RAILWAY CARS AND CARRIAGES.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Much amusement may be extracted from the gratuitous and anonymous advice which is so generously showered down upon the public after any exciting incident. Unfortunately, our enjoyment of the ridiculous is often marred by the melancholy absurdity of the comments and suggestions made in the letters "To the Editor" " Preno," a correspondent of your own, in your number of the 12th inst., recommends the adoption of the American rail- way car as calculated to save us from the recurrence of such disasters of that of Abergele.
The American car generally carries about 60 persons, and (as "Preno" ingeniously enough observes) has only two doors, rather narrower than those with which the English carriage is furnished, in the proportion of at least two to every twelve passengers. The windows of the American car are so constructed that a person cannot get through them.
" Preno " is presumably not aware (1) that towards the close of last year, on the Lake Shore Railroad, near Buffalo, a train having run down an embankment, one of the overturned cars caught fire from the stove ; and that such was the rush of the passengers to get through the two narrow apertures, that few, if any, escaped, and fifty-three persons were slowly burnt to death in that cunningly contrived man-roaster; (2) that at the commencement of this year, in New Jersey, within thirty miles of New York, a precisely similiar accident occurred, when twenty-six persons perished in the same awful manner ; (3) that the English railway carriage is being introduced on the best American lines, on the New York and Newhaven Railroad, for instance.
A man who is merely labouring under ordinary cacoethes scri- bendi, with its usual concomitant, thirst for print, cannot, of course, be expected to study facts. Still, the awful danger of the American cars is so obvious to any one who for an instant con- ceives the idea of them in connection with that of fire (as your correspondent has done), that " Preno's " state is probably far more serious than he or his friends imagine it to be.—I am, Sir, &c., FRANK T. LAWRENCE.
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