272 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



ISkpt. 



ill-success, which they have on many occasions ackoowledged. At all 

 events, then, they cannot say that experience has been against us, whatever 

 they may choose to say and think about the soundness of our theories. 



M'e believe by this time everything has been planned and tried about 

 the railway system, except lelting it alone, but we very much fear this is 

 the only experiment with it that will never be tried. It is, nevt-riheless, 

 one encouragement to persevere, to us and other friends of non-intervention, 

 that the experience as to railways, and the enlarged experience of every 

 (imilar establishment and institution, results iu confirming the propriety of 

 onr convictions. 



In the teeth of the truism, that all human undertakings are fallible anrl 

 all new undertakings imperfect, no al'owance is made for the railway 

 system, but every accident is seized hold to authorise its condemnation and 

 restraint. The result of such interference has never b'-en followed out, 

 but a careful examination of railway accidents from the tirst returns would 

 show, that while many accidents are due to carelessness beyonti the control 

 of any authority, slill more are due to the progressive condition of the 

 railway system, and still more to the attempts for the prevention of acci- 

 dent. Luggage trucks used at lirst to be put between the passenger car- 

 riages and the engine, to provide against the possibility of injury from 

 explosion of the engine. A train having been run into from behind, the 

 luggage and goods trucks were then, on the demand of the public, put 

 behind. This was followed by au accident, from a train being injured 

 from the front. The public then required trucks to be put fore and aft. 

 Notwithstanding this, a train was rut in halves at a junction. 



In order to give stability to the trains, it was an early practice to mil 

 goods and passengers. This whs, on the public voice, given up, but there 

 was a demand for empty horse-boxes and luggage vans to be mixed with 

 the trains for safety. Me believe these have been the cause of very many 

 accidents, from their unequal weight and construction leading to their 

 being thrown off the way, and to the passenger carriages riding upon 

 them. 



From the public demand for signals, signal-men, and pointsmen, has 

 resulted certainly no greater safety, but certainly many more accidents 

 from neglect of signals. 



While the jumble of passenger carriages, trucks, and horse-boxes might 

 do very well for the 20-mile an hour speed of I83G, it is very unsuited for 

 the .50-mile-an-hour speed of 1847. A new system must require new 

 safeguards, and to no one can the care of these be more properly entrusted 

 than to railway managers. 



As non-interference seems to us the best mode of legislating for rail- 

 ways, so railway managers seem to us to constitute the best and only 

 safeguard against accident, and the only one on which no reliance has been 

 placed. It cannot now be very well denied, that a railway accident, 

 whomsoever else it may affect, inflicts a certain, and nearly always a very 

 heavy, loss upon the railway company, exposes the directors to very great 

 odium, blame, and misrepresentation on the part of the public press, and 

 subjects railway ofiicers to the fear of losing their appointments. Pecu- 

 niary and moral responsibility of this kind is what our institutions teach 

 us to rely upon in every other case, but the word "railway" has the magic 

 power of shaking our convictions and our prejudices and banishing our 

 common-sense. It is contended that railways are only to be treated by 

 exceptional law, and this has only to be asserted to be allowed, — so much 

 the worse. 



To find out the means of avoiding accident is to find oat a means of 

 saving money, and this is a further inducement, which afl'ects railway 

 managers and no other parties. The time is not so far back when the 

 engine-drivers on the newly-opened railways were ignorant, drunken, 

 brutal, ill-ronducted, and desperate barbarians from the coalpits of the 

 north of England, who were extravagantly paid, and who were under no 

 restraint. It is well known that having no fear of death, they have pur- 

 posely risked accidents for the sake of the fun, as they esteemed it, 

 whereby human life was perilled and property injured and wasted. Fines 

 they paid by common contribution from their large wages. — criminal 

 punishments had no terrors for those whom death and danger did not 

 scare. As to dismissal, it was only a change of employment— perhaps at 

 higher wages. The man who was dismissed from an old line went to a 

 new one ; and after having made the tour of England, accepted higher 

 wages abroad. Jlore engiuemen viere wanted than could be found, and, 

 though wages were so high, respectable men could not be got to enlist 

 themselves in a body the members of which were so desperate, the nature 

 of which was then so hazardous, and which the legislature were called 

 iipou to brand with a special penal code. 



Thus the lives of passengers and the property of the companies were 

 fully and truly at the mercy of a set of desperadoes. This is language 

 which is strange now, but which was that of the press only a few years 

 ago. The companies exerted themselves, they gradually trained a better 

 conducted body «tf men, and they have now engine-drivers more inielli- 

 gent and more trustworthy, at very much less than the wages which they 

 then paid. The saving to the companies under this head is very great; so 

 is the conse:;uent saving which they have been able to dfect in the con- 

 sumption of fuel and the wear and tear of the working stock. All this is 

 over and above the greater freedom from accident. 



It seems stiange to look back and peruse the virulent attacks and abuse 

 which were laiished on railway directors at the time of which we are 

 speaking, and the Timei dul not forget to demand that directors should be 

 made criminally responsible for the engine-drivers. We believe there was 

 but a very narrow escape from a Draconian code, whereby railway direc- 

 tors, officers, and engine-drivers would have been left open to criminal 

 pains aud penalties. This is an ultima ratio for railway abuses which is a 

 great favourite now, though how it would work it needs no great clever- 

 ness to foretell. The office of a railway director at the present moment is 

 one of much more honour and vanity than emolument — sometimes nothing 

 a year and a vote of censure being the salary, but most frequently the 

 liberal sum of fifty or a hundred pounds a year; which latter is, we 

 believe, the sum forming the civil list of a railway king. 



The establishment of a body of gentlemen, who are not to be well paid 

 nor to be greatly honoured, but who are to be marked out for the applica- 

 tion of the most hateful criminal proceedings for acts and persons beyond 

 their control, would be a novelty in English society. What class of per- 

 sons would succeed members of the legislature as railway chairmen and 

 directors, we do not pretend to say : we only know that the present class 

 of directors would retire, and that a lower class would take their places. 

 The nearest model we can get of the effect of such legislation is supplied 

 by the newspaper press, wherein the wisdom of parliament has so hedged 

 the proprietorship with criminal liabilities, tiiat it is most rare for the real 

 proprietor to be registered and published, and an ingenious deceit is prac- 

 tised which would do credit to China. In some provinces of that enlight- 

 ened empire, substitutes are to be obtained for the price of seventeen 

 pounds in hard money, who will undergo the penalty of death or the 

 greatest tortures ; and, in England, the Attorney General is fain to content 

 himself with a substitute, who, for a given considr-ration, will consent to 

 be fined in the Exchequer, or sentenced to imprisonment in the Old Uailey. 

 Instead of the class of newspaper proprietors being raised by the presence 

 of Sir John Easthope, Bart. M.P., or Joliu Walter, E-q. M P., whose 

 public character and responsibility might be brought publicly to bear, the 

 legislature has etFectually provided that public and per-onal stau'ling shall 

 be of no value, and a virtual protection shall be given to the libeller and 

 scandalmonger, for whom under no circumstances has the law any terror, 

 and whose calumnies now only have power, because personal character is 

 allowed to be of no weight in the decision. The same results would 

 attend the application of criminal responsibilities to railway liirectornhip, 

 and the least of all consequences of such ill advised legislation would be 

 the subslilution of men of straw for men of character and responsibility. 



What benefit has resulted from Boardof-Trade-inspection we do not 

 know, and we are hardly aware that the inspectors put forward any very 

 prominent claim. Indeed, so small is the appreciable benefit, that wo 

 apprehend the days of railway inspection are numbered, and that many 

 years will not elapse before it becomes obsolete. We have an example of 

 this in gas inspection. It is singu'ar that the progress of the steam- 

 packet, gas, and the locomotive engine, was impeded by explosions at an 

 early date. The blowing-up of one of his first engines in Wales was the 

 true cause why Trevithick's locomotive remained unused, and it was 

 charged with the two faults of a dangerous construction and a want of 

 bite, which in the present day do not present themselves as common objects 

 of fear. The dangerous explosion of a locomotive is now one of the least- 

 known causes of accident, and two cases only have, we believe, occurred 

 of late years — one in the United States, and one on the Sheffield and Man- 

 chester Railway. The blowing-up of one of the first steamboats gave this 

 mode of conveyance the character of great danger ; and those who remem- 

 ber the defective constructiou of the boats which first ran on the Thames, 

 can bear witness to their clumsiness and liability to derangement. Within 

 two years of the establishment of a gas company in London, a gasometer 

 blew up with a terrific explosion, and so much were the public alarmed at 

 the seeming hazards of these magazines of dangerous combustible, that an 

 act was passed, which is we believe still unrepealed, placing very great 



