Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828–1965

3. Collisions and the Rise of Regulation, 1873–1900

Few years during the nineteenth century brought a more dreadful crop of train accidents than 1887. The Railroad Gazette recorded 207 passenger fatalities and as usual collisions took a goodly toll. The year began badly. On January 3, B&O freight train No. 26, under command of Conductor L. F. Fletcher, left Garrett, Indiana, heading east toward Republic, Ohio. The engine was not steaming properly and it finally broke down just west of the station. The road to Republic was a single track, and as Fletcher well knew, the westbound express was due at the station in 10 minutes. In fact, the express was running 3 minutes late, but unaccountably Fletcher failed to send out flag protection for his train, as company rules required, and the express plowed into the freight, killing thirteen people. At first glance, the disaster was but one more example of employee nonfeasance: had the conductor done his job there would have been no accident. But as both the coroner’s jury and the railroad press pointed out, the B&O was far from blameless. The freight engine was unfit for service and road breakdowns were invariably highly dangerous. Moreover, the B&O was one of the few companies that did not employ Westinghouse brakes on passenger equipment. It still used the Loughridge straight air brake that was slower than the Westinghouse automatic and had been obsolete since 1872. The engineman of the express had seen the freight about 1,000 feet away while he was running about 43 miles per hour; an automatic brake should have stopped the train. The accident also revealed the need for a “proper system of clearly visible fixed signals in conjunction 70 3 CollisionsandtheRiseofRegulation,1873–1900 There is no crop raised in this country which can be relied upon with . . . the certainty that the next few months will be prolific in what are known to railroad men as “tail-enders.” —Arthur Wellington, 1884 The . . . railroads kill . . . [300 passengers a year, but] 987,631 corpses die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances. The railroads are good enough for me. —Mark Twain, 1871 with the block system,”the Railroad Gazette noted. Finally, the B&O heated the express with old-fashioned stoves, although various safety heaters were then on the market, and most of the casualties had been caused by the fire, not the collision.1 Republic reveals much about the nature of collisions. They frightened the public out of all proportion to their likelihood, for to passengers they were uncontrollable, mysteriously caused, and, where fire was involved, especially dreadful. Like Bradford (chapter 2), Republic also re- flected a complexity of causes. While the tragedy seemed to result from human error by the conductor, it also stemmed from managerial decisions and technological choices that reflected economic considerations. For if the maturation of American railroads after 1870 lessened derailments, it increased collisions. Rising traffic density in the context of an expanding labor market overwhelmed the old train order system. In addition, increasing passenger train speed and weight largely offset beneficial effects of better brakes, while the introduction of very large freight cars created a bulge of freight collisions from break-in-twos. Pressured by the trade press and public outcry, the carriers responded tardily with new brake and signal technology and improved company employment practices. Yet neither private nor public efforts proved adequate and by 1900 collisions again became a public issue. RegulatoryBeginnings,1871–1880 A rear collision on the Eastern Railroad on August 24, 1871, near Revere, Massachusetts, that killed twenty-nine people was responsible for the first serious state accident investigation. In 1869, partly at the behest of Charles Francis Adams Jr., Massachusetts established a Board of Railroad Commis60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 Percentage of Train Accidents Per Million Train Miles 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Source: Appendix 1. Figure 3.1. The Rise of Collisions, 1873–1900 CollisionsandtheRiseofRegulation 71 72 DeathRodetheRails sioners that included Adams and that he soon dominated. Modeled after the British Board of Trade, it could investigate and make recommendations , but otherwise had no power. Adams was no enthusiast of regulation. An elitist, he had little sympathy for passengers killed through “their own fault” (chapter 4), and while he favored state action to control train accidents , he believed that more might be accomplished...