. 26 Railway Accidents. (January, 
from the brittle nature of the material, or from defects of 
manufacture, or from being too tightly shrunk on the 
wheel, and they have frequently failed from one of these 
causes, or from a combination of them. ‘The danger con- 
sists, not in the fracture, or in the tyre becoming divided, 
whilst running, into two or more parts, but in the probability 
of the tyre, which is, or ought to be, in a state of tension on 
the wheel, flying suddenly and violently from it when frac- 
ture occurs, and this danger is greater with steel than with 
iron tyres. 
3. Signals and Points.—During the seven years from 1854 
to 1860 inclusive, as many as eighty-eight accidents hap- 
pened from the use of improper or inefficient signals. Ac- 
cidents have been caused by the total want of signals, 
especially at sidings, others have arisen from their defective 
form, or from their bad position. Many accidents have 
occurred in connection with distance signals; in some 
cases they have been placed so near to the station that the 
engine-driver has been unable to stop within the space 
allowed. It was observed by Captain Tyler in 1870, that 
out of sixty-one collisions, independent of the collisions at 
junCtions or level crossings, thirty-one, or more than half 
of them, were due to defective arrangements with regard to 
signals or points, but that in twenty-eight cases out of these 
negligence was combined with the defects, and that the 
latter contributed more or less to the negligence ; and out 
of eighteen collisions at junctions there were ten cases in 
which defective signal and point arrangements were the 
cause. In 1871 there were fifty-three accidents caused by 
defective signal and point arrangements, or want of locking 
apparatus; in 1872 the number of accidents due to similar 
causes was seventy-one, and last year it was seventy-eight, 
so that this cause of accident would appear to be growing 
rapidly in importance. 
When trains were few, and the speed at which they 
travelled was moderate, a comparatively crude method of 
signalling sufficiently answered every purpose; with the 
increase of trains, the complications of junctions, and the 
greater difficulty that consequently existed in controlling a 
number of signals at any one point, it became necessary to 
place all the signal and point levers in or around the signal 
cabins; and, in order to afford a better view to the signal- 
man, the cabins were raised to a greater or less height 
above the ground, and placed in convenient situations, ac- 
cording to local circumstances. But even then, when the 
control was more conveniently placed in the hands of one 
