PUNCTUALITY ON RAILWAYS.
[TO TEM EDITOR OF THR SPROTATOR:.]
Sin,—Are we fatalists, or are we simply too lazy and helpless to make a vigorous move towards diminishing the danger of travelling by railway ? The number of accidents reported in the newspapers may perhaps have been considerably increased by the watchfulness of those whose duty it is to write about them, and it may be that we all search out the reports with morbid curiosity, but it certainly strikes most readers of the daily press that there has lately been an alarming recurrence of the heading "Railway Accident." Of course there are, and must always be, certain elements of danger which cannot be eliminated. Individuals, too, will show the frailty of human nature by occasional neglect in the midst of a generally careful life ; neglect which may produce no particular results, and may escape notice, but at another time may lay the foundation of a hecatomb. Axles may snap without warning, ' chairs ' may be- come loose and never be fastened ; but the first thing to do is to clear away, if possible, those casualties which are the result of system.
A perfect system may be, as I say, occasionally spoilt by indi- vidual inattention, but what is to be said in favour of one which is not only liable to such a source of danger, but is in itself the foundation of most accidents. I refer to the plan which allows a time-table to make certain promises and the trains to disregard these, as though they were merely hints thrown out for the guidance of a confiding public.
I once noticed some carpenters who were to make a partition in a room. They proceeded to put together a slight framework of odd pieces of wood, until it fitted the place intended for the partition. They next cut it into parts that could be got out through the doorway, and afterwards made it up again as a model. This seemed to me a clumsy and unworkmanlike mode of action, but it certainly was practical. There was no relying upon measures that might possibly be inaccurate and figures that might get multiplied or added up wrong. There was the absolute structure to be copied. Now suppose Railway Companies were to apply this principle to the construction of their time-tables. Let them start a train of weight and length about the average of what would be required in the course of ordinary traffic, and let it go through the ordinary routine in stoppages, the taking-up and putting-down of passengers. 'What sort of relation would the table thus produced bear to the theoretically calculated one? For all I know, this may have been originally done, and a frequent repetition of such a performance might be inconvenient ; but if it has ever been done, the results do not seem to have become traditional. As it is, the train, in order to fulfil its advertised directions, ought to behave in a theoretical manner. There ought to be no stopping at those stations for which there is no advertised allowance of time. A train, in fact, behaves like a disobedient errand-boy. At certain
spots it may reasonably stop, and has a fair time given for so doing, others it ought to pass with nothing more than a friendly recognition, if it is to keep up its punctuality to the end of the journey. It can smoke as it goes along, and if it be of a high class, it may even drink without stopping, but as for stayiigto play at pitch-and-toss with casual horse-boxes, that is a very grave offence.
This is an age of machinery, but machinery requires what the age does not seem invariably to possess,—regularity. Now, punc- tuality is, to a great extent, a matter not only of individual habit, but of ordinary fashion. I have known schools, for instance, where it was not the fashion to be very particular as to time. At one there had been established among the boys a rule, in which the masters certainly did not always acquiesce, that if a master- were more than a quarter of an hour late for a lesson they might "cut." Well, such a thing did not often happen, but the very existence of such a traditional arrangement shows that such un- punctuality was not unknown. Again, I know another place,. where a master considers it a very exceptional case if he is a minute late for a lesson. There it is simply the fashion to bet in time.
It would be interesting to discover what influence the intro- duction and improvement of clocks and watches have had' on the human race; whether it is a real advantage to have- Greenwich time telegraphed throughout the kingdom, or whether. it is a hollow mockery. In the case of irregularity on our rail- ways the public are partly to blame. We have a way of running- things rather too fine. The French have a dodge for securing the- early arrival of their passengers which is hardly worth copying, but is worth recording, it is so childish. I was intending one day last summer to go from Paris to Versailles, and proceeded to the St. Lazare station. I felt sure I was in good time until I got close to- the station, when I noticed to my surprise that the clock outside indicated that there was not much time to spare. On getting to the platform, I looked at the clock inside, and found that this was. five minutes slower than the other, being, in fact, the true time In the train a fellow-passenger explained, with all the descriptive pantomime of his nation, that the discrepancy was intentional; it was meant to hurry the unsuspecting one, and make him,—here he- went through a vigorous imitation of running.
Another plan of theirs is more sensible, though perhaps it might not do here,—it might be galling to the independent spirit of the Briton. At some stations, I dare say at all of them, there is a. regular notice that no luggage can be registered within ten minutes before the time at which the train is to start, and no- tickets can be obtained during the last five minutes.
Whatever may be the inconvenience of their methods, they certainly do set us a good example in the matter of regularity. If, after all, we cannot learn a lesson, if we must go on in our own peculiar way, if some of the prolific causes of horrible accidents cannot be eliminated, it must be the duty of ingenious philanthro- pists to devise trains that shall stand the rude shocks,—trains fitted with wonderful buffers, or most softly padded compartments, or provided with compressible "dummies," which shall make the colliding masses come to a gradual and harmless stand-still.—I am,, Sir, &c., Rossall, Fleetwood, March 4, 1874. A. A. BOURNE.
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