Railway Train and Station Service; Describing the Organization and Manner of Operating Trains, and the Duties of Train and Station Officials (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Train Accidents?Their Nature and Causes?Train Accidents on American Roads for Ten Years?Accidents proper?Nominal Accidents, but Actual Blunders? What should be Insisted upon?Laxity of Discipline. Before proceeding to give in detail the myriad signals and rules and regulations necessary to the government of trains, it is right and proper to emphasize the necessity of great clearness and thoroughness in the preparation and execution of rules of this kind. I have had this object in view in the preparation of this and the two succeeding chapters. It is to be regretted in this connection that the published reports of train accidents are far from complete. For instance, it would be interesting to know how many accidents have occurred in the United States in the last ten years from neglect to protect trains standing upon the main track from rear collisions, and what were the particular excuses or explanations given in each instance by those in charge, or whether, in some instances, the rules and regulations themselves were not deficient in clearness or thoroughness. I have traveled many hundreds of thousands of miles and never met with an accident, even the derailment of a train; but I have been often impressed with what seemed to me to be a want of activity and vigilance on the part of the brakeman in protecting the train from rear collision when delayed upon the main track. His apparent neglect in this respect has happily, so far as I am concerned, never been attended with any mishap, but we all of us know of instances where frightful loss of life and property have resulted from rear collisions caused, we have been led to believe in some cases, by neglect to properly guard the standing train. Accidents of this kind, however, are not always the result of neglect...