Part 18

Of all accidents to employees the most numerous are those which arise in coupling and uncoupling cars. In Massachusetts, in 1888, the employees killed and injured were 391; of these casualties 154 occurred in coupling accidents. The commissioners of other States, especially of Iowa, have for years published statistics showing nearly the same ratio. Fortunately accidents of this class, although numerous, are not proportionately fatal. Far the greater part of them result in the loss of part of a hand; but they are so frequent as to have caused much discussion, legislation, and invention. Several States have, one time and another, passed laws requiring the use of automatic couplers; and two or three years ago there were on record in the United States over four thousand coupler patents. The laws have been futile because impracticable; and most of the patents have been worthless for the same reason. It was obvious that the business of supplying couplers for the one million freight cars of the country could not be put into the hands of some one patentee unless his device was manifestly and pre-eminently superior to all others. It became important, therefore, to select as a standard some type of coupler general enough to include the patents of various men, and at the same time so definite that all couplers made to conform to the standard could work together interchangeably. Those who read Mr. Voorhees' story[21] of the wanderings of a freight car will understand that any one freight car in the United States or Canada should be prepared to run in the same train with any other car. A few years ago a committee of the Master Car-builders' Association was appointed to choose and recommend a type of coupler to be adopted as the standard of the association. After prolonged and careful study of the subject, the committee recommended the type of which the Janney is the best known example, and that has now become the standard of the association. This action does not give a monopoly to the Janney company, as there are already half a dozen couplers which conform to the type. This coupler is shown by diagrams in the article by M. N. Forney, page 142. A perspective view is herewith given. This device couples automatically, and thus does away with the necessity for the brakeman going between the cars. It can also be unlocked by the rod shown extending to the side of the car, and the locking device can be set not to couple, to facilitate switching and yard work. The mechanical principles of this coupler are a great and important improvement upon any form of link-and-pin coupler; and the coupler question has now come to this point: A type of coupler has been selected by a technical body representing most of the railroads of the United States. It is general enough to avoid the evils of a patent monopoly. It promises to be economical in operation, and will certainly do away with the terrible loss of life and limb which results from the use of the non-automatic coupler. The railroads are adopting it with reasonable speed, perhaps, but not as rapidly as simple considerations of humanity would dictate.

Closely related to the coupler is the vestibule, which within the last two years has become so fashionable. The vestibule is not merely a luxury, but has a certain value as a safety device.[22] The full measure of this value has not yet been proved. Occasionally lives are lost by passengers falling from or being blown from the platforms of moving trains. Such accidents the vestibule will prevent, and, further, it decreases the oscillation of the cars, and thus to some degree helps to prevent derailment. It is also some protection against telescoping. A few months ago a coal train on a double-track road was derailed, and four cars were thrown across in front of a solid vestibule train of seven Pullman cars approaching on the other track. The engine of the vestibuled train was completely wrecked. Even the sheet-iron jacket was stripped off it. The engineer and fireman were instantly killed, but not another person on the train was injured. They escaped partly because the cars were strong, and partly, doubtless, because the vestibules helped to keep the platforms on the same level and in line, and thus to prevent crushing of the ends of the cars.

The number of passengers burned in wrecks is greatly exaggerated in the public mind; but that fate is so horrible that it is not wonderful that "the deadly car-stove" should be the object of persistent and energetic attacks by the press and in State legislatures. The result has been the development, in the last three years, of the entirely new business of inventing and trying to sell systems of heating by steam or hot water from the locomotive, and even by electricity. In fact, the manufacture of such apparatus has already become an industry of some importance, several thousand cars being equipped with it. This whole matter of steam-heating is still in a somewhat crude state, and it does not seem desirable to force it by legislation. It has been demonstrated that it is the cheapest way of heating trains, and the most easily regulated; and it has become a good advertisement to attract passengers. Consequently the whole subject may be safely left in the hands of the railroad companies, and allowed to develop itself naturally in a business way. There is not yet any system of continuous heating so perfected that a railroad company could without hardship be compelled to adopt it for all its passenger equipment.

Fires in wrecked trains have originated probably quite as often from kerosene lamps as from the stoves. The danger of fire from this source, and the desire to give passengers the luxury of sufficient light, have led to methods of lighting by gas and, more recently by electricity. Lighting by compressed gas ceased years ago to be an experiment. In Germany it is almost universal, but in this country it has been brought into use very slowly. The system is almost absolutely safe, not unreasonably expensive, and may be made to give satisfactory and even brilliant illumination; but the ideal light for railroad trains will probably be found in electricity. It is even safer than gas, and is the most adaptable of any known method of lighting. Some sleeping-cars that have been recently put in service on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway are provided with small electric lamps in the sides of the car, between each two adjoining seats, so that the occupants can read comfortably either when sitting in their seats or lying in their berths.

* * * * *

It is not to be supposed that so large a subject as that of safety appliances can be exhaustively treated within the limits of one article. It has been thought best, therefore, to give most of the space available to the two or three devices of greatest and most useful application. There remain various others that are in daily use, and that have important offices, which have not even been mentioned. If the reader has gleaned from these very incomplete notes some clearer notions than he had before of the means by which the power of the locomotive is guided into safe and useful paths, the writer's object has been accomplished.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] The statistics of train accidents used in this article are those collected and published monthly for many years by the _Railroad Gazette_. In the nature of things such statistics cannot be absolutely accurate, but no others are in existence for the whole country. These are sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes.

[21] See "The Freight-car Service," page 267.

[22] See "Railway Passenger Travel," page 249.

RAILWAY PASSENGER TRAVEL.

BY HORACE PORTER.

The Earliest Railway Passenger Advertisement--The First Time-table Published in America--The Mohawk and Hudson Train--Survival of Stage-coach Terms in English Railway Nomenclature--Simon Cameron's Rash Prediction--Discomforts of Early Cars--Introduction of Air-brakes, Patent Buffers and Couplers, the Bell-cord, and Interlocking Switches--The First Sleeping-cars--Mr. Pullman's Experiments--The "Pioneer"--Introduction of Parlor and Drawing-room Cars--The Demand for Dining-cars--Ingenious Devices for Heating Cars--Origin of Vestibule-cars--An Important Safety Appliance--The Luxuries of a Limited Express--Fast Time in America and England--Sleeping-cars for Immigrants--The Village of Pullman--The Largest Car-works in the World--Baggage-checks and Coupon Tickets--Conveniences in a Modern Depot--Statistics in Regard to Accidents--Proportion of Passengers in Various Classes--Comparison of Rates in the Leading Countries of the World.

From the time when Puck was supposed to utter his boast to put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes to the time when Jules Verne's itinerant hero accomplished the task in twice that number of days, the restless ingenuity and energy of man have been unceasingly taxed to increase the speed, comfort, and safety of passenger travel. The first railway on which passengers were carried was the "Stockton & Darlington," of England, the distance being 12 miles. It was opened September 27, 1825, with a freight train, or, as it is called in England, a "goods" train, but which also carried a number of excursionists. An engine which was the result of many years of labor and experiment on the part of George Stephenson was used on this train. Stephenson mounted it and acted as driver; his bump of caution was evidently largely developed, for, to guard against accidents from the recklessness of the speed, he arranged to have a signalman on horse-back ride in advance of the engine to warn the luckless trespasser of the fate which awaited him if he should get in the way of a train moving with such a startling velocity. The next month, October, it was decided that it would be worth while to attempt the carrying of passengers, and a daily "coach," modelled after the stage-coach and called the "Experiment," was put on, Monday, October 10, 1825, which carried six passengers inside and from fifteen to twenty outside. The engine with its light load made the trip in about two hours. The fare from Stockton to Darlington was one shilling, and each passenger was allowed fourteen pounds of baggage. The limited amount of baggage will appear to the ladies of the present day as niggardly in the extreme, but they must recollect that the bandbox was then the popular form of portmanteau for women, the Saratoga trunk had not been invented, and the muscular baggage-smasher of modern times had not yet set out upon his career of destruction. The advertisement which was published in the newspapers of the day is here given, and is of peculiar interest as announcing the first successful attempt to carry passengers by rail.

The Liverpool & Manchester road was opened in 1829. The first train was hauled by an improved engine called the "Rocket," which attained a speed of 25 miles an hour, and some records put it as high as 35 miles. This speed naturally attracted marked attention in the mechanical world, and first demonstrated the superior advantages of railways for passenger travel. Only four years before, so eminent a writer upon railways as Wood had said: "Nothing can do more harm to the adoption of railways than the promulgation of such nonsense as that we shall see locomotives travelling at the rate of 12 miles an hour."

America was quick to adopt the railway system which had had its origin in England. In 1827 a crude railway was opened between Quincy and Boston, but it was only for the purpose of transporting granite for the Bunker Hill Monument. It was not until August, 1829, that a locomotive engine was used upon an American railroad suitable for carrying passengers. This road was constructed by the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, and the experiment was made near Honesdale, Pa. The engine was imported from England and was called the "Stourbridge Lion."

In May, 1830, the first division of the Baltimore & Ohio road was opened. It extended from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, a distance of 15 miles. There being a scarcity of cars, the regular passenger business did not begin till the 5th of July following, and then only horse-power was employed, which continued to be used till the road was finished to Frederick, in 1832. The term Relay House, the name of a well-known station, originated in the fact that the horses were changed at that place.

The following notice, which appeared in the Baltimore newspapers, was the first time-table for passenger railway trains published in this country:

RAILROAD NOTICE.

A sufficient number of cars being now provided for the accommodation of passengers, notice is hereby given that the following arrangements for the arrival and departure of carriages have been adopted, and will take effect on and after Monday morning next the 5th instant, viz.:

A brigade of cars will leave the depot on Pratt St. at 6 and 10 o'clock A. M., and at 3 to 4 o'clock P. M., and will leave the depot at Ellicott's Mills at 6 and 8½ o'clock A. M., and at 12½ and 6 P. M.

Way passengers will provide themselves with tickets at the office of the Company in Baltimore, or at the depots at Pratt St. and Ellicott's Mills, or at the Relay House, near Elk Ridge Landing.

The evening way car for Ellicott's Mills will continue to leave the depot, Pratt St., at 6 o'clock P. M. as usual.

N. B. Positive orders have been issued to the drivers to receive no passengers into any of the cars without tickets.

P. S. Parties desiring to engage a car for the day can be accommodated after July 5th.

It will be seen that the word train was not used, but instead the schedule spoke of a "brigade of cars."

The South Carolina Railroad was begun about the same time as the Baltimore & Ohio, and ran from Charleston to Hamburg, opposite Augusta. When the first division had been constructed, it was opened November 2, 1830.

Peter Cooper, of New York, had before this constructed a locomotive and made a trial trip with it on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, on the 28th of August, 1830, but, not meeting the requirements of the company, it was not put into service.

A passenger train of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad which was put on in October, 1831, between Albany and Schenectady, attracted much attention. It was hauled by an English engine named the "John Bull," and driven by an English engineer named John Hampson. This is generally regarded as the first fully equipped passenger train hauled by a steam-power engine which ran in regular service in America. During 1832 it carried an average of 387 passengers daily. The accompanying engraving is from a sketch made at the time.

It was said by an advocate of mechanical evolution that the modern steam fire-engine was evolved from the ancient leathern fire-bucket; it might be said with greater truth that the modern railway car has been evolved from the old-fashioned English stage-coach.

England still retains the railway carriage divided into compartments, that bear a close resemblance inside and outside to stage-coach bodies with the middle seat omitted. In fact, the nomenclature of the stage-coach is in large measure still preserved in England. The engineer is called the driver, the conductor the guard, the ticket-office is the booking-office, the cars are the carriages, and a rustic traveller may still be heard occasionally to object to sitting with his back to the horses. The earlier locomotives, like horses, were given proper names, such as Lion, North Star, Fiery, and Rocket; the compartments in the round-houses for sheltering locomotives are termed the stalls, and the keeper of the round-house is called the hostler. The last two are the only items of equine classification which the American railway system has permanently adopted.

America, at an early day, departed not only from the nomenclature of the turnpike, but from the stage-coach architecture, and adopted a long car in one compartment and containing a middle aisle which admitted of communication throughout the train. The car was carried on two trucks, or bogies, and was well adapted to the sharp curvature which prevailed upon our railways.

The first five years of experience showed marked progress in the practical operation of railway trains, but even after locomotives had demonstrated their capabilities and each improved engine had shown an encouraging increase in velocity, the wildest flights of fancy never pictured the speed attained in later years.

When the roads forming the line between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa., were chartered in 1835, and town meetings were held to discuss their practicability, the Honorable Simon Cameron, while making a speech in advocacy of the measure, was so far carried away by his enthusiasm as to make the rash prediction that there were persons within the sound of his voice who would live to see a passenger take his breakfast in Harrisburg and his supper in Philadelphia on the same day. A friend of his on the platform said to him after he had finished: "That's all very well, Simon, to tell to the boys, but you and I are no such infernal fools as to believe it." They both lived to travel the distance in a little over two hours.

The people were far from being unanimous in their advocacy of the railway system, and charters were not obtained without severe struggles. The topic was the universal subject of discussion in all popular assemblages. Colonel Blank, a well-known politician in Pennsylvania, had been loud in his opposition to the new means of transportation. When one of the first trains was running over the Harrisburg & Lancaster road, a famous Durham bull belonging to a Mr. Schultz became seized with the enterprising spirit of Don Quixote, put his head down and tail up, and made a desperate charge at the on-coming locomotive, but his steam-breathing opponent proved the better butter of the two and the bull was ignominiously defeated. At a public banquet held soon after in that part of the State, the toast-master proposed a toast to "Colonel Blank and Schultz's bull--both opposed to railroad trains." The joke was widely circulated and had much to do with completing the discomfiture of the opposition in the following elections.

The railroad was a decided step in advance, compared with the stage-coach and canal-boat, but, when we picture the surroundings of the traveller upon railways during the first ten or fifteen years of their existence, we find his journey was not one to be envied. He was jammed into a narrow seat with a stiff back, the deck of the car was low and flat, and ventilation in winter impossible. A stove at each end did little more than generate carbonic oxide. The passenger roasted if he sat at the end of the car, and froze if he sat in the middle. Tallow candles furnished a "dim religious light," but the accompanying odor did not savor of cathedral incense. The dust was suffocating in dry weather; there were no adequate spark-arresters on the engine, or screens at the windows, and the begrimed passenger at the end of his journey looked as if he had spent the day in a blacksmith-shop. Recent experiments in obtaining a spectrum-analysis of the component parts of a quantity of dust collected in a railway car show that minute particles of iron form a large proportion, and under the microscope present the appearance of a collection of tenpenny nails. As iron administered to the human system through the respiratory organs in the form of tenpenny nails mixed with other undesirable matter is not especially recommended by medical practitioners, the sanitary surroundings of the primitive railway car cannot be commended. There were no double tracks, and no telegraph to facilitate the safe despatching of trains. The springs of the car were hard, the jolting intolerable, the windows rattled like those of the modern omnibus, and conversation was a luxury that could be indulged in only by those of recognized superiority in lung power. The brakes were clumsy and of little service.

The ends of the flat-bar rails were cut diagonally, so that when laid down they would lap and form a smoother joint. Occasionally they became sprung; the spikes would not hold, and the end of the rail with its sharp point rose high enough for the wheel to run under it, rip it loose, and send the pointed end through the floor of the car. This was called a "snake's head," and the unlucky being sitting over it was likely to be impaled against the roof. So that the traveller of that day, in addition to his other miseries, was in momentary apprehension of being spitted like a Christmas turkey.

Baggage-checks and coupon tickets were unknown. Long trips had to be made over lines composed of a number of short independent railways; and at the terminus of each the bedevilled passenger had to transfer, purchase another ticket, personally pick out his baggage, perhaps on an uncovered platform in a rain-storm, and take his chances of securing a seat in the train in which he was to continue his weary journey.

After the principal companies had sent agents to Europe to gather all the information possible regarding the progress made there, they soon began to aim at perfecting what may justly be called the American system of railways. The roadbed, or what in England is called the "permanent way," was constructed in such a manner as to conform to the requirements of the new country, and the equipment was adapted to the wants of the people. In no branch of industry has the inventive genius of the race been more skilfully or more successfully employed than in the effort to bring railway travel to its present state of perfection. Every year has shown progress in perfecting the comforts and safety of the railway car. In 1849 the Hodge hand-brake was introduced, and in 1851 the Stevens brake. These enabled the cars to be controlled in a manner which added much to the economy and safety of handling the trains. In 1869 George Westinghouse patented his air-brake, by which power from the engine was transmitted by compressed air carried through hose and acting upon the brakes of each car in the train.[23] It was under the control of the engineer, and its action was so prompt and its power so effectual that a train could be stopped in an incredibly short time, and the brakes released in an instant. In 1871 the vacuum-brake was devised, by means of which the power was applied to the brakes by exhausting the air.

A difficulty under which railways suffered for many years was the method of coupling cars. The ordinary means consisted of coupling-pins inserted into links attached to the cars. There was a great deal of "slack," the jerking of the train in consequence was very objectionable, and the distance between the platforms of the cars made the crossing of them dangerous. In collisions one platform was likely to rise above that of the adjoining car, and "telescoping" was not an uncommon occurrence.