THE NORWALK ACCIDENT.
The railroad at Norwalk crosses a small inlet of Long Island Sound
by means of a draw-bridge, which is approached from the direction
of New York around a sharp curve. A ball at the mast-head was in
1853 the signal that the draw was open and the bridge closed to
the passage of trains. The express passenger train for Boston,
consisting of a locomotive and two baggage and five passenger cars,
containing about one hundred and fifty persons, left New York as
usual at eight o'clock that morning. The locomotive was not in
charge of its usual engine-driver but of a substitute named Tucker;
a man who some seven years before had been injured in a previous
collision on the same road, for which he did not appear to have
been in any way responsible, but who had then given up his position
and gone to California, whence he had recently returned and was now
again an applicant for an engineer's situation. This was his third
trip over the road, as substitute. In approaching the bridge at
Norwalk he apparently wholly neglected to look for the draw-signal.
He was running his train at about the usual rate of speed, and
first became aware that the draw was open when within four hundred
feet of it and after it had become wholly impossible to stop the
train in time. He immediately whistled for brakes and reversed his
engine, and then, without setting the brake on his tender, both he
and the fireman sprang off and escaped with trifling injuries. The
train at this time did not appear to be moving at a speed of over
fifteen miles an hour. The draw was sixty feet in width; the water
in the then state of the tide was about twelve feet deep, and the
same distance below the level of the bridge. Although the speed
of the train had been materially reduced, yet when it came to the
opening it was still moving with sufficient impetus to send its
locomotive clean across the sixty foot interval and to cause it to
strike the opposite abutment about eight feet below the track; it
then fell heavily to the bottom. The tender lodged on top of the
locomotive, bottom up and resting against the pier, while on top
of this again was the first baggage car. The second baggage car,
which contained also a compartment for smokers, followed, but in
falling was canted over to the north side of the draw in such a way
as not to be wholly submerged, so that most of those in it were
saved. The first passenger car next plunged into the opening; its
forward end crushed in, as it fell against the baggage car in front
of it, while its rear end dropped into the deep water below; and
on top of it came the second passenger car, burying the passengers
in the first beneath the _débris_, and itself partially submerged.
The succeeding or third passenger car, instead of following the
others, broke in two in the middle, the forward part hanging down
over the edge of the draw, while the rear of it rested on the track
and stayed the course of the remainder of the train. Including those
in the smoking compartment more than a hundred persons were plunged
into the channel, of whom forty-six lost their lives, while some
thirty others were more or less severely injured. The killed were
mainly among the passengers in the first car; for, in falling, the
roof of the second car was split open, and it finally rested in such
a position that, as no succeeding car came on top of it, many of
those in it were enabled to extricate themselves; indeed, more than
one of the passengers in falling were absolutely thrown through the
aperture in the roof, and, without any volition on their part, were
saved with unmoistened garments.
Shocking as this catastrophe was, it was eclipsed in horror by
another exactly similar in character, though from the peculiar
circumstances of the case it excited far less public notice, which
occurred eleven years later on the Grand Trunk railway of Canada.
In this case a large party of emigrants, over 500 in number and
chiefly Poles, Germans and Norwegians of the better class, had
landed at Quebec and were being forwarded on a special train to
their destination in the West. With their baggage they filled
thirteen cars. The Grand Trunk on the way to Montreal crosses the
Richelieu river at Beloeil by an iron bridge, in the westernmost
span of which was a draw over the canal, some 45 feet below it. Both
by law and under the running rules of the road all trains were to
come to a dead stand on approaching the bridge, and to proceed only
when the safety signal was clearly discerned. This rule, however,
as it appeared at the subsequent inquest, had been systematically
disobeyed, it having been considered sufficient if the train was
"slowed down." In the present case, however--the night of June 29,
1864,--though the danger signal was displayed and in full sight
for a distance of 1,600 feet, the engine-driver, unfamiliar with
the road and its signals, failed to see it, and, without slowing
his train even, ran directly onto the bridge. He became aware of
the danger when too late to stop. The draw was open to permit the
passage of a steamer with six barges in tow, one of which was
directly under the opening. The whole train went through the draw,
sinking the barge and piling itself up in the water on top of it.
The three last cars, falling on the accumulated wreck, toppled over
upon the west embankment and were thus less injured than the others.
The details of the accident were singularly distressing. "As soon
as possible a strong cable was attached to the upper part of the
piling, and by this means two cars, the last of the ill-fated train,
were dragged onto the wharf under the bridge. Their removal revealed
a horrible sight. A shapeless blue mass of hands and heads and feet
protruded among the splinters and frame-work, and gradually resolved
itself into a closely-packed mass of human beings, all ragged and
bloody and dinted from crown to foot with blue bruises and weals
and cuts inflicted by the ponderous iron work, the splinters and
the enormous weight of the train. * * * A great many of the dead
had evidently been asleep; the majority of them had taken off their
boots and coats in the endeavor to make themselves as comfortable
as possible. They lay heaped upon one another like sacks, dressed
in the traditional blue clothing of the German people. * * * A
child was got at and removed nine hours after the accident, being
uninjured in its dead mother's arms."
The accident happened at 2 A.M., and before sundown of the next day
86 bodies had been taken out of the canal; others were subsequently
recovered, and yet more died from their hurts. The injured were
numbered by hundreds. It was altogether a disaster of the most
appalling description, in extenuation of which nothing was to
be said. It befell, however, a body of comparatively friendless
emigrants, and excited not a tithe of the painful interest which yet
attaches to the similar accident to the Boston express at Norwalk.
These terrible disasters were both due, not alone to the
carelessness of the two engine-drivers, but to the use of a crude
and inadequate system of signals. It so happened, however, that
the legislature of Connecticut was unfortunately in session at the
time of the Norwalk disaster, and consequently the public panic
and indignation took shape in a law compelling every train on
the railroads of that state to come to a dead stand-still before
entering upon any bridge in which there was a draw. This law is
still in force, and from time to time, as after the New Hamburg
catastrophe, an unreasoning clamor is raised for it in other
states. In point of fact it imposes a most absurd, unnecessary and
annoying delay on travel, and rests upon the Connecticut statute
book a curious illustration of what usually happens when legislators
undertake to incorporate running railroad regulations into the
statutes-at-large. It is of a par with another law, which has for
more than twenty-five years been in force in Connecticut's sister
state of Massachusetts, compelling in all cases where the tracks of
different companies cross each other at a level the trains of each
company to stop before reaching the crossing, and then to pass over
it slowly. The danger of collision at crossings is undoubtedly much
greater than that of going through open draws. Precautions against
danger in each case are unquestionably proper and they cannot be
too perfect, but to have recourse to stopping either in the one
case or the other simply reveals an utter ignorance of the great
advance which has been made in railroad signals and the science of
interlocking. In both these cases it is, indeed, entitled to just
about the same degree of respect as would be a proposal to recur to
pioneer engines as a means of preventing accidents to night trains.
The machinery by means of which both draws and grade crossings
can be protected, will be referred to in another connection,[7]
meanwhile it is a curious fact that neither at grade crossings
nor at draws has the mere stopping of trains proved a sufficient
protection. Several times in the experience of Massachusetts' roads
have those in charge of locomotives, after stopping and while moving
at a slow rate of speed, actually run themselves into draws with
their eyes open, and afterwards been wholly unable to give any
satisfactory explanation of their conduct. But the insufficiency
of stopping as a reliable means of prevention was especially
illustrated in the case of an accident which occurred upon the
Boston & Maine railroad on the morning of the 21st of November,
1862, when the early local passenger train was run into the open
draw of the bridge almost at the entrance to the Boston station. It
so happened that the train had stopped at the Charlestown station
just before going onto the bridge, and at the time the accident
occurred was moving at a speed scarcely faster than a man could
walk; and yet the locomotive was entirely submerged, as the water
at that point is deep, and the only thing which probably saved the
train was that the draw was so narrow and the cars were so long that
the foremost one lodged across the opening, and its forward end only
was beneath the water. At the rate at which the train was moving
the resistance thus offered was sufficient to stop it, though, even
as it was, no less than six persons lost their lives and a much
larger number were more or less injured. Here all the precautions
imposed by the Connecticut law were taken, and served only to
reveal the weak point in it. The accident was due to the neglect of
the corporation in not having the draw and its system of signals
interlocked in such a way that the movement of the one should
automatically cause a corresponding movement of the other; and this
neglect in high quarters made it possible for a careless employé to
open the draw on a particularly dark and foggy morning, while he
forgot at the same time to shift his signals. An exactly similar
instance of carelessness on the part of an employé resulted in the
derailment of a train upon the Long Branch line of the Central Road
of New Jersey at the Shrewsbury river draw on August 9, 1877. In
this case the safety signal was shown while the draw fastening had
been left unsecured. The jar of the passing train threw the draw
slightly open so as to disconnect the tracks; thus causing the
derailment of the train, which subsequently plunged over the side
of the bridge. Fortunately the tide was out, or there would have
been a terrible loss of life; as it was, some seventy persons were
injured, five of whom subsequently died. This accident also, like
that on the Boston & Maine road in 1862, very forcibly illustrated
the necessity of an interlocking apparatus. The safety signal was
shown before the draw was secured, which should have been impossible.
[7] Chapters XVII and XVIII.
Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive record of this or
any other class of railroad accidents occurring in America, but
during the six years 1873-8 there occurred twenty-one cases of
minor disaster at draws, three only of them to passenger trains.
Altogether, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, these resulted
in the death of five employés and injury to one other. No passenger
was hurt. In Great Britain not a single case of disaster of any
description has been reported as occurring at a draw-bridge since
the year 1870, when the present system of official Board of Trade
reports was begun. The lesson clearly to be drawn from a careful
investigation of all the American accidents reported would seem to
be that a statute provision making compulsory the interlocking of
all draws in railroad bridges with a proper and infallible system
of signals might have claims on the consideration of an intelligent
legislature; not so an enactment which compels the stopping of
trains at points where danger is small, and makes no provision as
respects other points where it is great.