554 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



stop to think and calculate, and analyze their own inventions, that 

 the market is constantly full of new and perfectly impracticable 

 devices, and railroad men are constantly besieged with the greatest 

 quantity of new things, good, bad and indifferent, in fact, so 

 much of a bore has it become that superintendents pay no atten- 

 tion to anything that is offered them, however good it may be, 

 they no doubt are losers in many cases by this course. I have 

 thought many times that thousands of dollars would be saved, 

 and great gain also would be made to railroads by the appointment 

 of an able board of examiners on the part of the companies, who 

 should meet, say every two months, in some central place, and 

 let them carefully examine everything new, and if it was found 

 desirable, their recommendation should be sufficient to induce its 

 adoption; or in the absence of that, why not have a mechanical 

 adviser to each company; almost every corporation has its counsel 

 or legal adviser, and I see no reason why it would not be as valuable 

 to them to have a competent mechanical adviser. It might save 

 them a large amount of money now paid for legal expenses. 

 Thousands of dollars are constantly paid by superintendents 

 (with the laudable desire to have everything connected with 

 their roads as perfect as possible) in trying the most impracti- 

 cable experiments, which a competent mechanical engineer would 

 pronounce worthless or of little value on examination. There are 

 many superintendents of talent and great administrative capacity, 

 but whose mechanical skill or judgment of mechanics is not 

 worth a rush. To show such men a new combination of mechan- 

 ism would elicit about as satisfactory an opinion as that of Capt. 

 Cuttle concerning the loss of Walter Gay. 



Mr. Chairman, I have no disposition to dwell or particularize 

 on accidents that occur to railroads, they are bad enough and 

 terrific enough, and it does seem as though they should teach us 

 lessons not soon to be forgotten. I have no great devotion to 

 the past or old, merely because it is such, but in so far as it teaches 

 us to avoid the shoals, rocks, and quicksands, and I might add 

 railroad wrecks that lie on our journey; I am willing and bound 

 to study its lessons with the most profound attention. It was 

 said by the unfortunate engineer of the New Haven train, at the 

 time of the Norwalk disaster, that had the brakemen done their 

 duty the train would not have gone off. I infer from that remark 

 that the accident was not beyond the control of appliances 

 already in the train, had the means been at hand for their instant 

 action. The invention of which I have previously spoken, made 



