The Washington herald., 1912-11-03
AMERICAN RAILROADS AVERAGE ONE
VICTIM EVERY SEVEN MINUTES OF TIME
III. W. Belnap, Special Investigator, Tells of
WeEk Being Done to Safeguard Lives
of Travelling Public Trainmen
Blamed for Carelessness.
~ JAMES b. MORROW.

railroads safe in the United States. The
public rarely hears any Of their names
yet they are officers Of the national gov
ternment and some Of them are usually
ipresent before the wreckage Of an acci-
fuent has been gathered up and carried
Rway.
Omc.any, these men are known as in
lepectors OF safety appliances. Under the
law they are expected to note whether
railroads are working their employees
more than sixteen hours . day and II
their cars are equipped with self-couplers
with automatic brakes. The tnvestiga-
tion Of accidents also, 10 an important
part Of their business.
Two inspectors are permanently STA
toned IN each of the fourteen districts
which stretch across and UP and down
for reports OF bad accidents and when
one occurs they hasten to the scene and
get the facts. shielding no one. neither
the railroad nor its trainmen. switchmen.
or telegraphers II found culpable. Often
they are ordered into action by tele-
gram from Washington. Among them are
those who have been locomotive engi-
neers. conductors, superintendents. train
dispatchers, and trainmas:ers At a re-
cent civil service examination OF men
hopeful Of becoming inspectors. only forty
one passed out Of about 900 applicants
Over the inspectors and chief among
them in skill. activity and intelligence Is
H w. Belnap, once a telegrapher and
later a brakeman and a conductor. An
inspector must have had eight years Of
practical experience on a railway. Mr..
Belnap came to his Office after a service
Of fourteen years on the Big Four be-
tween Indianapolis and st. Louis. From
the track and from the train he brought
TO his work an everyday knowledge OF
signals, of time tables. and of rules and
orders and likewise Of the human ele-
ments which must be reckoned with in
the operation of railroads. He is a COM
pact and hearty man and goes straight
10 the point Of everything. His eyes are
keen. his mind is quick, and he can talk
like lawyer when such language is nee
essary.
The Causes of Accidents.
That is big and disputed question"
he answered. when 1 asked him to name
the principal causes OF accidents on rail-
roads. My own opinion is that most ac-
cidents are traceable to man himself,
rather than to machinery. broken rails
and defects in roadbeds. We print bull
letin every three months giving the facts
about serious casualties Here are the
bulletins covering six months of last year
and the first quarter Of this year. Go
through them and you will find the de-
=.
thirty-two of which were collisions and
twenty-three of the thirty-twO were head
end collisions. Orders were disobeyed. or
wrongly given. or signals were disregard
Cd Only man is censurable under such
circumstances.
The bulletins contain reports of none
hut the worst accidents. There were
many more collisions during the period
] have mentioned. Indeed there were l.
6Ii accidents Of that kind during the first
three months of this year. Men grow
careless or they try to make up lost
time and trains come together. Then
there are hundreds of derailments every
year-rails of car wheels break or the
tracks give way in weak spots. The
Lehigh Valley wreck near Manchester
y. Y, in which twenty-nine persons were
killed and siNty-two injured. was occa-
stoned by a new rail that was defectively
manufactured.
Against my off-hand views on the SUBJ
ject of accidents. / am willing to put the
sworn testimony of F. c. Rice. general
inspector of transportation on the Chi
cago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
who has said that excessive speed was
the cause of about % or 50 per cent of the
catastrophies in the last few years
quote Mr.. Rice because he is accurate,
technically. Every man in the train serv-
ice of railroad is geared up to his
highest speed physically and mentally
The boy who calls trainman out of bed
is in a hurry. From the time he gets
up until he is through with his work
the trainman is pushed by spoken word
and orders by telegraph. Americans in
all walks of life are speed crazy More
over, / want to say right here that the
railroad managers themselves sensation
ally demonstrated to the public that the
1000 miles between New York and Chicago
could be travelled in eighteen hours The
49,
til they saw it done.
All Trains ON High Gear.
The price of speed. of course, is loss
of limb, Disagreement or death. to say |
nothing of the destruction Of property |
The contagion. logically, has got in |
among the freights. On a road in the |
Middle West, the other day. freight in |
four long sections passed a telegraph sta
tion inside Of eighteen minutes and as a |
result one of them ran over another. The |
figures for last year show that one pas |
senger was killed every twenty-five hours |
and one employe every three hours on |
the railroads OF the United States in train |
accidents. One passenger was injured |
every eleven minutes. Only accidents |
which cause the death or injury of one
or more persons or a property loss of $50 |
are reported to the Interstate Commerce
Commission. We know that during the
past twenty-four years 1sS,GS7 persons-l
passengers. railway workers, and tres
passers-have been killed on our railroads
and that 1.3s5.e1S have been injured, which
means an annual average of 1855 killed.
and 5S150 injured, a daily average of 1S1 |
killed or injured or, refining the figures
further, one person every seven minutes.
Night and day. year in and year out
death goes walking about.
THE facts are terrible, I admit, but to
those who understand the situation the
wonder Is that conditions are no worse L
We sentfmentalizs about the engineer but l
do we actually know what he is doing in
the cab OF a locomotive that is hauling
the Pennsylvania Special or the TWEEN.
tieth Century Limited? Running at sixty
miles an hour. in a driving storm Of snow
or rain or in fog. he can only see a
short car-length ahead. He must read
and determine each Of the signals he L
passes inside Of half . second. During
clear weather he can look ahead and in
terpret the signal as he approaches It.
but even 30 he has the busiest and most
job on earth.
The EnEfneer ih His Cab.
Let US Imagine that the day Or night /,
is quiet and light and then let US look
At the engineman while he 10 at his work.
His hand, of course. Is at the throttle. He :
roads the signals ~ they Hash BY. keeps II
biz mind on his watch, listens to learn ID
z the machinery b going al right studies :!