Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1913 — MAKING TRAVEL SAFE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MAKING TRAVEL SAFE

EXPERIENCED MEN AT WORK ON IMPORTANT SUBJECT. Prevention of Railroad Accidents • Matter to Which Grave Attention Is Being Given, and Results Are Already. Seen. Thirty-ohe wideawake and seasoned men are helping to make traveling

on railroads safe in - the United States. The public rarely hears any of their names, yet they are officers of the national government, and some of them are usually present before the wreckage of an accident has been gathered up and carried away, writes James B. Morrow In the Philadelphia Record. Officially

these men are known as inspectors of safety appliances. Under the law they are expected to note whether railroads are working their employes more than 16 hours a day and if the cars are equipped with self-couplers, and their trains —freight and passenger—with automatic brakes. The investigation of accidents, also, is an important ]Art of their business. Two inspectors are permanently stationed in each of the 14 districts which stretch across and up and down the country. They read the newspapers for reports of bad accidents, and when one occurs they hasten to the scene and get the facts, shielding no one, neither the railroad nor its trainmen, switchmen or telegraphers, if found culpable. Often they are ordered into action by a telegram from Washington. Among them are those who have been locomotive engineers, conductors, superintendents, train dispatchers and trainmasters. At a recent civil examination of men hopeful of becoming Inspectors only 41 passed out of about 900 applicants.

Over the Inspectors and chief among them in skill, activity and intelligence is H. W. Belknap, once a telegrapher, and later a brakeman conductor. An inspector must have had eight years of practical experience on a railway. Mr. Belknop came to his office after a service of 14 years. From the track and from the train he brought to his work an everyday knowledge of signals, of time tables, and of rules and orders and likewise of the human elements which must be reckoned with in the operation of railroads. He Is a compact and hearty man and goes straight to the point of everything. His eyes are keen, his mind is quick, and he can talk like a lawyer when such language is necessary. “This is a big and disputed question,” he answered, when I asked him to name the principal causes of accidents on railroads. “My own opinion is that most accidents are traceable to man himself, rather than to machinery, broken rails and defects tn roadbeds. We print a bulletin every three months giving the facts about serious casualties. Here are the bulletins covering six months, of last year and the first quarter of this year. Go through them and you will find the detailed reports of 48 accidents, 32 of which were collisions and 23 of the 32 were head-on collisions. Orders were disobeyed, or wrongly given, or signals were disregarded. Only man is censurable under such circumstances. “The bulletin contains reports of none but the worst accidents. There were 1,674 accidents of that kind during the first three months of this year. Men grow careless or they try to make up lost time and' trains come together. Then there are hundreds of derailments every year—rails or car wheels break or the tracks give way in weak spots. The Lehigh Valley wreck near Manchester, N. Y., in which 29 persons were killed and 62 injured, was occasioned by a new rail that was defectively manufactured. “Against my off-hand views on the subject of accidents, I am willing to put the sworn testimony of F. C. Rice, general inspector of transportation on a leading western line, who has said that ‘excessive speed was the cause of about 75 or 80 per cent, of the catastrophles in the last few years.* I quote Mr. Riee;-because he is accurate, technically. Every man in the train service of a railroad is geared up to his highest speed physically and mentally. The boy who calls a trainman out of bed is In a hurry. From the time he gets up until he is through with the trainman is pushed by spoken word and orders by telegraph. Americans in all walks of life are speed crazy. Moreover, I want to say right here that the railroad managers themselves sensationally demonstrated to the public that the 1,000 miles between New York and Chicago could be traveled in 18 houra The people ' didn't know anything about it until they saw it done.”