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

4. The Major Risks from Minor Accidents, 1873–1900

The great majority of casualties on railroads were not the result of spectacular collisions or derailments. While such disasters might injure or kill dozens of people all at once, most of the carnage resulted from “minor” accidents that picked them off one or two at a time. These were passengers who fell while running for the train, or employees who were crushed while coupling cars, or working men and women who took a shortcut across the tracks or tried to beat a train to the crossing. Throughout the nineteenth century, such accidents were usually invisible . In part this was simply because they were little: a train accident that killed a dozen people became a headline; a dozen accidents that killed twelve people became obituaries. But as modern researchers have noted, ideology can also attenuate as well as amplify risks and the ideology of individualism also colored views on such accidents. The standard memorial for a person killed in a little accident was: “it was his own fault.” Since legal liability for accidents depended on fault, the carriers had less economic interest in preventing such accidents than they did train wrecks that harmed passengers. While similar conceptions also dulled public humanitarian concerns, this fault-based view gradually receded. As understanding of accident causation became more complex, some officials and reformers began to assert that accidents had social as well as individual causes, and that the community had an interest in preventing them. Changing attitudes and improved technology reduced the number of little accidents as the nineteenth century ended, but crossing and trespassing accidents remained major problems.1 97 4 TheMajorRisksfromMinorAccidents,1873–1900 The whole system of American institutions is based upon the principle that . . . people can take . . . good care of themselves. —Charles Francis Adams, 1871 It is not in the interest of the state to have . . . [these coupling injuries] continue. —New York Board of Railroad Commissioners, 1884 98 DeathRodetheRails TamingtheIronHorse In both Britain and the United States locomotives accounted for many accidents . Boiler explosions usually killed only trainmen, typically one or two at a time. In 1887, a typical year, the Railroad Gazette reported fourteen explosions that killed fourteen trainmen. American locomotives were more likely to blow up than those in Britain, for American carriers routinely exceeded designed pressures, which overstressed pins, rods, and other moving parts, and in a rickety old locomotive, might bring disaster. In 1868 the American Railway Times reported a boiler explosion on a Grand Trunk locomotive that was twenty years old, and which had iron near the seams corroded to one-third its original thickness. In 1870 one engineman claimed his road ran such long trains that if he followed the rules for steam pressure he could not start the train. From 1873 to 1886 the Gazette’s data yield an average explosion rate of 0.8 per thousand locomotives, which was admittedly a considerable undercount. Locomotives were long lived; over two decades such an annual risk implied the sobering fact that nearly 2 percent of all locomotives would explode. In Britain, by contrast, much more complete reporting yielded an explosion rate of 0.46 per thousand over the same period.2 Locomotives had many other ways of killing or maiming trainmen. Gilbert Lathrop reported that a fellow engineman on the Rio Grande was killed when the Johnson bar (the reversing lever) failed to latch and hit him in the stomach when he opened the throttle. Main or side rods broke with such frequency that the Railroad Gazette classified such accidents separately. Engineman J. Harvey Reed reported that when the main connecting pin broke on a Rogers Mogul locomotive he was on, the side rod acted like a flail, tearing up the cab. In 1887 the Gazette reported seventeen Figure 4.1. Locomotive Accidents from Explosions and Broken Rods, 1873–1900 Per Thousand Locomotives 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 Sources: Railroad Gazette; author’s calculations. such accidents; one of them to Locomotive No. 72 of the Rome,Watertown & Ogdensburg on July 16 killed the engineman as it was drawing a special train containing President Cleveland and his wife.3 The Master Mechanics and the Locomotive The men in charge of the steam locomotive were the master mechanics and their main interest was in increasing its efficiency and hauling capacity. To this end they built ever-larger machines with greater...