OIL-TANK ACCIDENTS.
Similar in some of its more dramatic features to the Versailles
accident, though originating from a wholly different cause, was the
Abergele disaster, which at the time occupied the attention of the
British public to the exclusion of everything else. It occurred
in 1868, and to the "Irish mail," perhaps the most famous train
which is run in England, if, indeed, not in the world. Leaving
London shortly after 7 A.M., the Irish mail was then timed to make
the distance to Chester, 166 miles, in four hours and eighteen
minutes, or at the rate of 40 miles an hour. For the next 85 miles,
completing the run to Holyhead, the speed was somewhat increased,
two hours and five minutes only being allowed for it. Abergele is a
point on the sea-coast of Wales, nearly midway between Chester and
Holyhead. On the day of the accident, August 20, 1868, the Irish
mail left Chester as usual. It was made up of thirteen carriages
in all, which were occupied, as the carriages of that train usually
were, by a large number of persons whose names at least were widely
known. Among these, on this particular occasion, was the Duchess of
Abercorn, wife of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with five
children. Under the running arrangements of the London & North
Western road a freight, or as it is there called a goods train, left
Chester half an hour before the mail, and was placed upon the siding
at Llanddulas, a station about a mile and a half beyond Abergele,
to allow the mail to pass. From Abergele to Llanddulas the track
ascended by a gradient of some sixty feet to the mile. On the day of
the accident it chanced that certain wagons between the engine and
the rear end of the goods train had to be taken out to be left at
Llanddulas, and in doing this it became necessary to separate the
train and to leave five or six of the last wagons in it standing on
the tracks of the main line, while those which were to be left were
backed onto a siding. The employé, whose duty it was, neglected to
set the brakes on the wagons thus left standing, and consequently
when the engine and the rest of the train returned for them, the
moment they were touched and before a coupling could be effected,
the jar set them in motion down the incline towards Abergele. They
started so slowly that a brakeman of the train ran after them,
fully expecting to catch and stop them, but as they went down the
grade they soon outstripped him and it became clear that there was
nothing to check them until they should meet the Irish mail, then
almost due. It also chanced that the cars thus set in motion were
oil cars.
The track of the North Western road between Abergele and Llanddulas
runs along the sides of the picturesque Welsh hills, which rise
up to the south, while to the north there stretches out a wide
expanse of sea. The mail train was skirting the hills and laboring
up the grade at a speed of thirty miles an hour, when its engineer
suddenly became aware of the loose wagons coming down upon it around
the curve, and then but a few yards off. Seeing that they were oil
cars he almost instinctively sprang from his locomotive, and was
thrown down by the impetus and rolled to the side of the road-bed.
Picking himself up, bruised but not seriously hurt, he saw that
the collision had already taken place, that the tender had ridden
directly over the engine, that the colliding cars were demolished,
and that the foremost carriages of the train were already on fire.
Running quickly to the rear of the train he succeeded in uncoupling
six carriages and a van, which were drawn away from the rest, before
the flames extended to them, by an engine which most fortunately was
following the train. All the other carriages were utterly destroyed,
and every person in them perished.
The Abergele was probably the solitary instance of a railroad
accident in which but a single survivor sustained any injury. There
was no maiming. It was death or entire escape. The collision was
not a particularly severe one, and the engineer of the mail train
especially stated that at the moment it occurred the loose cars were
still moving so slowly that he would not have sprung from his engine
had he not seen that they were loaded with oil. The very instant
the collision took place, however, the fluid seemed to ignite and
to flash along the train like lightning, so that it was impossible
to approach a carriage when once it caught fire. The fact was that
the oil in vast quantities was spilled upon the track and ignited by
the fire of the locomotive, and then the impetus of the mail train
forced all of its leading carriages into the dense mass of smoke and
flame. All those who were present concurred in positively stating
that not a cry, nor a moan, nor a sound of any description was heard
from the burning carriages, nor did any one in them apparently make
an effort to escape.
The most graphic description of this extraordinary and terrible
catastrophe was that given by the Marquis of Hamilton, the eldest
son of the Duke of Abercorn whose wife and family, fortunately
for themselves, occupied one of those rear carriages which were
unshackled and saved. In this account the Marquis of Hamilton
said:--"We were startled by a collision and a shock which, though
not very severe, were sufficient to throw every one against his
opposite neighbor. I immediately jumped out of the carriage,
when a fearful sight met my view. Already the whole of the three
passengers' carriages in front of ours, the vans, and the engine
were enveloped in dense sheets of flame and smoke, rising fully
twenty feet high, and spreading out in every direction. It was the
work of an instant. No words can convey the instantaneous nature
of the explosion and conflagration. I had actually got out almost
before the shock of the collision was over, and this was the
spectacle which already presented itself. Not a sound, not a scream,
not a struggle to escape, not a movement of any sort was apparent
in the doomed carriages. It was as though an electric flash had
at once paralyzed and stricken every one of their occupants. So
complete was the absence of any presence of living or struggling
life in them that as soon as the passengers from the other parts
of the train were in some degree recovered from their first shock
and consternation, it was imagined that the burning carriages were
destitute of passengers; a hope soon changed into feelings of horror
when their contents of charred and mutilated remains were discovered
an hour afterward. From the extent, however, of the flames, the
suddenness of the conflagration, and the absence of any power to
extricate themselves, no human aid would have been of any assistance
to the sufferers, who, in all probability, were instantaneously
suffocated by the black and fetid smoke peculiar to paraffine, which
rose in volumes around the spreading flames."
Though the collision took place before one o'clock, in spite
of the efforts of a large gang of men who were kept throwing
water on the tracks, the perfect sea of flame which covered the
line for a distance of some forty or fifty yards could not be
extinguished until nearly eight o'clock in the evening; for the
petroleum had flowed down into the ballasting of the road, and the
rails themselves were red-hot. It was therefore small occasion
for surprise that, when the fire was at last gotten under, the
remains of those who lost their lives were in some cases wholly
undistinguishable, and in others almost so. Among the thirty-three
victims of the disaster the body of no single one retained any
traces of individuality; the faces of all were wholly destroyed,
and in no case were there found feet, or legs, or anything at all
approaching to a perfect head. Ten corpses were finally identified
as those of males, and thirteen as those of females, while the sex
of ten others could not be determined. The body of one passenger,
Lord Farnham, was identified by the crest on his watch; and, indeed,
no better evidence of the wealth and social position of the victims
of this accident could have been asked for than the collection of
articles found on its site. It included diamonds of great size
and singular brilliancy; rubies, opals, emeralds, gold tops of
smelling-bottles, twenty-four watches, of which but two or three
were not gold, chains, clasps of bags, and very many bundles of
keys. Of these the diamonds alone had successfully resisted the
intense heat of the flame; the settings were nearly all destroyed.
Of the causes of this accident little need or can be said. No human
appliances, no more ingenious brakes or increased strength of
construction, could have averted it or warded off its consequences
once it was inevitable. It was occasioned primarily by two things,
the most dangerous and the most difficult to reach of all the
many sources of danger against which those managing railroads
have unsleepingly to contend:--a somewhat defective discipline,
aggravated by a little not unnatural carelessness. The rule of
the company was specific that all the wagons of every goods train
should be out of the way and the track clear at least ten minutes
before a passenger train was due; but in this case shunting was
going actively on when the Irish-mail was within a mile and a half.
A careless brakeman then forgot for once that he was leaving his
wagons close to the head of an incline; a blow in coupling, a little
heavier perhaps than usual, sufficed to set them in motion; and they
happened to be loaded with oil.
A catastrophe strikingly similar to that at Abergele befell an
express train on the Hudson River railroad, upon the night of the
6th of February, 1871. The weather for a number of days preceding
the accident had been unusually cold, and it is to the suffering
of employés incident to exposure, and the consequent neglect of
precautions on their part, that accidents are peculiarly due. On
this night a freight train was going south, all those in charge of
which were sheltering themselves during a steady run in the caboose
car at its rear end. Suddenly, when near a bridge over Wappinger's
Creek, not far from New Hamburg, they discovered that a car in the
centre of the train was off the track. The train was finally stopped
on the bridge, but in stopping it other cars were also derailed,
and one of these, bearing on it two large oil tanks, finally rested
obliquely across the bridge with one end projecting over the up
track. Hardly had the disabled train been brought to a stand-still,
when, before signal lanterns could in the confusion incident to the
disaster be sent out, the Pacific express from New York, which was
a little behind its time, came rapidly along. As it approached the
bridge, its engineer saw a red lantern swung, and instantly gave the
signal to apply the brakes. It was too late to avoid the collision;
but what ensued had in it, so far as the engineer was concerned,
an element of the heroic, which his companion, the fireman of the
engine, afterwards described on the witness stand with a directness
and simplicity of language which exceeded all art. The engineer's
name was Simmons, and he was familiarly known among his companions
as "Doc." His fireman, Nicholas Tallon, also saw the red light swung
on the bridge, and called out to him that the draw was open. In
reply Simmons told him to spring the patent brake, which he did,
and by this time they were alongside of the locomotive of the
disabled train and running with a somewhat slackened speed. Tallon
had now got out upon the step of the locomotive, preparatory to
springing off, and turning asked his companion if he also proposed
to do the same:--"'Doc' looked around at me but made no reply, and
then looked ahead again, watching his business; then I jumped and
rolled down on the ice in the creek; the next I knew I heard the
crash and saw the fire and smoke." The next seen of "Doc" Simmons,
he was dragged up days afterwards from under his locomotive at the
bottom of the river. But it was a good way to die. He went out
of the world and of the sight of men with his hand on the lever,
making no reply to the suggestion that he should leave his post, but
"looking ahead and watching his business."
Dante himself could not have imagined a greater complication of
horrors than then ensued: liquid fire and solid frost combined to
make the work of destruction perfect. The shock of the collision
broke in pieces the oil car, igniting its contents and flinging them
about in every direction. In an instant bridge, river, locomotive,
cars, and the glittering surface of the ice were wrapped in a sheet
of flame. At the same time the strain proved too severe for the
trestlework, which gave way, precipitating the locomotive, tender,
baggage cars, and one passenger car onto the ice, through which they
instantly crushed and sank deep out of sight beneath the water.
Of the remaining seven cars of the passenger train, two, besides
several of the freight train, were destroyed by fire, and shortly,
as the supports of the remaining portions of the bridge burned away,
the superstructure fell on the half-submerged cars in the water and
buried them from view.
Twenty-one persons lost their lives in this disaster, and a large
number of others were injured; but the loss of life, it will be
noticed, was only two-thirds of that at Abergele. The New Hamburg
catastrophe also differed from that at Abergele in that, under
its particular circumstances, it was far more preventable, and,
indeed, with the appliances since brought into use it would surely
be avoided. The modern train-brake had, however, not then been
perfected, so that even the hundred rods at which the signal was
seen did not afford a sufficient space in which to stop the train.