dramatic and terrible. There were circumstances connected with it, too, which gave it a sort of moral significance, – contrasting so suddenly the joyous return from the country fête in the pleasant afternoon of May, with what De Quincey has called the vision of sudden death. It contained a whole homily on the familiar text. As respects the number of those killed and injured, also, the Versailles accident has not often been surpassed; perhaps never in France. In this country it was surpassed on one occasion, among others, under circumstances very similar to it. This was the accident at Camphill station, about twelve miles from Philadelphia, on July 17, 1856, which befell an excursion train carrying some eleven hundred children, who had gone out on a Sunday-school picnic in charge of their teachers and friends.
It was the usual story. The road had but a single track, and the train, both long and heavy, had been delayed and was running behind its schedule time. The conductor thought, however, that the next station could yet be reached in time to meet and there pass a regular train coming towards him. It may have been a miscalculation of seconds, it may have been a difference of watches, or perhaps the regular train was slightly before its time; but, however it happened, as the excursion train, while running at speed, was rounding a reverse curve, it came full upon the regular train, which had just left the station. In those days, as compared with the present, the cars were but egg-shells, and the shock was terrific. The locomotives struck each other, and, after rearing themselves up for an instant, it is said, like living animals, fell to the ground mere masses of rubbish. In any case the force of the shock was sufficient to hurl both engines from the track and lay them side by side at right angles to, and some distance from it. As only the excursion train happened to be running at speed, it alone had all the impetus necessary for telescoping; three of its cars accordingly closed in upon each other, and the children in them were crushed; as in the Versailles accident, two succeeding cars were driven upon this mass, and then fire was set to the whole from the ruins of the locomotives. It would be hard to imagine anything more thoroughly heart-rending, for the holocaust was of little children on a party of pleasure. Five cars in all were burned, and sixty-six persons perished; the injured numbered more than a hundred.5
Of this disaster nothing could be said either in excuse or in extenuation; it was not only one of the worst description, but it was one of that description the occurrence of which is most frequent. An excursion train, while running against time on a single-track road, came in collision with a regular train. The record is full of similar disasters, too numerous to admit of specific reference. Primarily of course, the conductors of the special trains are as a rule in fault in such cases. He certainly was at Camphill, and felt himself to be so, for the next day he committed suicide by swallowing arsenic. But in reality in these and in all similar cases, – both those which have happened and those hereafter surely destined to happen, – the full responsibility does not rest upon the unfortunate or careless subordinate; – nor should the weight of punishment be visited upon him. It belongs elsewhere. At this late day no board of directors, nor president, nor superintendent has any right to operate a single track road without the systematic use of the telegraph in connection with its train movements. That the telegraph can be used to block, as it is termed, double-track roads, by dividing them into sections upon no one of which two trains can be running at the same time, is matter of long and daily experience. There is nothing new or experimental about it. It is a system which has been forced on the more crowded lines of the world as an alternative to perennial killings. That in the year 1879 excursion trains should rush along single-track roads and hurl themselves against regular trains, just as was done twenty-three years ago at Camphill, would be deemed incredible were not exactly similar accidents still from time to time reported. One occurred near St. Louis, for instance, on July 4, 1879. The simple fact is that to now operate single-track roads without the constant aid of the telegraph, as a means of blocking them for every irregular train, indicates a degree of wanton carelessness, or an excess of incompetence, for which adequate provision should be made in the criminal law. Nothing but this appeal to the whipping-post, as it were, seems to produce the needed mental activity; for it is difficult to realize the stupid conservatism of ordinary men when brought to the consideration of something to which they are not accustomed. On this very point of controlling the train movement of single-track roads by telegraph, for instance, within a very recent period the superintendent of a leading Massachusetts road gravely assured the railroad commissioners of that state, that he considered it a most dangerous reliance which had occasioned many disasters, and that he had no doubt it would be speedily abandoned as a practice in favor of the old time-table and running-rules system, from which no deviations would be allowed. This opinion was expressed, also, after the Revere disaster of 1871, it might have been supposed, had branded into the record of the state the impossibility of safely running any crowded railroad in a reliance upon the schedule.6 Such men as this, however, are not accessible to argument or the teachings of experience, and the gentle stimulant of a criminal prosecution seems to be the only thing left.
CHAPTER VII.
TELEGRAPHIC COLLISIONS
And yet, even with the wires in active use, collisions will occasionally take place. They have sometimes, indeed, even been caused by the telegraph, so that railroad officials at two adjacent stations on the same road, having launched trains at each other beyond recall, have busied themselves while waiting for tidings of the inevitable collision in summoning medical assistance for those sure soon to be injured. In such cases, however, the mishap can almost invariably be traced to some defect in the system under which the telegraph is used; – such as a neglect to exact return messages to insure accuracy, or the delegating to inexperienced subordinates the work which can be properly performed only by a principal. This was singularly illustrated in a terrible collision which took place at Thorpe, between Norwich and Great Yarmouth, on the Great Eastern Railway in England, on the 10th of September, 1874. The line had in this place but a single track, and the mail train to Norwich, under the rule, had to wait at a station called Brundell until the arrival there of the evening express from Yarmouth, or until it received permission by the telegraph to proceed. On the evening of the disaster the express train was somewhat behind its time, and the inspector wrote a dispatch directing the mail to come forward without waiting for it. This dispatch he left in the telegraph office unsigned, while he went to attend to other matters. Just then the express train came along, and he at once allowed it to proceed. Hardly was it under way when the unsigned dispatch occurred to him, and the unfortunate man dashed to the telegraph office only to learn that the operator had forwarded it. Under the rules of the company no return message was required. A second dispatch was instantly sent to Brundell to stop the mail; the reply came back that the mail was gone. A collision was inevitable.
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