THE EXCURSION-TRAIN FROM DOVER TO THE HOSPITAL.
"Men proposes," we sometimes say, "but God disposes"; when we ought to say, "Man proposes, but neglects to perform." The frightful scene at Croydon on Monday afternoon resulted from the acts of a Railway Company which certainly proposed to do some- thing very different. Nothing could be gayer or more enjoying than the scene at Dover station in the morning : a train stood ready with twenty- four carriages to receive excursionists bent upon spending a por- tion of the day at the Crystal Palace. These excursions have been held as being in many respects a triumphant evidence to the pro- gress of practical science amongst us, which brings the most die- tent parts of the country nearer together, and, as it were, places the Crystal Palace near London at the disposal of the people of Dover. The people who live at Dover and along the line have heard much of the Crystal Palace; they desire to see it with their own eyes; the Company will liberally enable them to do so for a very trifling fare ; the carriages fill well, gathering more as the tram goes along the line. The rapid motion, the cheapness, the sympathy of a common object amongst a number collected together —uniting, as it were, the novelty of strangers with the common purpose of friends—created that joyous spirit in the travelling party which is favoured by the brilliancy of a summer's day. The sky was just clouded enough to be pleasant, and the journey with its growing numbers was one of happy anticipations. The train has arrived within one station of the Crystal Palace, and suddenly the whole scene is altered.
That same train is a heap of shattered ruins. The engine is con- verted to a ragged remnant of itself, as if it were taken from an old-iron-shop. The tender is upside down. The carriages of the train are jammed together, some of them barely recognizable. One is a fragment like that of a child's broken toy ; another, of the se- cond class, is reduced to a bare stage which once was the koor, with one single upright wall, the hindmost panne' of the carriage; an the rest, save a few fragments, swept clean off. Packed within that mass or scattered amongst the remnants are the human beings that were just before laughing in unchecked gayety—now groaning in agony and horror, or silent in senselessness or death.
That last scene, under the 'eareumstances, followed so naturally from the former, that it may be said to have been inevitable. "Man proposes "; as the South-Eastern Railway Company pro- at a certain number of persons should be conveyed for a
isricsi that to the Crystal Palace. But man performs thus ; landing the pleasure-party in a heap of ruins, and distributing them amongst sick chambers and hospitals. The Company had undertaken to perform it great task without absolutely securing the circumstances that would have made it safe. The line is al- ready crowded with traffic;- and it has been remarkably free from accidents, because the Company had done much to secure exactness in its arrangements with regard to the timing of trains and to re- porting the clearance of the line from station to station. In this instance additional care was requisite, because one more train was added to the number of those running upon the line. The ex- cursion-train was behind its appointed time ; but that fault of the Company ought to have enforced additional attention on the part of others, since the regular working of the line was thus thrown into irregularity. Instead of that, it would appear that the servants of another Company which has a right of way over the line—the London and Brighton—knowing that the excursion-train ought to have passed some time before, presumed that it had done so ; as if railway time-tables were always carried out exactly. Presuming that the excursion-train had passed, the Brighton Company's ser- vants placed a ballast-engine upon the line, Where it stood to take in water. Presuming that the line was cleared for it, the ex- cursion-train came up at a dashing pace. Now man proposed to snake a pleasant excursion from Dotes to the Crystal Palace, but
what man performed was, to place a ballast-engine on therailway, and run the excursion-train full tilt into it—exchanging the Crys- tal Palace for the Hospital. We have frequently said that in ninety-nine cases in a hundred the causes of railway accidents are :perfectly obvious, and are scarcely distant from that kind of negligence which becomes crimi- nal intent It was so now.
In the present case, however, there rises the question, whether excursion-trains always additionally hazardous on account of their irregular character—almost always delayed from the impossibility of getting a gay multitude soberly into its places—are necessary to secure their professed object? The design was well-intentioned. It is evident that railways cannot supply transit at the mere cost of the locomotion or the wear and tear of the rolling stock : as in the case of the Post-office, the whole cost of the plant and adminis- tration has to be recovered, if possible.' There is no reason, how- ever, why a particular kind of traffic which brings in money should be rejected if it can be so managed as not to reduce the whole taritE The object of the excursionist is cheapness. He desires to procure a day's pleasure at the price for which people of the work- ing classes or the humbler portion of the middle class can pay Without wounding conscience. The railway-proprietor has no ob- jection to 'sell the particular kind of conveyance for purposes of pleasure, at rates suited to the peculiar nature of the demand, if he can keep the Commodity, with its peculiar price, separate from the ordinary kind of conveyance, which he sells for business at rates determined by the business 'demand and by the cost. Hence the design of the excursion-train, which supplied cheap conveyance for pleasure purposes, while aiming to keep that conveyance distinct from the ordinary business traffic. The first idea was, to furnish these only in the lump by means of a special train; but there is no necessity for that material form of restriction. The same limit could be secured in other ways' and one suggests itself simply as an example. Tickets, say to the number of three hun- dred could be issued for a particular excursion, and sold a week previously to their coming in force; and they might be so dated as to distribute the three hundred over the six days of the 'Week, fifty for each day i • leaving the purchaser to take his chance on which of the six days his own prize might fall ; and then the three hundred, instead of being sent By one particular train, could be distributed among the ordinary trains. The purchaser would no doubt be in some uncertainty respecting his own arrangements; but the cheapness would be the premium upon his acquiescence, and in cases of real difficulty, no doubt, he would be able to ex- change tickets with some other purchaser. This, at all events, would be one mode of providing cheap trips for pleasure pur- poses, without necessitating special trains in addition to the or- dinary number, and yet without interfering with the ordinary rates of charge.
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