping.