THE PROTECTION OF BRIDGES.
Long, varied and terrible as the record of bridge disasters has
become, there are, nevertheless, certain very simple and inexpensive
precautions against them, which, altogether too frequently,
corporations do not and will not take. At Ashtabula the bridge
gave way. There was no derailment as there seems to have been
at Tariffville. The sustaining power of a bridge is, of course,
a question comparatively difficult of ascertainment. A fatal
weakness in this respect may be discernable only to the eye of a
trained expert. Derailment, however, either upon a bridge, or when
approaching it, is in the vast majority of cases a danger perfectly
easy to guard against. The precautions are simple and they are not
expensive, yet, taking the railroads of the United States as a
whole, it may well be questioned whether the bridges at which they
have been taken do not constitute the exception rather than the
rule. Not only is the average railroad superintendent accustomed
to doing his work and running his road under a constant pressure to
make both ends meet, which, as he well knows, causes his own daily
bread to depend upon the economies he can effect; but, while he
finds it hard work at best to provide for the multifarious outlays,
long immunity from disaster breeds a species of recklessness even
in the most cautious:--and yet the single mishap in a thousand
must surely fall to the lot of some one. Many years ago the
terrible results which must soon or late be expected wherever the
consequences of a derailment on the approaches to a bridge are not
securely guarded against, were illustrated by a disaster on the
Great Western railroad of Canada, which combined many of the worst
horrors of both the Norwalk and the New Hamburg tragedies; more
recently the almost forgotten lesson was enforced again on the
Vermont & Massachusetts road, upon the bridge over the Miller River,
at Athol. The accident last referred to occurred on the 16th of
June, 1870, but, though forcible enough as a reminder, it was tame
indeed in comparison with the Des Jardines Canal disaster, which
is still remembered though it happened so long ago as the 17th of
March, 1857.
The Great Western railroad of Canada crossed the canal by a bridge
at an elevation of about sixty feet. At the time of the accident
there were some eighteen feet of water in the canal, though, as
is usual in Canada at that season, it was covered by ice some two
feet in thickness. On the afternoon of the 17th of March as the
local accommodation train from Hamilton was nearing the bridge,
its locomotive, though it was then moving at a very slow rate of
speed, was in some way thrown from the track and onto the timbers
of the bridge. These it cut through, and then falling heavily on
the string-pieces it parted them, and instantly pitched headlong
down upon the frozen surface of the canal below, dragging after it
the tender, baggage car and two passenger cars, which composed the
whole train. There was nothing whatever to break the fall of sixty
feet; and even then two feet of ice only intervened between the
ruins of the train and the bottom of the canal eighteen feet below.
Two feet of solid ice will afford no contemptible resistance to a
falling body; the locomotive and tender crushed heavily through
it and instantly sank out of sight. In falling the baggage car
struck a corner of the tender and was thus thrown some ten yards
to one side, and was followed by the first passenger car, which,
turning a somersault as it went, fell on its roof and was crushed to
fragments, but only partially broke through the ice, upon which the
next car fell endwise, and rested in that position. That every human
being in the first car was either crushed or drowned seems most
natural; the only cause for astonishment is found in the fact that
any one should have survived such a catastrophe,--a tumble of sixty
feet on ice as solid as a rock! Yet of four persons in the baggage
car three went down with it, and not one of them was more than
slightly injured. The engineer and fireman, and the occupants of the
second passenger car, were less fortunate. The former were found
crushed under the locomotive at the bottom of the canal; while of
the latter ten were killed, and not one escaped severe injury. Very
rarely indeed in the history of railroad accidents have so large a
portion of those on the train lost their lives as in this case, for
out of ninety persons sixty perished, and in the number was included
every woman and child among the passengers, with a single exception.
There were two circumstances about this disaster worthy of especial
notice. In the first place, as well as can now be ascertained in
the absence of any trustworthy record of an investigation into
causes, the accident was easily preventable. It appears to have
been immediately caused by the derailment of a locomotive, however
occasioned, just as it was entering on a swing draw-bridge. Thrown
from the tracks, there was nothing in the flooring to prevent the
derailed locomotive from deflecting from its course until it toppled
over the ends of the ties, nor were the ties and the flooring
apparently sufficiently strong to sustain it even while it held to
its course. Under such circumstances the derailment of a locomotive
upon any bridge can mean only destruction; it meant it then,
it means it now; and yet our country is to-day full of bridges
constructed in an exactly similar way. To make accidents from this
cause, if not impossible at least highly improbable, it is only
necessary to make the ties and flooring of all bridges between the
tracks and for three feet on either side of them sufficiently strong
to sustain the whole weight of a train off the track and in motion,
while a third rail, or strong truss of wood, securely fastened,
should be laid down midway between the rails throughout the entire
length of the bridge and its approaches. With this arrangement, as
the flanges of the wheels are on the inside, it must follow that in
case of derailment and a divergence to one side or the other of the
bridge, the inner side of the flange will come against the central
rail or truss just so soon as the divergence amounts to half the
space between the rails, which in the ordinary gauge is two feet and
four inches. The wheels must then glide along this guard, holding
the train from any further divergence from its course, until it
can be checked. Meanwhile, as the ties and flooring extend for the
space of three feet outside of the track, a sufficient support is
furnished by them for the other wheels. A legislative enactment
compelling the construction of all bridges in this way, coupled with
additional provisions for interlocking of draws with their signals
in cases of bridges across navigable waters, would be open to
objection that laws against dangers of accident by rail have almost
invariably proved ineffective when they were not absurd, but in
itself, if enforced, it might not improbably render disasters like
those at Norwalk and Des Jardines terrors of the past.