The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-02 00:00:00

THE ACCIDENT ON THE .WORTII KEN '
RAILWAY.

The inquiry into the fatal accident whieil occurred
on the North Kent Railway, between Strood and
Gravesend, on the 20th ult., by which Geo. Wa Iler,
the head guard, was killed, was resumed at the
Town-hall, Gravesend, yesterday, by Mr, E. A.

HiHer, the borough coroner:
Captain Henry Whalley Tyr;er, from the Railway
Department of the Lloard of Trade, was the first
witness examined. He said he ,had inspected the
line on the 24th ult., having join. eel the coroner and
jury at their request. He considered it a difficult
thing to throw a steady engine off a'
.good road on
a straight line, and that there must tab something
very far wrong in the engine, train, or' permanent
way when an accident of this kind oceure. In the
present instance the engine evidently left I:he line
before the carriages, and the cause of the accident,
therefore, lay between the engine and the road.
The engine Showed no symptoms of failure in .any
of its parts such as would have led to the present
accident. The permanent way was in a less satis-
factory condition. It had been down since 1847, a
period of 15 years. The sleepers were not he a good
condition. The trenails, by means of whi.ela the
chairs were attached to them, were in a yet worse
state, and the joints were loose. It was admitted
by the witnesses at the ,former examination tleat
the first disturbance in the permanent way—
that is to say, the bulges to the left and right—.
arose solely from the failure of theafienails which
ought to have secured the chairs to the sleepers.
The foreman platelayer, Beibents, though he as-
serted that the trenails so foteteere3l had been sound,
admitted, nevertheless, that they had given way.
It might have been quite true the his auger, as he
,1
bored them out went into hard wo grabecause such
trenails frequently lay broken in ' he chairs and
useless for security, while the upper and lower por-
, tions were still in a bard condition. If he could
have been certain of the particular chairs,
' and their position, he should have been ably
to point out how far each fastening had
been secure or defective, and what parts had
given way where the rail was knocked out of its
place. As it was, he could only state the general
but inevitable conclusion that, as the rail 4id thus
give way under the passage of an engine under
ordinary speed, that alone was suffieient proof' that
the rail was not securely retained in its place by
the fastening which ought to have held it. Fie
might add that this rail did not appear to have been.
subjected to any great violence, or even to have
been bent when thus pushed out of its place. The
engine either did not appear to have met with great
resistance when it came against this rail, as it did
not merely drop off it when it:* gave way, but, un-
checked in the oscillation which it had derived from
the previous slight bulges on the road, it went at
once considerably off the rails to the heft, as he ob-
served by the marks still visible on tlec sleepers
and by the absence of broken chairs on tn.e off side
of the line. If the rail had been perfectly secured
the engine would have glanced from it and ~left it
undisturbed. If the trenails on the outside of the
rail had been sound and strong, or if there had beep.
wrought iron spikes in their places, that rail would,"
no doubt, not have been thus displaced, even if the
trenails had been less secure inside the rail. In
examining the line in the neighbourhood of the scene
of the accident, he found many cases in which the
heads of the trenails were gone altogether out of the
chairs as they stood in the line. Sometimes both of
them had disappeared from one chair, and the holes
were filled with dirt. In some cases the heads of
the trenails remained in the chairs after their frac-
ture, and in others he was able to pull them out with
his thumb and finger. In short, he found these
fastenings so much deteriorated as to render an acci-
dent of this description not only within the bounds
of possibility but very likely to occur. The broken
rail, which was found at 50 yards beyond the dis-
placed rail, had the appearance of having been bent
and broken by violent impact on the inside, and its
appearance indicated the track of the engine cross"
ing it, besides showing that it must have been held
in its place far more tightly than the rail 50 yared,
behind, which was thrown out on its side. After
full consideration of all the circumstances of the
case, as far as he had been able to ascertain them,
he attributed the accident to the failure of the wooden
fastenings between the chairs and the sleepers. The
use of the wooden trenails had been the soie cause
of the accident on the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway in 1860, and on the South Western and
Glasgow inMay,lB6l. In the former case the engine,
of the express train burst-the permanent way, and
the carriages only were thrown off the line. In the
latter case the engine and carriages left the rails
under circumstances very similar to those they were
then investigating, though with more fatal results.
In answer to questions by the Coroner, Captain
Tyler added that if the weather had been ever 5.,0
bad the accident ought never to have occurred Lt
the fastenings were good.
Examined by Mr. Rees, solicitor, who represented
the railway company, Capt. Tyler said that he hau
seen so many accidents through wooden trenails
that he advocated spikes instead, and had recora-
mended their use to the North Kent Railway Cow
pany. Their engineer had as great an objection to
them as he had. He was sorry to see that nothing
but wooden trenails had been put down by the en-
gineer of the London, Chatham, and Dover Rail"
way, although the engineer of that line stood very
high in his profession. So long as trenails remained
sound they held the chairs better than spikes,whiell
were apt to shift out after being in use several yeer''
Spikes were still more necessary on curves. When
he inspected a line made with trenails he AlwaY!
reported that to the Board of Trade, but on curve'
he insisted on spikes.
The Coroner having read over and commented 011
the evidence,
The jury retired, and, after an absence of am
.
hour, brought in the following special verdict ..
"Accidental" death; and it is the unanimous opi-
y
the imperfect state of the permanent jury
ion of the jury that the accident is attr
wa ibutabl
at andeto
near the spot where it occurred, and the re-
commend the immediate attention of the tom aq
P
to the state of the trenails and sleepers.
Mr.Eborall, the general manager of the raihtql)",
said the recommendation of the jury should have
every attention, and that the company deeply re"
gretted the accident.