'^ i»»Mc«ai>J»K)«:ao«:>M:j5c<^^ 



Realizing Steel Car Weakness 



Nobody denies that in a bad wreck something will smash, anil it 

 may be a wooden ear or it may be a steel car. Experience shows 

 that both will go to pieces if hit hard enough, and experience also 

 shows that the steel car is at fault oftener than the car of wood, in 

 proportion to the numbers of each in use. 



The first woal^ness of the steel car, and one which the steel 

 advocates carefully avoid mentioning, is its proneness to leave 

 the track or to break or spread the rails. It is heavy and rigid. 

 It refuses to take curves, and if there is a defective rail or a 

 rotten tie, the steel car finds it and begins to smash things, while 

 the wooden car, being lighter and more yielding, passes over and 

 gives the track walker a chance to find the dangerous place. 



This phase of the situation was ably presented by James O. 

 Fagan in a letter to the New York Times, Sept. 19. .^mong other 

 points made by him were the following: 



"Under present conditions on the railroads steel car legislation would 

 not only be very unwise, hut would actually be a case of dangerouj 

 Federal interference with railroad management. About a year ago quite 

 a sensation was created by the discovery and publication by the Interstate 

 Commerce Commission of facts relating to the manufacture of steel rails 

 and the stability of roadl>eds. .\ccidents pointing to weakness in these 

 features were of daily occurrence. An abundance of evidence was pub- 

 lished about rotten ties, broken rails, and weak bridges. Comparisons 

 were made between the cost and structure of roadbeds in tbis country 

 and abroad. Meanwhile railroad presidents and managers all over the 

 country were taking hold of these problems in earnest, and at the time 

 public statements were made by these men to the effect that the railroads 

 were in immediate need of millions upon millions of dollars for better- 

 ment purposes, and specifically to prepare for the problems connected 

 with the constantly increasing weight of cars and locomotives. Before 

 permitting or compellin;; the railroads to add an unlimited number 

 of ponderous steel cars to their eauipment. then, would it not be weil 

 to secure from the Interstate Commerce Commission an opinion as to the 

 present preparedness of the railroads to cai-ry in safety this additional 

 weight? Surely, these tracks and roadbeds are matters of the first con- 

 sideratiou. and any cart-before-tlie-horse legislation should be looked 

 upon by the people with the greatest disfavor. 



"In fact, a careful scrutiny of the records for the past year or two 

 warrants the suspicion that the unusual weight and speed of these trains 

 have been the probable causes iu most of these accidents. Saving lives 

 in this roundabout fashion is something new in railroad and human 

 economy. It reminds one of Dickson's hero who saved a small fortune in 

 his mind by purchasing at bargain sales articles for which he had 

 absolutely no use." 



The New York Times commented editorially upon this matter 

 by taking the ground that: 



"The provision of steel cars never prevented accidents, never can pre- 

 vent them. It may, indeed, be a direct cause of the spreading or fracture 

 of rails and of consequent derailments. The prevention of accidents 

 on the railways has become a direct personal issue between managements 

 and men. It is an issue of the gravest importance to the public, and 

 it has been brought to an acute stage by the continual demands for 

 more pay, or. when that is refused, less responsibility for the trainmen to 

 whose hands are intrusted the lives of passengers. It might even be 

 argued that the multiplication of mechanical safety devices is now in 

 itself an element of danger. When engineers, conductors, and flagmen 

 unite to thrust the safety first responsibility upon the power of car 

 bodies to withstand shocks of collisions resulting from their running 

 past signals, it is time for the public to take a part in passing upon 

 their qualifications." 



The common sense method would be to attain safety first b) 

 keeping cars on the track, and this is hard to do in case of the 

 steel car, A line or two in the ordinary news dispatch regarding 

 wrecks often gives the secret away. Note the following in an 

 associated press dispatch, published Sept. 16, regarding a wreck at 

 Coatesville, Pa. 



"The train was not running fast when the sleepers, of steel construction, 

 left the rails and turned over on their sides. One of the ears slid half 

 way down a fifteen-foot embankment. There were sixty-eight persons in 

 the sleepers. The accident is said to have been due to the spreading 

 of the rails." 



The three points here are, the cars were steel, the train was not 

 running fast, and the rails spread. Would an element of safety 

 be added by a law compelling the use of steel cars exclusively? 

 "Would not the rails spread just the same, or worse? 



Almost exactly the same story was told in a dispatch, Sept. 20, 



from Nahatta, Kansas, where twenty passengers were injured when 

 steel cars left the track because of a defective rail, and went 

 over an embankment. Is legislation needed here to compel the use 

 of cars already in use (and in the wreck)? 



News agency dispatches to the papers are impartial. They are 

 not arguing for the steel car, the wooden car, or any other car, 

 but they simply tell what happens, and that is why their testi- 

 mony as to the insufliciency if not the actual danger of the steel 

 ear is so telling. 



Two days later than the dispatch quoted above, the Brooklyn 

 Eagle had nearly two whole pages of description and pictures of a 

 wreck on Long Island in which three were killed and forty-five 

 were hurt. The news agency — the same impartial agency which 

 simply tells what happened — introduced the two-page description in 

 one plain, straightforward sentence as follows: 



"Three persons were killed outright, two others were injured so severely 

 that they are expected to die, and forty-three other passengers were more 

 or less seriously injured early today in a head-on collision of two electric 

 passenger trains of steel construction, on the Whiteston.- nivlslon of the 

 Long Island Railroad at College Point." 



Here were steel cars, and there was not even spreading rails to 

 offer as an excuse for the accident It was a "head-on" alTair, and 

 that is the situation in which steel cars are supposed to display 

 their elements of safety. The news report tells how they did it: 



"There was a crash that could be heard for more than half a mile, and 

 the Manhattan-bound train pierced its way through nearly half the length 

 of the first car of the opposing train before both trains came to a stop. 

 Passengers, who had been hurled in all directions from their seats, lay in 

 a jumbled mass on the floors of (he trains for a moment, and then as 

 many as were able rushed for the open. They found that none of the 

 cars except the first of each train had left the rails. Of these, the head 

 car of the Manhattan-bound train showed no signs of the accident save 

 that the front end was mashed in and its forward trucks lost under the 

 wreckage of the car with which it had locked itself. On the latter car 

 the front end was entirely torn away, and from the front vestibule, where 

 the motorman's box had been, great ribbons of the steel sheathing of 

 which the car was built had been rolled back as if by a gigantic can- 

 opener for fully halt the length of the car." 



An inspection of the photographic illustrations of the wreck, pub- 

 lished in the Brooklyn Eagle, shows that the steel car went so 

 completely to pieces that it was a tangled heap of scrap. No 

 wooden car, even of the most flimsy construction, was ever more 

 completely wrecked. This is not a new occurrence. Steel cars 

 have crumpled many a time under the impact of collision. No more 

 dependence can be placed in them than in the wooden coach 

 — perhaps not as much. They appear, therefore, to be no safer 

 than the wooden car when the accident comes, and are far more 

 liable to cause accidents. 



The element of greater safety, which is so loudly proclaimed by 

 the steel interests, seems to be a myth. All travelers know from 

 experience that the steel car is less comfortable than the wood, 

 but many have cheerfully endured the discomfort because of the 

 increased safety which they supposed they were getting when they 

 rode in the steel coach. The accumulation of accidents to the steel 

 car is piling up proof that it is less comfortable and no safer. 



One of the farthest-fetched of all attacks on the wooden car has 

 recently appeared in a circular sent out to the members of a trav- 

 elers' insurance association of prominence. It is based on the 

 wreck of three cattle cars some months ago in Texas, and a photo- 

 graphic picture shows the demolished cars. There is no question 

 that they were thoroughly wrecked, but the picture shows some- 

 thing that doubtless escaped the author's notice in his zeal to 

 exhibit the broken cattle cars. The camera has not been trained 

 sufficiently in prevarication to leave out tell-tale details that do 

 not help the deception, Down the track stands the car that de- 

 molished the three cars of cattle, and it is a common old wooden 

 box car. The e.xplanation is apparent. The three-flimsy stock cars, 

 which are made of slats like a corncrib, were simply crushed when 

 the wooden box car hit them. It was wood against wood, and the 

 strongest came out uninjured. 



—33— 



