244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



EAILWAY ACCIDENTS AND THE COLOE SENSE 



BY Professor GEORGE M. STRATTON 



THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 



IN considering whether some of our frequent railway accidents may 

 not be due to the character of the signals we employ, it should be 

 borne in mind that these signals often must be caught and instantly 

 translated into action under conditions of uncommon mental stress. 

 And for this reason, defects of the symbols which might otherwise be 

 far from serious do now become of vital moment. Yet it has been 

 said that the work of the locomotive engineer seems to the observer 

 more difficult than it is — that the long training through which these 

 men must pass permits them to carry lightly their great respon- 

 sibilities. It was the more interesting, therefore, when, on an 

 express-engine not long ago, we had come to the end of our long 

 course, and the din and jostle had given way to calm, to hear the 

 engineer speak of the tension of his work. He had been at the 

 throttle but three hours that day, and after going for a time to the 

 round-house, would take his express back over the same run that night. 

 " My partner," said he, " will have the run to-morrow. No man could 

 stand it, holding her down in this way day after day." And so the 

 engine crews on such a swift express lie off alternate days, and the 

 engineer and fireman may not take out their train unless the entire 

 preceding day has been a day of rest. Such carefulness on the part of 

 a great corporation calls for praise which should be all the less re- 

 strained when so much must be said to-day of the shortcomings of our 

 railways. Yet there could hardly be stronger proof of the strain under 

 which the engineer must labor; for no company would give to its 

 hardy servants every alternate day for freedom, unless experience had 

 taught that the service itself required it. 



Nor is it difficult to appreciate in some measure the severity of the 

 work. Various duties that on an ocean steamer are distributed among 

 helmsman, lookout, engineer, and the officer on the bridge, here fall 

 cbiefly upon a single man, and this where the care and instant judg- 

 ment required seem at times to be not far below those needed for the 

 guidance of a ship. The locomotive engineer must control a marvel- 

 ously complex and ponderous piece of mechanism, keeping his sight 

 and hearing and sense of shock so alive that amid the universe of whirl 

 and glare and explosive rattle in which, for the time, he is centered, he 

 can detect the foreign note or quiver that speaks of disarrangement. 



