The Express.
London, England, 1864-07-20 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 20.

AMONG the most formidable of all railway
accidents, because apparently the least preventible,
is what our neighbours call deraitlement—that is,
the train moving off the rails. When this happens
on the top of • steep embankment, the result is
one of those catastrophes which are so vividly
represented by nightmare—the engine springing
into the air like some monstrous creature struck to
the heart, and hurrying headlong an enormous
weight of carriages filled with a multitude of
human beings down • precipice. Few travellers
have passed over one of those viaducts, which are
the masterpieces of engineering skill, without
imagining the terror and confusion of such a fall.
If the accident takes place in • cutting, the con-
sequences are less frightful to contemplate, and
the bulk of the passengers are perhaps let off with
a severe shaking, some serious bruises, and some
broken limbs. But no bare enumeration of wounds
or bruises can furnish a fair estimate of the in-
juries which weak or timid persons suffer by
these shocks to the nervous system. It is only
when • jury of men of business see before them
what was the other day an active professional man
or a prosperous tradesman incapacitated for all re-
sponsibility or employment, struck with a lingering
paralysis, or labouring under a low and wasting
malady, that a tolerably just impression of the
wide-spread or lasting damage done by •
" shaking "of this kind is obtained. But are acci-
dents of this class leas preventible, leas sub-
ject to control, than those which are caused
by hazardous arrangements in the locomotive and
traffic departments (due to the reckless demands
of the public quite as much as to unscrupulous
avidity on the part of companies), or by
the carelessness or inefficiency of the servants
employed along the line and at the stations ? When
a train runs off the rails the fault is to be found
either in the condition of the permanent way, or
in the neglect by the engine driver of the most
obvious precautions in approaching and turning
sharp curves. A faulty condition of the permanent
way is not always easy of detection by ordinary
observers, if it is confined to a single small section
of a loosened rail. But it can hardly escape
the most ordinary attention from • practised eye ;
and if there is one part of railway administration
more than another over which the Board of Trade is
supposed to exercise constantly and systematically
a more than nominal supervision, it is the con-
dition of the permanent way. Indeed, though
a rail may become loosened by the passage of a
single heavy train (and that is one of the rail-
way accidents which are as clearly beyond con-
trol as the snapping of • leather rein), the
general condition of the permanent way is sup-
posed to be, and ought to be, as well and accu-
rately known to every responsible authority on
the line, from the Board-room to the plate-
layers, as the state of the old Northern road should
have been to the drivers of the old York and Edin-
burgh mails. Excepting the contingency of a
sudden loosening of some small portion of a
rail, there is really no excuse for accidents which
may be ascribed to the faulty condition of
the permanent way. The other cause of
accidents of this class, the carelessness of drivers
in approaching curves, is of course as pre-
ventible as strict discipline and severe penal-
ties can make it. Accidents caused by wilful
mischief are happily too exceptional to be
classed among the dangers of railway travelling.
The recent accident on the Great Eastern line near
Bradfield must be attributed to some defect in the
condition of the permanent way, or to neglect of re-
gulations on the part of the engine driver ; it CM
hardly be ►ttributable to any cause beyond con-
trol. On the other hand, the accident to the ex-
press train on Saturday last near Newcastle, on
the North Eastern line, appears to be one of those
which may be compared to the snapping of a
coachman's reins when his team is at full speed
" springing " a hill ; the crank shaft of the engine
broke, a coupling chain snapped, and three'
carriages ran off the rails. The train, however,
was a very heavy one, and was behind time, and it
was goir.g down a considerable incline at the
rate of about forty miles an hour when this acci-
dent occurred. Whether this rate of speed was
excessive may be questionable ; but it is
certain that twice as many accidents occur from
making up for lost time as from want of punc-
tuality in arrivals and departures, or from a too
frequent and rapid succession of trains. On the
whole, it is curious to note that there is scarcely
an accident within the experience of railway pas-
sengers which has not its analogue in the casualties
familiar to travellers by coach.

Even the heartrending accident to the emigrant
train on the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, on
the 29th of Jone, in which some hundred and
fifty lives were sacrificed, is no exception to this
remark. A stage coachman who had deliberately
driven at a turnpike gate or over the parapet of a
bridge would certainly have been held responsible
for the lives of his passengers. Recklessness such
as that of an engine-driver who wilfully and ad-
visedly drives a long and crowded train over an
open swing•bridge into a river, regardless of danger
signals, and of all standing orders and precautions,

is, we believe, unexampled, and takes the cata-
strophe out of all categories of calculable &Agents.
Nothing but a sudden fit of desperale madness ail.
account for the conduct of the man who himself,
by some malignant irony of fate, miraculously °soaped
unhurt from the yawning ruin in which a multitude
of his fellow-creatures were swallowed up. All the
circumstances of this vast calamity surround it with
grief and misery unparalleled. It was a train of emi-
grants from many nations, speaking many tongues;
Poles, Bohemians, Swedes, Germans, who had
but just landed in that new world of hope and
promise after enduring all the dangers and discom-
forts of the weary ocean voyage. Of 565 passengers
on board the Necker, about 538 came on by the
Grand Trunk line, and of these 538 not less than
154, men, women, and children, were doomed to
drowning in the Richelieu River, or to be cast in
hideous confusion, bruised and crushed, amidst a
heap of broken railway waggons and piled lumber,
on the river's bank. The cries of the orphan children
for their lost parents (one infant was found cling-
ing to its dead mother's breast), the speechless
agony of the widowed, the forlorn bewilderment
of sundered families, standing by the wreck of all
the peat and of all the future; who shall picture this
scene of desolation 9 Our railway accidents on
this side of the Atlantic sink into insignificance
when we think of this little future world of Euro-
pean industry and civilization—a new community,
a population in itself—crossing the ocean in safety,
to be drowned in a river by the reckless driver of
a railway train.