RAILWAY ACCIDENTS. 



25. Next in frequency to accidents from collision, are those 

 which arise from the engine or the vehicles escaping from the 

 rails. The causes which produce this class of accidents are 

 very various. 



The most frequent are impediments left on the rails, such as 

 blocks of wood, bars of iron, spare sleepers or rails. The engine 

 encountering obstacles of this kind is generally thrown off, 

 dragging with it one or more of the carriages. 



Cattle from adjacent fields, through deficient fences, have 

 sometimes got upon the road, and the engine encountering them 

 has run over them, and been thrown off. 



A wheel or axle of the engine, tender, or any of the carriages 

 breaking, is sometimes the cause of escape from the rails. A 

 defect in the rails themselves is not unfrequently the cause of 

 this class of accidents. This is especially liable to occur at a 

 joint chair, that is to say, a chair where the ends of two suc- 

 cessive rails are united. It frequently happens that one of these 

 rails is considerably above or below the other, or that the rails 

 are not sufficiently fastened in the chair. The impact of the 

 wheel of the engine on such a defective joint may either imme- 

 diately break the rail, or so weaken it that one of the succeeding 

 carriage-wheels will break it, and the carriages thus escape from 

 the rails. 



26. Another not unfrequent cause of accidents is the neglect 

 of the points and switches, a name given to a part of the 

 mechanism by which trains are enabled to pass from one line of 

 rails to another, or from either line into the sidings. 



When such passage is intended, a certain change is made in 

 the position of the points and switches by a person employed 

 for this purpose on the line, and after the train passes from the 

 line the switches are restored to their usual position. If any 

 neglect take place in this operation, considerable danger will 

 ensue to the trains which next pass. 



27. In order to ascertain the proportion in which these causes 

 of accident respectively operate, we have taken indiscriminately, 

 from the returns of accidents, 100 cases, of which the following 

 is the analysis : 



Accidents from collision 56 



broken wheel or axle . . . . 18 



defective rail . . . . . 14 



by switches ..... 5 

 impediments lying on road 



off rails by cattle on line ... 3 



bursting boiler .... 1 



100 

 172 



