CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS.
Wholly apart from the derailment, which was the real occasion of
the Des Jardines disaster, there was one other cause which largely
contributed to its fatality, if indeed that fatality was not in
greatest part immediately due to it.
The question as to what is the best method of coupling together
the several individual vehicles which make up every railroad
train has always been much discussed among railroad mechanics.
The decided weight of opinion has been in favor of the strongest
and closest couplings, so that under no circumstances should the
train separate into parts. Taking all forms of railroad accident
together, this conclusion is probably sound. It is, however, at
best only a balancing of disadvantages,--a mere question as to
which practice involves the least amount of danger. Yet a very
terrible demonstration that there are two sides to this as to most
other questions was furnished at Des Jardines. It was the custom
on the Great Western road not only to couple the cars together in
the method then in general use, but also, as is often done now, to
connect them by heavy chains on each side of the centre coupling.
Accordingly when the locomotive broke through the Des Jardines
bridge, it dragged the rest of the train hopelessly after it. This
certainly would not have happened had the modern self-coupler been
in use, and probably would not have happened had the cars been
connected only by the ordinary link and pins; for the train was
going very slowly, and the signal for brakes was given in ample time
to apply them vigorously before the last cars came to the opening,
into which they were finally dragged by the dead weight before them
and not hurried by their own momentum.
On the other hand, we have not far to go in search of scarcely less
fatal disasters illustrating with equal force the other side of the
proposition, in the terrible consequences which have ensued from the
separation of cars in cases of derailment. Take, for instance, the
memorable accident of June 17, 1858, near Port Jervis, on the Erie
railway.
As the express train from New York was running at a speed of about
thirty miles an hour over a perfectly straight piece of track
between Otisville and Port Jervis, shortly after dark on the evening
of that day, it encountered a broken rail. The train was made up
of a locomotive, two baggage cars and five passenger cars, all of
which except the last passed safely over the fractured rail. The
last car was apparently derailed, and drew the car before it off the
track. These two cars were then dragged along, swaying fearfully
from side to side, for a distance of some four hundred feet, when
the couplings at last snapped and they went over the embankment,
which was there some thirty feet in height. As they rushed down the
slope the last car turned fairly over, resting finally on its roof,
while one of its heavy iron trucks broke through and fell upon the
passengers beneath, killing and maiming them. The other car, more
fortunate, rested at last upon its side on a pile of stones at the
foot of the embankment. Six persons were killed and fifty severely
injured; all of the former in the last car.
In this case, had the couplings held, the derailed cars would
not have gone over the embankment and but slight injuries would
have been sustained. Modern improvements have, however, created
safeguards sufficient to prevent the recurrence of other accidents
under the same conditions as that at Port Jervis. The difficulty lay
in the inability to stop a train, though moving at only moderate
speed, within a reasonable time. The wretched inefficiency of the
old hand-brake in a sudden emergency received one more illustration.
The train seems to have run nearly half a mile after the accident
took place before it could be stopped, although the engineer had
instant notice of it and reversed his locomotive. The couplings did
not snap until a distance had been traversed in which the modern
train-brake would have reduced the speed to a point at which they
would have been subjected to no dangerous strain.
The accident ten years later at Carr's Rock, sixteen miles west of
Port Jervis, on the same road, was again very similar to the one
just described: and yet in this case the parting of the couplings
alone prevented the rear of the train from dragging its head to
destruction. Both disasters were occasioned by broken rails; but,
while the first occurred on a tangent, the last was at a point where
the road skirted the hills, by a sharp curve, upon the outer side of
which was a steep declivity of some eighty feet, jagged with rock
and bowlders. It befell the night express on the 14th of April,
1876. The train was a long one, consisting of the locomotive, three
baggage and express, and seven passenger cars, and it encountered
the broken rail while rounding the curve at a high rate of speed.
Again all except the last car, passed over the fracture in safety;
this was snapped, as it were, off the track and over the embankment.
At first it was dragged along, but only for a short distance; the
intense strain then broke the coupling between the four rear cars
and the head of the train, and, the last of the four being already
over the embankment, the others almost instantly toppled over after
it and rolled down the ravine. A passenger on this portion of the
train, described the car he was in "as going over and over, until
the outer roof was torn off, the sides fell out, and the inner roof
was crushed in." Twenty-four persons were killed and eighty injured;
but in this instance, as in that at Des Jardines, the only occasion
for surprise was that there were any survivors.
Accidents arising from the parting of defective couplings have of
course not been uncommon, and they constitute one of the greatest
dangers incident to heavy gradients; in surmounting inclines freight
trains will, it is found, break in two, and their hinder parts come
thundering down the grade, as was seen at Abergele. The American
passenger trains, in which each car is provided with brakes, are
much less liable than the English, the speed of which is regulated
by brake-vans, to accidents of this description. Indeed, it may be
questioned whether in America any serious disaster has occurred from
the fact that a portion of a passenger train on a road operated by
steam got beyond control in descending an incline. There have been,
however, terrible catastrophes from this cause in England, and that
on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road near Helmshere, a station some
fourteen miles north of Manchester, deserves a prominent place in
the record of railroad accidents.
It occurred in the early hours of the morning of the 4th of
September, 1860. There had been a great _fête_ at the Bellevue
Gardens in Manchester on the 3d, upon the conclusion of which some
twenty-five hundred persons crowded at once upon the return trains.
Of these there were, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road, three; the
first consisting of fourteen, the second of thirty-one, and the last
of twenty-four carriages: and they were started, with intervals of
ten minutes between them, at about eleven o'clock at night. The
first train finished its journey in safety. Not so the second and
the third. The Helmshere station is at the top of a steep incline.
This the second train, drawn by two locomotives, surmounted, and
then stopped for the delivery of passengers. While these were
leaving the carriages, a snap as of fractured iron was heard, and
the guards, looking back, saw the whole rear portion of the train,
consisting of seventeen carriages and a brake-van, detached from
the rest of it and quietly slipping down the incline. The detached
portion was moving so slowly that one of the guards succeeded in
catching the van and applying the brakes; it was, however, already
too late. The velocity was greater than the brake-power could
overcome, and the seventeen carriages kept descending more and
more rapidly. Meanwhile the third train had reached the foot of
the incline and begun to ascend it, when its engineer, on rounding
a curve, caught sight of the descending carriages. He immediately
reversed his engine, but before he could bring his train to a stand
they were upon him. Fortunately the van-brakes of the detached
carriages, though insufficient to stop them, yet did reduce their
speed; the collision nevertheless was terrific. The force of the
blow, so far as the advancing train was concerned, expended itself
on the locomotive, which was demolished, while the passengers
escaped with a fright. Not so those in the descending carriages.
With them there was nothing to break the blow, and the two hindmost
carriages were crushed to fragments and their passengers scattered
over the line. It was shortly after midnight, and the excursionists
clambered out of the trains and rushed frantically about, impeding
every effort to clear away the _débris_ and rescue the injured,
whose shrieks and cries were incessant. The bodies of ten persons,
one of whom had died of suffocation, were ultimately taken out from
the wreck, and twenty-two others sustained fractures of limbs.
At Des Jardines the couplings were too strong; at Port Jervis and
at Helmshere they were not strong enough; at Carr's Rock they gave
way not a moment too soon. "There are objections to a plenum and
there are objections to a vacuum," as Dr. Johnson remarked, "but a
plenum or a vacuum it must be." There are no arguments, however,
in favor of putting railroad stations or sidings upon an inclined
plane, and then not providing what the English call "catch-points"
or "scotches" to prevent such disasters as those at Abergele or
Helmshere. In these two instances alone the want of them cost
over fifty lives. In railroad mechanics there are after all some
principles susceptible of demonstration. That vehicles, as well as
water, will run down hill may be classed among them. That these
principles should still be ignored is hardly less singular than it
is surprising.