The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-15 00:00:00

RAILWAY ACCIDENT'S.

One of the worst consequences of the present
bitter weather is the increased danger to which it
exposes railway passengers. Under ordinary cir-
cumstances travelling by railwayis hazardous
enough. Hundreds of lives are put at the mercy of
a sleepy driver or a careless pointsman, and the in-
attention of a signal keeper may result in the
sudden infliction of a terrible form of death on a
dozen helpless passengers. These risks, however,
may be greatly diminished by vigilant control, and
it speaks volumes for the carefulness of railway
officials that during the dull days and long dark
nights of winter more frequent disasters have not
been caused by indoles2ce or neglect. But ano-
ther form of danger has arisen, scarcely to be
averted by the most watchiLkl supervision. The
causes of the evil referred to are so imperfectly un-
derstood that no efficient remedies is ave yet been pro-
posed ; indeed, the evidence given at coroners in-
quests on railway accidents Irequently tends to mis-
lead:persons whose business it should be to detect the
causes of these occurrences, and to apply a en/v. The
unusual number of accidents which happened to-
wards the close of last week will probably compel
closer attention to this subject, and induce scientific ,
men to enter upon an investigation which they alone
are qualified to conduct. On Friday or Saturday
four railway trains broke down, with fatal results
—two on the London, Chatham, and Dover, one
on the London and North Western, and one on the
Shrewsbury and Hereford. Seven persons were
killed; several others dangerously, if not mortally,
injured; and many more hurt and bruised in a
lesser degree. Three of these accidents are traceable
to the fracture of "tires" of carriage wheels, and in
the Hereford case to the breaking of an axle. Nu-
merous other instances of similar fractures have
been recorded during the week. On all sides we hear
of springs breaking, tires fracturing, and axles snap-
ping off like short carrots. In cases like these, where
carelessness cannot be imputed to railway officers,
the unvarying custom of coroners' juries is to lay
the blame on the quality of the iron. At Teyn-
ham and at Hereford the story was the same
—the iron was pronounced defective, and there the
matter ended, juries and engineers concurring in
the view that the producer of the iron had furnished
metal of an inferior quality, and thus remotely con-
tributed to scatter wounds and death among unfor-
tunate people who had trusted their lives to faulty
axles and unsound tires. If coroners would make a
point of summoning witnesses competent to pro-
nounce opinions on this question, the inquests,
which are now little better than useless forms,
might render valuable assistance in elucidating the
mystery, and providing against the recurrence of
similar disasters. At Hereford, one of the jurors,
" as a practical man," undertook to say that the
axle was made of bad iron ; and in another case a
railway engineer came to a similar conclusion, be-
cause the iron was " crystallised." The cry thus
raised is taken up by the newspapers, and the
public are led to believe that ironmasters and
axlemakers' have combined to de'raud rail-
way companies and imperil the lives of
travellers by using imperfect metal to in-
crease their own profits. Had any person of
competent metallurgical knowledge been examined,
he would have cleared up the difficulty by showing
that the crystallization of railway iron is no fault
of the maker, but is caused by the operation of a
natural law, set in force by the railway system
itself. Wrought or malleable iron (of which all
railway tires and axles are made) when it leaves
the maker's hands is fibrous in structure, highly
ductile, and before breaking might, by the exertion
of sufficient force, be actually tied into a knot. But
by the action of long continued percussion, or the
tremulous motion to which it is subjected in rail-
way work, the metal loses its fibrous nature, and
acquires a crystalline character. In this state it no
longer retains the tenacity and cohesion which for-
merly characterised it, but becomes exceedingly
brittle and liable to fracture. The brittleness increases
as the temperature is depressed ; consequently, in
such weather as we have lately had the liability to
accident through fracture is incalculably greater
than at other periods. The variation in the struc-
ture of the iron is unattended with any chemical
change in the metal, but Os purely physical.
It results from a new molecular arrangement of the
particles of iron, and is very slightly, if at all,
affected by the quality of the metal in the first
instance. So highly brittle may iron thus become
that, in extremely cold weather, the precaution
ordinarily resorted to of striking the wheels and
axles, or tapping with a hammer to ascertain their
soundness, if incautiously performed, may, by crack-
ing the metal, bring about the very mischief it is
intended to discover. The obvious remedy is the
replacement of wheels and axles by new ones at
shorter intervals than is now customary ; but the
objection to this course is the enormous expense it
would entail upon railway companies—an expense
which the public would be unwilling to bear by
paying li;gher fares. There is, however, another
and less costly mode by which the evil might be
remedied, and the crystalline structure largely,
and perhaps wholly, corrected. This might be
effected by occasionally "annealing" the iron—
that is, by exposing it to a red heat and allowing,
it to cool slowly. By this treatment the duc-
tility of the metal would be restored, the crys-
talline structure removed. and the liability to sud-
den fracture in periods of low temperature greatly
diminished. The process suggested would, no doubt
be attended with trouble and expense, as it would
probably necessitate the re-turning of the axles And
the use of new bearings; but however grave these
inconveniences may be, they are nevertheless to be
preferred to the dreadful consequences resulting
from fracture. Accidents from the breaking of tires
or axles might in many cases be obviated by mount-
ing railway carriages on six wheels instead of four.
Six-wheeled carriages no doubt have their disadvan-
tages ; but of their superior safety there can be no
question, and if the public desire to travel securely
they must be content to sacrifice something in speed.
If one wheel of a four-wheeled carriage should hap-
pen to break, the carriage must immediately be
thrown off the rails; but to reduce a six-wheeled car.
riage to the same helpless condition three wheels
must break simultan eously,two on one of the end axles
and one on the middle axle, an occurrence scarcely
within the range ofpossibility. The breaking ofcoup-
-lin g chains—another fertile cause of acciden t—is less
easily to be guarded against. Probably the varia-
tions of temperature lately recorded, by disturbing
the soil, may have displaced some of the rails at
their points of junction, and thus have thrown car-
riages off the line. In such a case it is no wonder
that the strongest available iron is unable to bear
the strain. A thin metal wire may be broken by
the pressure of the hand. It may therefore be con-
ceived how readily the thickest iron cable may be
fractured by the sudden jerk to which it is subjected
when the enormous weight of a railway train,
dragged violently along an uneven surface, is thrown
upon it. Minute and continuous inspection of the
permanent way affords the only means of avoiding
accidents from this cause. Indeed, the occurrences
of the last few days, and the alarm and distrust
they have excited, should impress upon railway
companies the importance of redoubled vigilance
during the frost. Neither labour nor expense
should be spared ; the faintest indication of dan-
ger should be scrupulously noted, and the most
patient investigation bestowed upon the scien-
tific questions to which attention has been drawn.
By using each accident as a means of discovering
hidden sources of danger, railway companies may,
and probably will, succeed in reducing to a mini-
mum the risks to which their passengers are
exposed, and in preventing future disasters of the
description we have just now to deplore.—Ari.'s
Birmingham Gazette.

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