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Dante himself could not have imagined a greater complication of horrors than then ensued: liquid fire and solid frost combined to make the work of destruction perfect. The shock of the collision broke in pieces the oil car, igniting its contents and flinging them about in every direction. In an instant bridge, river, locomotive, cars, and the glittering surface of the ice were wrapped in a sheet of flame. At the same time the strain proved too severe for the trestlework, which gave way, precipitating the locomotive, tender, baggage cars, and one passenger car onto the ice, through which they instantly crushed and sank deep out of sight beneath the water. Of the remaining seven cars of the passenger train, two, besides several of the freight train, were destroyed by fire, and shortly, as the supports of the remaining portions of the bridge burned away, the superstructure fell on the half-submerged cars in the water and buried them from view.

Twenty-one persons lost their lives in this disaster, and a large number of others were injured; but the loss of life, it will be noticed, was only two-thirds of that at Abergele. The New Hamburg catastrophe also differed from that at Abergele in that, under its particular circumstances, it was far more preventable, and, indeed, with the appliances since brought into use it would surely be avoided. The modern train-brake had, however, not then been perfected, so that even the hundred rods at which the signal was seen did not afford a sufficient space in which to stop the train.

CHAPTER IX.
DRAW-BRIDGE DISASTERS

It is difficult to see how on double track roads, where the occurrence of an accident on one line of tracks is always liable to instantly "foul" the other line, it is possible to guard against contingencies like that which occurred at New Hamburg. At the time, as is usual in such cases, the public indignation expended itself in vague denunciation of the Hudson River Railroad Company, because the disaster happened to take place upon a bridge in which there was a draw to permit the passage of vessels. There seemed to be a vague but very general impression that draw-bridges were dangerous things, and, because other accidents due to different causes had happened upon them, that the occurrence of this accident, from whatever cause, was in itself sufficient evidence of gross carelessness. The fact was that not even the clumsy Connecticut rule, which compels the stopping of all trains before entering on any draw-bridge, would have sufficed to avert the New Hamburg disaster, for the river was then frozen and the draw was not in use, so that for the time being the bridge was an ordinary bridge; and not even in the frenzy of crude suggestions which invariably succeeds each new accident was any one ever found ignorant enough to suggest the stopping of all trains before entering upon every bridge, which, as railroads generally follow water-courses, would not infrequently necessitate an average of one stop to every thousand feet or so. Only incidentally did the bridge at New Hamburg have anything to do with the disaster there, the essence of which lay in the sudden derailment of an oil car immediately in front of a passenger train running in the opposite direction and on the other track. Of course, if the derailment had occurred long enough before the passenger train came up to allow the proper signals to be given, and this precaution had been neglected, then the disaster would have been due, not to the original cause, but to the defective discipline of the employés. Such does not appear to have been the case at New Hamburg, nor was that disaster by any means the first due to derailment and the throwing of cars from one track in front of a train passing upon the other; – nor will it be the last. Indeed, an accident hardly less destructive, arising from that very cause, had occurred only eight months previous in England, and resulted in eighteen deaths and more than fifty cases of injury.

A goods train made up of a locomotive and twenty-nine wagons was running at a speed of some twenty miles an hour on the Great Northern road, between Newark and Claypole, about one hundred miles from London, when the forward axle under one of the wagons broke. As a result of the derailment which ensued the train became divided, and presently the disabled car was driven by the pressure behind it out of its course and over the interval, so that it finally rested partly across the other track. At just this moment an excursion train from London, made up of twenty-three carriages and containing some three hundred and forty passengers, came along at a speed of about thirty-five miles an hour. It was quite dark, and the engineer of the freight train waved his arm as a signal of danger; one of the guards, also, showed a red light with his hand lantern, but his action either was not seen or was misunderstood, for without any reduction of speed being made the engine of the excursion train plunged headlong into the disabled goods wagon. The collision was so violent as to turn the engine aside off the track and cause it to strike the stone pier of a bridge near by, by which it was flung completely around and then driven up the slope of the cutting, where it toppled over like a rearing horse and fell back into the roadway. The tender likewise was overturned; but not so the carriages. They rushed along holding to the track, and the side of each as it passed was ripped and torn by the projecting end of the goods wagon. Of the twenty-three carriages and vans in the train scarcely one escaped damage, while the more forward ones were in several cases lifted one on top of the other or forced partly up the slope of the cutting, whence they fell back again, crushing the passengers beneath them.

This accident occurred on the 21st of June, 1870; it was very thoroughly investigated by Captain Tyler on behalf of the Board of Trade, with the apparent conclusion that it was one which could hardly have been guarded against. The freight cars, the broken axle of which occasioned the disaster, did not belong to the Great Northern company, and the wheels of the train had been properly examined by viewing and tapping at the several stopping-places; the flaw which led to the fracture was, however, of such a nature that it could have been detected only by the removal of the wheel. It did not appear that the employés of the company had been guilty of any negligence; and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that the accident was due to one of those defects to which the results of even the most perfect human workmanship must ever remain liable, and this had revealed itself under exactly those conditions which must involve the most disastrous consequences.

The English accident did, however, establish one thing, if nothing else; it showed the immeasurable superiority of the system of investigation pursued in the case of railroad accidents in England over that pursued in this country. There a trained expert after the occurrence of each disaster visits the spot and sifts the affair to the very bottom, locating responsibility and pointing out distinctly the measures necessary to guard against its repetition. Here the case ordinarily goes to a coroner's jury, the findings of which as a rule admirably sustain the ancient reputation of that august tribunal. It is absolutely sad to follow the course of these investigations, they are conducted with such an entire disregard of method and lead to such inadequate conclusions. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? – The same man never investigates two accidents, and, for the one investigation he does make, he is competent only in his own esteem.

Take the New Hamburgh accident as an example. Rarely has any catastrophe merited a more careful investigation, and few indeed have ever called forth more ill-considered criticism or crude suggestions. Almost nothing of interest respecting it was elicited at the inquest, and now no reliable criticism can be ventured upon it. The question of responsibility in that case, and of prevention thereafter, involved careful inquiry into at least four subjects: – First, the ownership and condition of the freight car, the fractured axle of which occasioned the disaster, together with the precautions taken by the company, usually and in this particular case, to test the wheels of freight cars moving over its road, especially during times of severe cold. – Second, the conduct of those in charge of the freight train immediately preceding and at the time of the accident; was the fracture of the axle at once noticed and were measures taken to stop the train, or was the derailment aggravated by neglect into the form it finally took? – Third, was there any neglect in signaling the accident on the part of those in charge of the disabled train, and how much time elapsed between the accident and the collision? – Fourth, what, if any, improved appliances would have enabled those in charge of either train to have averted the accident? – and what, if any, defects either in the rules or the equipment in use were revealed?

No satisfactory conclusion can now be arrived at upon any of these points, though the probabilities are that with the appliances since introduced the train might have been stopped in time. In this case, as in that at Claybridge, the coroner's jury returned a verdict exonerating every one concerned from responsibility, and very possibly they were justified in so doing; though it is extremely questionable whether Captain Tyler would have arrived at a similar conclusion. There is a strong probability that the investigation went off, so to speak, on a wholly false issue, – turned on the draw-bridge frenzy instead of upon the question of care. So far as the verdict declared that the disaster was due to a collision between a passenger train and a derailed oil car, and not to the existence of a draw in the bridge on which it happened to occur, it was, indeed, entitled to respect, and yet it was on this very point that it excited the most criticism. Loud commendation was heard through the press of the Connecticut law, which had been in force for twenty years, and, indeed, still is in force there, under which all trains are compelled to come to a full stop before entering on any bridge which has a draw in it, – a law which may best be described as a useless nuisance. Yet the grand jury of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of New York city even went so far as to recommend, in a report made by it on the 23d of February, 1871, – sixteen days after the accident, – the passage by the legislature then in session at Albany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately better counsels prevailed, and, as the public recovered its equilibrium, the matter was allowed to drop.

The Connecticut law in question, however, originated in an accident which at the time had startled and shocked the community as much even as that at Versailles did before or that at Abergele has since done. It occurred to an express train on the New York & New Haven road at Norwalk, in Connecticut, on the 6th of May, 1853.

CHAPTER X.
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 Belœil 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.

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.