BRIDGE ACCIDENTS.
Great as were the terrors inspired by the Norwalk disaster in those
comparatively early days of railroad experience, and deep as the
impression on the public memory must have been to leave its mark
on the statute book even to the present time, that and the similar
disaster at the Richelieu river are believed to have been the only
two of great magnitude which have occurred at open railroad draws.
That this should be so is well calculated to excite surprise,
for the draw-bridge precautions against accident in America are
wretchedly crude and inadequate, amounting as a rule to little more
than the primitive balls and targets by day and lanterns by night,
without any system of alarms or interlocking. Electricity as an
adjunct to human care, or a corrective rather of human negligence,
is almost never used; and, in fact, the chief reliance is still on
the vigilance of engine-drivers. But, if accidents at draws have
been comparatively rare and unattended with any considerable loss
of life, it has been far otherwise with the rest of the structures
of which the draw forms a part. Bridge accidents in fact always
have been, and will probably always remain, incomparably the worst
to which travel by rail is exposed. It would be impossible for
corporations to take too great precautions against them, and that
the precautions taken are very great is conclusively shown by the
fact that, with thousands of bridges many times each day subjected
to the strain of the passage at speed of heavy trains, so very few
disasters occur. When they do occur, however, the lessons taught
by them are, though distinct enough, apt to be in one important
respect of a far less satisfactory character than those taught by
collisions. In the case of these last the great resultant fact
speaks for itself. The whole community knows when it sees a block
system, or a stronger car construction, or an improved train brake
suddenly introduced that the sacrifice has not been in vain--that
the lesson has been learned. It is by no means always so in the
case of accidents on bridges. With these the cause of disaster
is apt to be so scientific in its nature that it cannot even be
described, except through the use of engineering terms which to the
mass of readers are absolutely incomprehensible. The simplest of
railroad bridges is an inexplicable mystery to at least ninety-nine
persons out of each hundred. Even when the cause of disaster is
understood, the precautions taken against its recurrence cannot be
seen. From the nature of the case they must consist chiefly of a
better material, or a more scientific construction, or an increased
watchfulness on the part of officials and subordinates. This,
however, is not apparent on the surface, and, when the next accident
of the same nature occurs, the inference, as inevitable as it is
usually unjust, is at once drawn that the one which preceded it
had been productive of no results. The truth of this was strongly
illustrated by the two bridge accidents which happened, the one at
Ashtabula, Ohio, on the 29th of December, 1876, and the other at
Tariffville, Connecticut, on the 15th of January, 1878.
There has been no recent disaster which combined more elements
of horror or excited more widespread public emotion than that at
Ashtabula bridge. It was, indeed, so terrible in its character and
so heart-rending in its details, that for the time being it fairly
divided the attention of the country with that dispute over the
presidential succession, then the subject uppermost in the minds of
all. A blinding northeasterly snow-storm, accompanied by a heavy
wind, prevailed throughout the day which preceded the accident,
greatly impeding the movement of trains. The Pacific express over
the Michigan Southern & Lake Shore road had left Erie, going west,
considerably behind its time, and had been started only with great
difficulty and with the assistance of four locomotives. It was due
at Ashtabula at about 5.30 o'clock P.M., but was three hours late,
and, the days being then at their shortest, when it arrived at the
bridge which was the scene of the accident the darkness was so great
that nothing could be seen through the driving snow by those on the
leading locomotive even for a distance of 50 feet ahead. The train
was made up of two heavy locomotives, four baggage, mail and express
cars, one smoking car, two ordinary coaches, a drawing-room car
and three sleepers, being in all two locomotives and eleven cars,
in the order named, containing, as nearly as can be ascertained,
190 human beings, of whom 170 were passengers. Ashtabula bridge is
situated only about 1,000 feet east of the station of the same name,
and spans a deep ravine, at the bottom of which flows a shallow
stream, some two or three feet in depth, which empties into Lake
Erie a mile or two away. The bridge was an iron Howe truss of 150
feet span, elevated 69 feet above the bottom of the ravine, and
supported at either end by solid masonwork abutments. It had been
built some fourteen years. As the train approached the bridge it had
to force its way through a heavy snow-drift, and, when it passed
onto it, it was moving at a speed of some twelve or fourteen miles
an hour. The entire length of the bridge afforded space only for
two of the express cars at most in addition to the locomotives,
so that when the wheels of the leading locomotive rested on the
western abutment of the bridge nine of the eleven cars which made up
the train, including all those in which there were passengers, had
yet to reach its eastern end. At the instant when the train stood
in this position, the engineer of the leading locomotive heard a
sudden cracking sound apparently beneath him, and thought he felt
the bridge giving way. Instantly pulling the throttle valve wide
open, his locomotive gave a spring forward and, as it did so, the
bridge fell, the rear wheels of his tender falling with it. The
jerk and impetus of the locomotive, however, sufficed to tear out
the coupling, and as his tender was dragged up out of the abyss
onto the track, though its rear wheels did not get upon the rails,
the frightened engineer caught a fearful glimpse of the second
locomotive as it seemed to turn and then fall bottom upwards into
the ravine. The bridge had given way, not at once but by a slowly
sinking motion, which began at the point where the pressure was
heaviest, under the two locomotives and at the west abutment. There
being two tracks, and this train being on the southernmost of the
two, the southern truss had first yielded, letting that side of
the bridge down, and rolling, as it were, the second locomotive
and the cars immediately behind it off to the left and quite clear
of a straight line drawn between the two abutments; then almost
immediately the other truss gave way and the whole bridge fell, but
in doing so swung slightly to the right. Before this took place the
entire train with the exception of the last two sleepers had reached
the chasm, each car as it passed over falling nearer than the one
which had preceded it to the east abutment, and finally the last two
sleepers came, and, without being deflected from their course at
all, plunged straight down and fell upon the wreck of the bridge at
its east end. It was necessarily all the work of a few seconds.
At the bottom of the ravine the snow lay waist deep and the stream
was covered with ice some eight inches in thickness. Upon this
were piled up the fallen cars and engine, the latter on top of the
former near the western abutment and upside down. All the passenger
cars were heated by stoves. At first a dead silence seemed to
follow the successive shocks of the falling mass. In less than
two minutes, however, the fire began to show itself and within
fifteen the holocaust was at its height. As usual, it was a mass of
human beings, all more or less stunned, a few killed, many injured
and helpless, and more yet simply pinned down to watch, in the
possession as full as helpless of all their faculties, the rapid
approach of the flames. The number of those killed outright seems
to have been surprisingly small. In the last car, for instance,
no one was lost. This was due to the energy and presence of mind
of the porter, a negro named Steward, who, when he felt the car
resting firmly on its side, broke a window and crawled through it,
and then passed along breaking the other windows and extricating
the passengers until all were gotten out. Those in the other cars
were far less fortunate. Though an immediate alarm had been given
in the neighboring town, the storm was so violent and the snow so
deep that assistance arrived but slowly. Nor when it did arrive
could much be effected. The essential thing was to extinguish the
flames. The means for so doing were close at hand in a steam pump
belonging to the railroad company, while an abundance of hose could
have been procured at another place but a short distance off. In
the excitement and agitation of the moment contradictory orders
were given, even to forbidding the use of the pump, and practically
no effort to extinguish the fire was made. Within half an hour of
the accident the flames were at their height, and when the next
morning dawned nothing remained in the ravine but a charred and
undistinguishable mass of car trucks, brake-rods, twisted rails and
bent and tangled bridge iron, with the upturned locomotive close to
the west abutment.
In this accident some eighty persons are supposed to have lost
their lives, while over sixty others were injured. The exact number
of those killed can never be known, however, as more than half of
those reported were utterly consumed in the fire; indeed, even of
the bodies recovered scarcely one half could be identified. Of the
cause of the disaster much was said at the time in language most
unnecessarily scientific;--but little was required to be said. It
admitted of no extenuation. An iron bridge, built in the early days
of iron-bridges,--that which fell under the train at Ashtabula, was
faulty in its original construction, and the indications of weakness
it had given had been distinct, but had not been regarded. That it
had stood so long and that it should have given way when it did,
were equally matters for surprise. A double track bridge, it should
naturally have fallen under the combined pressure of trains moving
simultaneously in opposite directions. The strain under which it
yielded was not a particularly severe one, even taken in connection
with the great atmospheric pressure of the storm then prevailing.
It was, in short, one of those disasters, fortunately of infrequent
occurrence, with which accident has little if any connection.
It was due to original inexperience and to subsequent ignorance
or carelessness, or possibly recklessness as criminal as it was
fool-hardy.
Besides being a bridge accident, this was also a stove accident,--in
this respect a repetition of Angola. One of the most remarkable
features about it, indeed, was the fearful rapidity with which
the fire spread, and the incidents of its spread detailed in the
subsequent evidence of the survivors were simply horrible. Men,
women and children, full of the instinct of self-preservation, were
caught and pinned fast for the advancing flames, while those who
tried to rescue them were driven back by the heat and compelled
helplessly to listen to their shrieks. It is, however, unnecessary
to enter into these details, for they are but the repetition of
an experience which has often been told, and they do but enforce
a lesson which the railroad companies seem resolved not to learn.
Unquestionably the time in this country will come when through
trains will be heated from a locomotive or a heating-car. That time,
however, had not yet come. Meanwhile the evidence would seem to show
that at Ashtabula, as at Angola, at least two lives were sacrificed
in the subsequent fire to each one lost in the immediate shock of
the disaster.[8]
[8] The Angola was probably the most impressively horrible of the
many "stove accidents." That which occurred near Prospect, N. Y.,
upon the Buffalo, Corry & Pittsburgh road, on December 24, 1872,
should not, however, be forgotten. In this case a trestle bridge
gave way precipitating a passenger train some thirty feet to the
bottom of a ravine, where the cars caught fire from the stoves.
Nineteen lives were lost, mostly by burning. The Richmond Switch
disaster of April 19, 1873, on the New York, Providence & Boston
road was of the same character. Three passengers only were there
burned to death, but after the disaster the flames rushed "through
the car as quickly as if the wood had been a lot of hay," and, after
those who were endeavoring to release the wounded and imprisoned men
were driven away, their cries were for some time heard through the
smoke and flame.
But a few days more than a year after the Ashtabula accident another
catastrophe, almost exactly similar in its details, occurred on
the Connecticut Western road. It is impossible to even estimate
the amount of overhauling to which bridges throughout the country
had in the meanwhile been subjected, or the increased care used
in their examination. All that can be said is that during the
year 1877 no serious accident due to the inherent weakness of any
bridge occcurred on the 70,000 miles of American railroad. Neither,
so far as can be ascertained, was the Tariffville disaster to be
referred to that cause. It happened on the evening of January 15,
1878. A large party of excursionists were returning from a Moody
and Sankey revival meeting on a special train, consisting of two
locomotives and ten cars. Half a mile west of Tariffville the
railroad crosses the Farmington river. The bridge at this point was
a wooden Howe truss, with two spans of 163 feet each. It had been
in use about seven years and, originally of ample strength and good
construction, there is no evidence that its strength had since been
unduly impaired by neglect or exposure. It should, therefore, have
sufficed to bear twice the strain to which it was now subjected.
Exactly as at Ashtabula, however, the west span of the bridge gave
way under the train just as the leading locomotives passed onto the
tressel-work beyond it: the ice broke under the falling wreck, and
the second locomotive with four cars were precipitated into the
river. The remaining cars were stopped by the rear end of the third
car, resting as it did on the centre pier of the bridge, and did
not leave the rails. The fall to the surface of the ice was about
ten feet. There was no fire to add to the horrors in this case, but
thirteen persons were crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three
others injured.[9]
[9] Of the same general character with the Tariffville and Ashtabula
accidents were those which occurred on November 1, 1855, upon the
Pacific railroad of Missouri at the bridge over the Gasconade, and
on July 27, 1875, upon the Northern Pacific at the bridge over the
Mississippi near Brainerd. In the first of these accidents the
bridge gave way under an excursion train, in honor of the opening
of the road, and its chief engineer was among the killed. The train
fell some thirty feet, and 22 persons lost their lives while over 50
suffered serious injuries.
At Brainerd the train,--a "mixed" one,--went down nearly 80 feet
into the river. The locomotive and several cars had passed the span
which fell, in safety, but were pulled back and went down on top
of the train. There were but few passengers in it, of whom three
were killed. In falling the caboose car at the rear of the train,
in which most of the passengers were, struck on a pier and broke in
two, leaving several passengers in it. In the case of the Gasconade,
the disaster was due to the weakness of the bridge, which fell under
the weight of the train. There is some question as to the Brainerd
accident, whether it was occasioned by weakness of the bridge or the
derailment upon it of a freight car.
Naturally the popular inference was at once drawn that this was
a mere repetition of the Ashtabula experience,--that the fearful
earlier lesson had been thrown away on a corporation either
unwilling or not caring to learn. The newspapers far and wide
resounded with ill considered denunciation, and the demand was loud
for legislation of the crudest conceivable character, especially
a law prohibiting the passage over any bridge of two locomotives
attached to one passenger train. The fact, however, seems to be
that, except in its superficial details, the Tariffville disaster
had no features in common with that at Ashtabula; as nearly as
can be ascertained it was due neither to the weakness nor to the
overloading of the bridge. Though the evidence subsequently given
is not absolutely conclusive on this point, the probabilities
would seem to be that, while on the bridge, the second locomotive
was derailed in some unexplained way and consequently fell on
the stringers which yielded under the sudden blow. The popular
impression, therefore, as to the bearing which the first of these
two strikingly similar accidents had upon the last tended only to
bring about results worse than useless. The bridge fell, not under
the steady weight of two locomotives, but under the sudden shock
incident to the derailment of one. The remedy, therefore, lay in the
direction of so planking or otherwise guarding the floors of similar
bridges that in case of derailment the locomotives or cars should
not fall on the stringers or greatly diverge from the rails so as
to endanger the trusses. On the other hand the suggestion of a law
prohibiting the passage over bridges of more than one locomotive
with any passenger train, while in itself little better than a legal
recognition of bad bridge building, also served to divert public
attention from the true lesson of the disaster. Another newspaper
precaution, very favorably considered at the time, was the putting
of one locomotive, where two had to be used, at the rear end of the
train as a pusher, instead of both in front. This expedient might
indeed obviate one cause of danger, but it would do so only by
substituting for it another which has been the fruitful source of
some of the worst railroad disasters on record.[10]
[10] "The objectionable and dangerous practice also employed on some
railways of assisting trains up inclines by means of pilot engines
in the rear instead of in front, has led to several accidents in
the past year and should be discontinued."--_General Report to the
Board of Trade upon the Accidents on the Railways of Great Britain
in 1878, p. 15._