RAILROAD SLAIJGFITER.
As many people have just been killed by several railway accidents that might easily have been prevented, the public will be in the mood to consider the necessity and feasibility of such prevention. In some cases, no doubt, the prevention lay with those who were the victims ; but in all there is evinced such serious mismanage- ment on the part of railway companies and their officers, as im- peratively to demand the intervention of some higher influence. The fatal accidents are five, and we will consider each separately. Four occurred on the 21st, the day of the great fog; but with proper arrangements the fog would have been harmless.
The first was the slaying of two men employed at West Drayton, in repairing the rails on the Great Western Railway. The labour- ers have standing orders to get off the line when a train approaches ; a steam-whistle was frequently sounded ; several of the labouring party did get off the line; but two remained on it, and they were killed. The fog was not dense enough to prevent their seeing where they were ; but it is conjectured that their ears were de- ceived by the passing of two trains at the moment, and that they got out of the way of one, without knowing that a second ap- proached; the noise of one train being drowned by that of the other, and the fog preventing the eye from correcting the vaguer sense of hearing. The labouring men, too, it was shown, are in general stupidly careless ; even making it a feat of daring to brave the on-coming of a train till it almost runs over them, and then stepping off the line, poor fools, " with a sneer." This is the effect of ignorance ; and of course railway directors and officers are not fairly chargeable with the stupidity of the men. But on this case one practical observation may be made. It is the uniform effect of diligent occupation, of whatsoever kind, to make the workman com- paratively heedless of aught but his task : his faculty of vigilance therefore is impaired ; and that would suggest the expediency of placing over every gang of men employed on a rail actually in use a person whose sole duty it should be to watch, with authority to order them off on approach of danger.
The next case occurred on the Birmingham and Gloucester Rail- way. A fireman, looking out from a tender, waa killed by dashing his head against some iron pillars that supported the centre of a bridge. It is said that it was no part of the man's duty to look out : but that is surely no apology for having any part of a building so near the line of rails that the most natural and unrestrained action subjects a man to sudden death. At this bridge, a passenger leaning out to look after a lost glove or a stray paper would be liable to a similar fate ; for the pillars are but eighteen inches dis- tant from the passing carriage. The entire course of every railway. should be perfectly clear even of lateral obstructions, with room to spare, so as to secure any trifling vivacity of action from penalties so horrible. Alteration of the bridge is promised.
The third accident was of a similar nature. It happened on the Midland Counties Railway. A guard was arranging some luggage on the top of a carriage, while the train was going, and his brains were dashed out against a bridge. Either men should not, on any- pretext, be allowed to mount to the tops of carriages, or bridges ought to be higher. Will this one too be altered? The fourth accident was on the same Midland Counties Railway, near Leicester. A train had stopped, and the breaksman had got down between the lines, to strew sand on the rail, which was slip- pery, in order that the train might start well : the noise of his own engine probably prevented him from hearing the approach of an- other train, to the concussion of which his stooping posture the more exposed him; and he was killed. Now men should either be forbidden to go between the lines at all, except at certain stations,— trains also being forbidden to pass such stations except at a walk- ing pace,—or the space between the two pair of rails should be sufficient to admit of any posture without risk of a blow from what passes; for it is absurd to expect that men, ignorant, busy, and familiar with impunity in danger, can constantly bear in mind the nice distinctions between the safety or peril of particular postures. Some of these suggestions, by requiring the width of a foot or two more in land, might occasion greater cost ; but the present saving is manifestly made at the expense of human life.
The fifth and most disastrous accident also occurred on the Midland Counties Railway, near Nottingham. The victims were utterly passive and unconscious, and the accident is imputable solely to the grossest negligence and rashness in some quarter. The reader should understand that the railroad runs through Derby to Nottingham, and that the station nearest to Nottingham is the Beeston station, the distance from Beeston to Nottingham being three miles. Through an accident which probably could not have been prevented, the up line from Nottingham was obstructed, near that town, by a tender that got off the rails and damaged them. This was about two o'clock. A train was to start from Nottingham at ten minutes to three o'clock, and it was resolved not to prevent it, but to despatch it by the down line, used for trains going to Nottingham. A train was expected from Derby, and it actually arrived at the Beeston station at three o'clock. HOWITT, a railway. policeman, was sent by KEARSLEY, an engineer, on foot to Bees- ton, to stop any train coming downwards, that is by the down line to Nottingham, until two trains from Nottingham should have passed : he reached the station, but gave his message vaguely. Before him had arrived Mr. LIGHTFOOT, the Nottingham station- master, who came from Nottingham to the Beeston station on the engine of one of the two trains whose path HOWITT was to clear ; travelling on the down line, the one appropriated to trains travelling in the opposite direction. Be it remembered that all this time there was an exceedingly thick fog. Now begins the most unac- countable blundering. Mr. Ltarrrroor, saying that the obstruc- tion would have been cleared by this time, and that the Notting- ham train would travel upon the up-line, the proper line, took charge of the Derby train, and went forward towards Nottingham. The policeman HOWITT says that he exhorted Mr. LIGHTFOOT not to do so ; and he asserts that he tried, unsuccessfully, to procure the intervention of the Beeston station-master and of the guard of the Derby train ; though this interference is denied. Mr. LIGHTFOOT avers that he was not aware of the intention to start any second train on the wrong line : he had scarcely left the station before his train clashed with the Nottingham train, coming upon the down line. Who actually sent it, whether KEARSLEY or some other person, does not distinctly appear. The Nottingham train was smashed to pieces; two people were killed ; one was so much hurt that he has undergone a dangerous amputation of the whole leg, the final result of which has yet to be learned ; and nineteen other persons were more or less hurt : in five minutes after Mr. LIGHTFOOT'S presumption of safety, his train had converted the peaceful railway into a scene like a field of battle, resounding with the cries and groans of the dying and wounded. Observe, one line of rails is blocked up : it is resolved, very hazardously, as it appears to us, to use the wrong line of rails, and a messenger is sent to the next station to establish that understanding : another person undoes the arrangement, and presumes that the right line will be used : the wrong line is used ; death and mutilation ensuing.
The solution of this fatal enigma we leave to time; but some things are apparent on the face of the case. On no account ought the wrong line to be used, until sufficient time has elapsed to alter the whole series of departures and arrivals on the railroad or a certain portion of it, so that while only one pair of rails is in use, it shall be used within certain defined hours solely as a down line, and in other defined periods solely as an up line; leaving sufficient interval without any use of it all, to allow for variations of time, and to prevent the casual collision of trains. Until that understanding be known, by written message and written answer, to be established throughout the part of the railroad where it becomes needful, that part ought only to be used for its right and generally accepted purpose, trains going only one way. Punctuality of departure and arrival should be strictly enforced. We know well of other lines on which delay of ten or fifteen minutes, or even more, has made passengers not unreasonably appre- hensive of some sudden collision from behind. If a train cannot de- part at its proper time, it should not be sent at all, but missed— regarded as a train lost ; the passengers or goods being sent by the next opportunity. The public would scarcely grumble, on know- ing that their own safety was the object : the trilling loss of money, if any, is not worth consideration in such a matter.
In the present case we find all sorts of people giving orders, and no one obeying to any effectual purpose : all do not even seem to know who is or is not superior to them ; but all evince large notions of their own discretion, sometimes commendably, sometimes cul- pably. HOWITT, the policeman, does not regard KEARSLEY, the engineer, as " exactly " his superior ; LIGHTFOOT, the manager of the Nottingham station, claims How= as " his servant "; yet LIGHTFOOT acknowledges in KEARSLEY an authority superior to his own! Such a defective subordination and discipline cannot but provoke confusion, and be seriously hazardous where powerful and dangerous engines are at work. That source of danger might easily be prevented. The whole body of servants belonging to each railway ought to be organized in one regiment, to use a military but appropriate term : the subjection of certain classes to other classes would readily and obviously be made intelligible, as police- men to clerks : and where equality of class prevented such obvious subordination, the effect might be produced by numbering the whole set of men in each class : Policeman 101 would have sueh authority over Policeman 102 as a corporal in the Army has over a private, 101 yielding again to 100: and this gradation of numbers might be made subservient to a useful species of promotion for good behaviour, especially with a slightly corresponding gradation of salaries. But the chief advantages of a strict subordination would be, that there would be no clashing of orders, a readily ascertainable responsibility on each occasion, and a better intelli- gence of every man's duty. Some one person ought to have been responsible, and known to be so, for the hazardous manoeuvre of the 21st instant ; instead of engineers, policemen, and clerks run- ning about marring each other's authority, and rendering the safety of a great railway what is proverbially " nobody's business."
The question remains as to the final enforcement of respon- sibility: and here the law needs evident and instant revision. We must remember that we have to deal with corporate bodies, who have proverbially " no heart," and whose soul of life and ex- istence is profit. No correctional check, therefore, seems so fitting as pecuniary fine, teaching that too reckless a grasp at profit may entail loss—restoring the money-balance to the side of prudence and security. It has also further recommendations. It is often opportune, as where the person maimed is deprived of the means of labour and subsistence, or where the person killed was the sup- port or aid of surviving relatives. Also, it has the favourable and spontaneous opinion of the real " public " in its favour ; evinced in the large but not disproportionate " deodands " imposed by juries. Such imposition, it appears, does not accord with the theory of that anomalous and absurd fine the deodand ; which should at once be abolished, and damages by civil action, under a facile pro- cess, should be substituted. That is the check to which every consideration points—the public instinct, the theory of corporate sensitiveness, and the spirit of just reparation.
Nola bens: it strikes us that, until some peremptory system shalt be adopted, Queen VICTORIA ought never to travel by special train, without another pilot special train sent before her, to be destroyed instead, in case of any misunderstanding among the clerks and policemen on the road.
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