344 



NATURE 



\Aug. 26, 1875 



events, it is well that the elements on which it depends should 

 be clearly understood . It will be thought that longer experi- 

 ence in the management of railways should go to ensure greater 

 safety, but there are other elements of the question which go to 

 counteract this in some degree. 



The safety of railway travelling depends on the perfection of 

 the machine in all its parts, including the whole railway, with its 

 movable ]:)lant, in that term ; it depends also on the nature and 

 quantity of traffic, and lastly, on human care and attention. 



With regard to what is human, it may be said that so many 

 of these accidents as arise from the fallibility of men will never 

 be eliminated until the race be improved. 



The liability to accident will also increase with the speed, and 

 might be reduced by slackening that speed. It increases with the 

 extent and variety of the traffic on the same line. The public, I 

 fear, will rather run the risk than consent to be carried at a 

 slower rate. The increase in extent and variety of traffic is not 

 likely to receive any diminution ; on the contrary, it is certain to 

 augment. 



I should be sorry to say that human care may not do some- 

 thing, and I am not among those who object to appeals through 

 the press, and otherwise, to railway companies, though some- 

 times perhaps they may appear in an unreasonable form. I see 

 no harm in men being urged in every way to do their utmost in 

 a matter so vital to many. 



A question may arise whether, if the railways were .in the 

 hards of the Government, they could not be worked with greater 

 safety. Government would not pay their officers better, or per- 

 haps so well, as the companies do, and it is doubtful whether 

 they would succeed in attracting to the service abler men. They 

 might do the work with a smaller number of chief officers, for 

 much of the time of the companies' managers is occupied in 

 internecine disputes. They might handle the traffic more 

 despotically, diminishing the number of trains, or the accommo- 

 dation afforded by them, or in other ways, to ensure more safety ; 

 but would the public bear any curtailment of convenience ? 



One thing they could, and perhaps would do. In cases where 

 the traffic is varied, and could more safely be conducted with the 

 aid of relief lines, which hold out no sufficient inducement to the 

 companies to make, the Government, being content with a lower 

 rate of interest, might undertake to make them, though then 

 comes the question whether, when the whole of this vast machine 

 came to depend for supplies on annual votes of Parliament, 

 money would be forthcoming in greater abundance than it is 

 under the present system. 



]]ut the consideration of this subject involves other and more 

 difficult questions. 



Where are thejlabours of Government to 'stop ? The cares of 

 State which cannot be avoided are already heavy and will grow 

 heavier every year. Dockyard establishments are trifling to what 

 the railway establishments, which already employ 250,000 men, 

 would be. The assumption of all the railways would bring 

 Government into conflict with every passenger, every trader, and 

 every manufacturer. With the railway companies there would 

 be no difficulty ; they would sell their undertakings to anyont, 

 provided the price was ample. 



Looking at the vast growth of railway traffic, one measiire 

 occurs to me as^ conducive to the safetj of railway passengers, 

 and likely to be dtmanded some day ; it is to construct between 

 important places railways which should carry passengers only or 

 coals only, or be set apart for some special separation of traffic ; 

 though there will be some difficulty in accomplishing this. 

 Landowners, through whose properties such lines would pass, 

 wculd probably wish to use such lines for general purposes. 

 Nevertheless, it may have to be tried some day. 



It would be instructive, were it practicable, to compare the 

 relative proportion of accidents by railway and by the old stage- 

 coaches, but no records that I am aware of exist of the latter that 

 would enable such a comparison to be made. It is practicable 

 to make some sort of comparison between the accidents in the 

 earlier day of our own railways and the accidents occurring at a 

 ater date 



The Board of Trade have unlortunately abandoned the custom, 

 which they adopted from 1852 to 1859, of returning the passenger 

 mileage, which is given in the German returns, and is the proper 

 basis upon which to found the pioportion of accidents, and not 

 on the number of passengers ^without any regard to distance 

 travelled, which has altered very much, the average journey per 

 passenger being nearly half in 1873 what it was in 1846. 



It Would be erroneous to compare the proportions of accidents 



to passengers carried in various year?, even if the correct number 

 of passengers travelling were given. But a figure is always 

 omitted from the Board of Trade return, which makes the pro- 

 portion of accidents to passengers appear larger than it is ; this 

 is the number of journeys performed by season-ticket holders?. 

 Some estimate could be made of the journeys of season-ticket 

 holders by dividing the receipts by an estimated average fare, or 

 the companies could make an approximate estimate, and the 

 passenger mileage could be readily obtained by the railway 

 companies from the tickets. These additions would greatly add 

 to the value of the railway returns as statistical documents, and 

 render the deductions made from them correct. 



Though it has been a work of labour, I have endeavoured to 

 supply these deficiencies, and I believe the results arrived at may 

 be taken as fairly accurate.' 



From the figures so arrived at, it appears the passenger 

 mileage has doubled between 1861 and 1873 ; and at the rate of 

 increase between 1870 and 1873 it would become double what it 

 was in 1873 in twelve years from that time, namely in 1885. 



The number of passengers has doubled between 1864 and 

 1873, and at the rate of increase between 1870 and 1873 it would 

 become double what it was in 1873 in eleven-and-a-half years, or 

 in 1885. 



It must, however, be remembered that the rate of increase 

 since 1870, though very regular for 1871, 1872, and 1873, is 

 greater than in previous years, being probably due to the rise of 

 wages and the great development ot third-class traffic, and it 

 would not be safe to assume this rate of increase will continue. 



Supposing no improvement had been effected in the working 

 of railway traffic, by the interlocking of points, the block 

 system, &c., the increase of accidents should have borne some 

 proportion to the passenger mileage, multiplied by the propor- 

 tion between the train mileage and the length of line open, as 

 the number of trains passing over the same line of rails would 

 tend to multiply accidents in an increasing proportion, especially 

 where the trains run at different speeds. 



The number of accidents varies considerably from year to 

 year, but taking two averages of ten years each, it appears that 

 the proportion of deaths of passengers from causes beyond their 

 control to passenger miles travelled in the ten years ending 

 December 31, 1873, was only two-thirds of the same proportion 

 in the ten years ending December 31, 1861 ; the proportion of 

 all accidents to passengers from causts beyond their own control 

 was one-ninth more in the last ten years than in the earlier, 

 whereas the frequency of trains had increased on the average 

 one-fourth. 



The limit, however, of considerable improvements in sig- 

 nalling, increased brake power, &c., will probably be reached 

 before long, and the increase of accidents will depend on the 

 increase of traffic, together with the increased frequiency of 

 trains. 



The large growth of railway traffic, which we 'may assume 

 will double in twenty years, will evidently greatly tax thfc 

 resources of the railway companies ; and unless the present 

 companies increase the number of the linfes of way, as some have 

 commenced to do, or new railways are made, the system of 

 expeditious and safe railway travelling Will be imperilled. Up 

 to the present time, however, the improvements in regulating the 

 traffic appear to have kept pace with the increase of traffic and 

 of speed, as the slight increase in the proportion of railway acci- 

 dents to passenger miles is probably chiefly due to a larger 

 number of trifling bruises being reported now than formerly. 



I believe it Was a former President of the Board of Trade who 

 said to an alarmed deputation, who waited upon him on the sub- 

 ject of railway travelling, that he thought he was safer in a rail- 

 way carriage than anywhere else. 



If he gave any such opinion he was not fat vvrong, as is suffi- 

 ciently evident when it can be said that there is only one pasSeiiger 

 injured in every four million miles travelled, or that, on an 

 average, a person may travel 100,000 miles each year for forty 

 years, and the chances be slightly in his favour of his not 

 receiving the slightest injury. 



A pressing subject of the present time is the economy of fticl. 

 Members of the British Associatioh have not neglected this 

 momentous question. 



At the meeting held at Kew-cSstlcori-Tyne in 1863, Sir 

 William Armstrong sounded an alarm as to the proximirte 

 exhaustion of our coal-fields. 



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