98 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
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
ASHTABULA BRIDGE. 99
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.
100 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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 heartrending 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 snowstorm, 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
DECEMBER 29, 1876. 101
great difficulty and with the assistance of four loco. motives.
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
102 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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
SNOW AND FIRE. 103
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 help. less, 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
104 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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
A STOVE-DISASTER AS WELL. 105
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
106 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
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.*
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 exami-
* 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.
THE TARIFFVILLE BRIDGE. 107
nation. All that can be said is that during the year 1877 no
serious accident due to the inherent weakness of any bridge occurred
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
loco. motive 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
108 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three others injured.*
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 weak-
* 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.
JANUARY 15, 1878. 109
ness 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
110 RAILR0AD ACCIDENTS.
source of some of the worst railroad disasters on record.*
* "The objectionable and dangerous practice
also employed on some railways of assisting trains tip 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.
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