24 Railway Accidents. [January, 
ensure, as far as possible, that due warning shall be given 
to the engine-drivers when a rail has to be taken out, while 
the road is being lifted, or whenever the line is not in a fit 
condition to be run over at speed. 
Twenty-six accidents occurred in 1871 owing to defects of 
construction. These defects, it was then pointed out, were not 
as promptly corrected as they ought to have been, as new 
materials were supplied, on many lines of railway; each com- 
pany, or each individual officer, waiting too often to buy his 
own experience, and profiting too little by the experience of 
other companies. Defects of maintenance, which appeared 
in nineteen cases, occurred partly from the over-work of 
materials, and partly from the want of more careful super- 
vision, and of more careful record and comparison, from 
which much valuable information might be obtained. The 
number of accidents due to defective construction of road or 
works was four in 1872, and six in 1873, and to defective 
maintenance of the same, sixteen in 1872, and twenty-four 
in 1873. 
It may perhaps be considered that forty accidents in one 
year, upon all the railways in the United Kingdom, due to 
defective construction or maintenance, is hardly above the 
number that might be expected to occur from such causes, 
considering the vast amount of traffic which now takes 
place in the neighbourhood, more particularly, of large 
towns and cities, but it must be remembered that these 
constitute a class of accident which is preventible by the 
exercise of due care on the part of the permanent way staff, 
and proper supervision during construction. It is, there- 
fore, one which should not be seen in the official returns, 
unless accompanied by some such causes as exceptional 
floods, or other reasons to show that they were not 
occasioned by any laxity of duty or neglect of ordinary pre- 
cautions on the part of the railway company or their 
officials. 
3. Maintenance of Rolling Stock.—With regard to loco- 
motives, instances do rarely occur—and they were more 
common in former than in recent years—of boiler ex- 
plosions, due in some instances to want of proper care in 
the selection of water for their use, and in others, to a 
faulty mode of staying the boiler. These causes of acci- 
dent are to be avoided by frequent inspe¢tion, by which the 
earliest intimation of any deterioration may be obtained, 
and the employment of weakened or worn-out boilers be 
discontinued. During the seven years from 1854 to 1860 
twenty-one locomotives exploded, but in the annual returns 
