XCVl KEPOKT 1875. 



beiag probably due to tho rise of wages and the great development of third- 

 class traffic, and it woiild 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, multi- 

 plied by the proportion 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 causes 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 signalling, increased 

 brake-power, &c. may be reached before long; and if so, the increase of 

 accidents will then depend on the increase of traffic, together with the in- 

 creased frequency of trains. 



The large growth of railway traffic, which we may assume will double in 

 twenty years, wiU evidently greatly tax the resources of the railway com- 

 panies ; and unless the present companies increase the number of the lines 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 accidents 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 subject of railway travelling, 

 that he thought he was safer in a railway carriage than anywhere else. 



If he gave any such opinion, he was not far wrong, as is sufficiently evident 

 when it can be said that there is only one passenger 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 favom' of 

 his not receiving the slightest injurj-. 



A pressing subject of the present time is the economy of fuel. Members of 

 the British Association have not neglected this momentous question. 



At the meeting held at Is'ewcastle-on-Tyne in 1863, Sir "William 

 Armstrong sonnded an alarm as to the proximate exhaustion of our coal-fields. 



