DRAW-BRIDGE DISASTERS.
It is difficult to see how on double track roads, where the
occurrence of an accident on one line of tracks is always liable to
instantly "foul" the other line, it is possible to guard against
contingencies like that which occurred at New Hamburg. At the time,
as is usual in such cases, the public indignation expended itself
in vague denunciation of the Hudson River Railroad Company, because
the disaster happened to take place upon a bridge in which there was
a draw to permit the passage of vessels. There seemed to be a vague
but very general impression that draw-bridges were dangerous things,
and, because other accidents due to different causes had happened
upon them, that the occurrence of this accident, from whatever
cause, was in itself sufficient evidence of gross carelessness. The
fact was that not even the clumsy Connecticut rule, which compels
the stopping of all trains before entering on any draw-bridge,
would have sufficed to avert the New Hamburg disaster, for the
river was then frozen and the draw was not in use, so that for the
time being the bridge was an ordinary bridge; and not even in the
frenzy of crude suggestions which invariably succeeds each new
accident was any one ever found ignorant enough to suggest the
stopping of all trains before entering upon every bridge, which, as
railroads generally follow water-courses, would not infrequently
necessitate an average of one stop to every thousand feet or so.
Only incidentally did the bridge at New Hamburg have anything to
do with the disaster there, the essence of which lay in the sudden
derailment of an oil car immediately in front of a passenger train
running in the opposite direction and on the other track. Of course,
if the derailment had occurred long enough before the passenger
train came up to allow the proper signals to be given, and this
precaution had been neglected, then the disaster would have been
due, not to the original cause, but to the defective discipline
of the employés. Such does not appear to have been the case at
New Hamburg, nor was that disaster by any means the first due to
derailment and the throwing of cars from one track in front of a
train passing upon the other;--nor will it be the last. Indeed, an
accident hardly less destructive, arising from that very cause, had
occurred only eight months previous in England, and resulted in
eighteen deaths and more than fifty cases of injury.
A goods train made up of a locomotive and twenty-nine wagons was
running at a speed of some twenty miles an hour on the Great
Northern road, between Newark and Claypole, about one hundred miles
from London, when the forward axle under one of the wagons broke. As
a result of the derailment which ensued the train became divided,
and presently the disabled car was driven by the pressure behind it
out of its course and over the interval, so that it finally rested
partly across the other track. At just this moment an excursion
train from London, made up of twenty-three carriages and containing
some three hundred and forty passengers, came along at a speed of
about thirty-five miles an hour. It was quite dark, and the engineer
of the freight train waved his arm as a signal of danger; one of
the guards, also, showed a red light with his hand lantern, but his
action either was not seen or was misunderstood, for without any
reduction of speed being made the engine of the excursion train
plunged headlong into the disabled goods wagon. The collision was
so violent as to turn the engine aside off the track and cause it
to strike the stone pier of a bridge near by, by which it was flung
completely around and then driven up the slope of the cutting, where
it toppled over like a rearing horse and fell back into the roadway.
The tender likewise was overturned; but not so the carriages. They
rushed along holding to the track, and the side of each as it passed
was ripped and torn by the projecting end of the goods wagon.
Of the twenty-three carriages and vans in the train scarcely one
escaped damage, while the more forward ones were in several cases
lifted one on top of the other or forced partly up the slope of
the cutting, whence they fell back again, crushing the passengers
beneath them.
This accident occurred on the 21st of June, 1870; it was very
thoroughly investigated by Captain Tyler on behalf of the Board of
Trade, with the apparent conclusion that it was one which could
hardly have been guarded against. The freight cars, the broken
axle of which occasioned the disaster, did not belong to the Great
Northern company, and the wheels of the train had been properly
examined by viewing and tapping at the several stopping-places; the
flaw which led to the fracture was, however, of such a nature that
it could have been detected only by the removal of the wheel. It did
not appear that the employés of the company had been guilty of any
negligence; and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
accident was due to one of those defects to which the results of
even the most perfect human workmanship must ever remain liable, and
this had revealed itself under exactly those conditions which must
involve the most disastrous consequences.
The English accident did, however, establish one thing, if nothing
else; it showed the immeasurable superiority of the system of
investigation pursued in the case of railroad accidents in England
over that pursued in this country. There a trained expert after
the occurrence of each disaster visits the spot and sifts the
affair to the very bottom, locating responsibility and pointing out
distinctly the measures necessary to guard against its repetition.
Here the case ordinarily goes to a coroner's jury, the findings of
which as a rule admirably sustain the ancient reputation of that
august tribunal. It is absolutely sad to follow the course of these
investigations, they are conducted with such an entire disregard of
method and lead to such inadequate conclusions. Indeed, how could it
be otherwise?--The same man never investigates two accidents, and,
for the one investigation he does make, he is competent only in his
own esteem.
Take the New Hamburgh accident as an example. Rarely has any
catastrophe merited a more careful investigation, and few
indeed have ever called forth more ill-considered criticism or
crude suggestions. Almost nothing of interest respecting it was
elicited at the inquest, and now no reliable criticism can be
ventured upon it. The question of responsibility in that case,
and of prevention thereafter, involved careful inquiry into at
least four subjects:--First, the ownership and condition of the
freight car, the fractured axle of which occasioned the disaster,
together with the precautions taken by the company, usually and in
this particular case, to test the wheels of freight cars moving
over its road, especially during times of severe cold.--Second,
the conduct of those in charge of the freight train immediately
preceding and at the time of the accident; was the fracture of the
axle at once noticed and were measures taken to stop the train, or
was the derailment aggravated by neglect into the form it finally
took?--Third, was there any neglect in signaling the accident on
the part of those in charge of the disabled train, and how much
time elapsed between the accident and the collision?--Fourth, what,
if any, improved appliances would have enabled those in charge
of either train to have averted the accident?--and what, if any,
defects either in the rules or the equipment in use were revealed?
No satisfactory conclusion can now be arrived at upon any of these
points, though the probabilities are that with the appliances since
introduced the train might have been stopped in time. In this case,
as in that at Claybridge, the coroner's jury returned a verdict
exonerating every one concerned from responsibility, and very
possibly they were justified in so doing; though it is extremely
questionable whether Captain Tyler would have arrived at a similar
conclusion. There is a strong probability that the investigation
went off, so to speak, on a wholly false issue,--turned on the
draw-bridge frenzy instead of upon the question of care. So far
as the verdict declared that the disaster was due to a collision
between a passenger train and a derailed oil car, and not to the
existence of a draw in the bridge on which it happened to occur, it
was, indeed, entitled to respect, and yet it was on this very point
that it excited the most criticism. Loud commendation was heard
through the press of the Connecticut law, which had been in force
for twenty years, and, indeed, still is in force there, under which
all trains are compelled to come to a full stop before entering
on any bridge which has a draw in it,--a law which may best be
described as a useless nuisance. Yet the grand jury of the Court of
Oyer and Terminer of New York city even went so far as to recommend,
in a report made by it on the 23d of February, 1871,--sixteen days
after the accident,--the passage by the legislature then in session
at Albany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately better counsels
prevailed, and, as the public recovered its equilibrium, the matter
was allowed to drop.
The Connecticut law in question, however, originated in an accident
which at the time had startled and shocked the community as much
even as that at Versailles did before or that at Abergele has since
done. It occurred to an express train on the New York & New Haven
road at Norwalk, in Connecticut, on the 6th of May, 1853.