NOVEL APPLIANCES.
The great peculiarity of the Revere accident, and that which gave
a permanent interest to it, lay in the revelation it afforded of
the degree in which a system had outgrown its appliances. At every
point a deficiency was apparent. The railroads of New England had
long been living on their early reputation, and now, when a sudden
test was applied, it was found that they were years behind the time.
In August, 1871, the Eastern railroad was run as if it were a line
of stage-coaches in the days before the telegraph. Not in one point
alone, but in everything, it broke down under the test. The disaster
was due not to any single cause but to a combination of causes
implicating not only the machinery and appliances in use by the
company, but its discipline and efficiency from the highest official
down to the meanest subordinate. In the first place the capacity of
the road was taxed to the utmost; it was vital, almost, that every
wheel should be kept in motion. Yet, under that very exigency, the
wheels stopped almost as a matter of necessity. How could it be
otherwise?--Here was a crowded line, more than half of which was
equipped with but a single track, in operating which no reliance was
placed upon the telegraph. With trains running out of their schedule
time and out of their schedule place, engineers and conductors were
left to grope their way along as best they could in the light of
rules, the essence of which was that when in doubt they were to
stand stock still. Then, in the absence of the telegraph, a block
occurred almost at the mouth of the terminal station; and there the
trains stood for hours in stupid obedience to a stupid rule, because
the one man who, with a simple regard to the dictates of common
sense, was habitually accustomed to violate it happened to be sick.
Trains commonly left a station out of time and out of place; and
the engineer of an express train was sent out to run a gauntlet the
whole length of the road with a simple verbal injunction to look
out for some one before him. Then, at last, when this express train
through all this chaos got to chasing an accommodation train, much
as a hound might course a hare, there was not a pretence of a signal
to indicate the time which had elapsed between the passage of the
two, and employés, lanterns in hand, gaped on in bewilderment at the
awful race, concluding that they could not at any rate do anything
to help matters, but on the whole they were inclined to think that
those most immediately concerned must know what they were about.
Finally, even when the disaster was imminent, when deficiency in
organization and discipline had done its worst, its consequences
might yet have been averted through the use of better appliances;
had the one train been equipped with the Westinghouse brake,
already largely in use in other sections of the country, it might
and would have been stopped; or had the other train been provided
with reflecting tail-lights in place of the dim hand-lanterns which
glimmered on its rear platform, it could hardly have failed to make
its proximity known. Any one of a dozen things, every one of which
should have been but was not, ought to have averted the disaster.
Obviously its immediate cause was not far to seek. It lay in the
carelessness of a conductor who failed to consult his watch, and
never knew until the crash came that his train was leisurely moving
along on the time of another. Nevertheless, what can be said in
extenuation of a system under which, at this late day, a railroad is
operated on the principle that each employé under all circumstances
can and will take care of himself and of those whose lives and limbs
are entrusted to his care?
There is, however, another and far more attractive side to the
picture. The lives sacrificed at Revere were not lost in vain. Seven
complete railroad years passed by between that and the Wollaston
Heights accident of 1878. During that time not less than two hundred
and thirty millions of persons were carried by rail within the
limits of Massachusetts. Of this vast number while only 50, or
about one in each four and a half millions, sustained any injury
from causes beyond their own power to control, the killed were just
two. This certainly was a record with which no community could well
find fault; and it was due more than anything else to the great
disaster of August 26, 1871. More than once, and on more than one
road, accidents occurred which, but for the improved appliances
introduced in consequence of the experience at Revere, could hardly
have failed of fatal results. Not that these appliances were in
all cases very cheerfully or very eagerly accepted. Neither the
Miller platform nor the Westinghouse brake won its way into general
use unchallenged. Indeed, the earnestness and even the indignation
with which presidents and superintendents then protested that their
car construction was better and stronger than Miller's; that their
antiquated handbrakes were the most improved brakes,--better, much
better, than the Westinghouse; that their crude old semaphores and
targets afforded a protection to trains which no block-system would
ever equal,--all this certainly was comical enough, even in the
very shadow of the great tragedy. Men of a certain type always have
protested and will always continue to protest that they have nothing
to learn; yet, under the heavy burden of responsibility, learn
they still do. They dare not but learn. On this point the figures
of the Massachusetts annual returns between the year 1871 and the
year 1878 speak volumes. At the time of the Revere disaster, with
one single honorable exception,--that of the Boston & Providence
road,--both the atmospheric train-brake and the Miller platform, the
two greatest modern improvements in American car construction, were
practically unrecognized on the railroads of Massachusetts. Even a
year later, but 93 locomotives and 415 cars had been equipped even
with the train-brake. In September, 1873, the number had, however,
risen to 194 locomotives and 709 cars; and another twelve months
carried these numbers up to 313 locomotives and 997 cars. Finally
in 1877 the state commissioners in their report for that year spoke
of the train-brake as having been then generally adopted, and at
the same time called attention to the very noticeable fact "that
the only railroad accident resulting in the death of a passenger
from causes beyond his control within the state during a period of
two years and eight months, was caused by the failure of a company
to adopt this improvement on all its passenger rolling-stock."
The adoption of Miller's method of car construction had meanwhile
been hardly less rapid. Almost unknown at the time of the Revere
catastrophe in September, 1871, in October, 1873, when returns on
the subject were first called for by the state commissioners,
eleven companies had already adopted it on 778 cars out of a total
number of 1548 reported. In 1878 it had been adopted by twenty-two
companies, and applied to 1685 cars out of a total of 1792. In other
words it had been brought into general use.