Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 294, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1913 — IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID [ARTICLE]

IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID

ACCIDENTS ON RAILROADS WILL ALWAYS BE. When One Considers What the Operation of the Vast Network of Lines Means That Fact Will Be Understood. Ten thousand, one hundred and eighty-five persons were killed in accidents Involving train operations upon steam railroads in the United States in the year ending June 30, 1912: Seventy-seven thousand one hundred and seventy-five were injured. Place a railroad map of the United 'States before you; trace thp black lines that represent the 200 and odd million miles of railroads, as they move from state to state, across mighty rivers, over mountain ranges, skirting the shores of great lakes, criss-crossing, weaving together linking In one vast chain the cities from coast to coast. Imagine this great network of tracks peopled by an army of 1,500,000 employes, engaged in the operation of trains; Imagine the equipment that the 116,000,000,000 investment represents; picture the 9,000,000 of passengers and the 1,500,000,000 tons of freight carried annually by the railroads. If you are able to grasp the picture of what these figures mean, you may realize the proportions that the railroad business has assumed.

Never In their wildest fancy could the early projectors have surmised the railroad business of today. Great feats of engineering have accomplished the seemingly impossible, and through arid deserts, across towering ranges and great bodies of water, steel rails have been laid, now clinging to the rock-hewn side of a mountain, now tunneling through its base, spanning bridges of steel, or deep down, through tubes, going beneath the water.

It was in the early '6os that the great activity in railroad building began. Ground for the Central Pacific had been broken in .1863 and the Union Pacific was pushing on from Omaha, to form, when their tracks should meet, the great gateway to the Pacific coast. It was these achievements which gave the Impetus to the building of new lines. With the increasing trackage, equipment and business came the necessity for some sort of training or discipline to increase efficiency and take the place of the loose methods then in-force. The telegraph which had come into use upon the Erie In 1851 for the dispatching of trains, brought with it many new rules and conditions. Promotions in all grades were greatly the matter of favoritism. An engineer of 1870 confessed that he “knew no more than a child how the steam got in or out of the cylinder: it seemed to push mighty hard; that’s all he knew about it.” It was these conditions that the early managers had to face and it has been only in the last 15 or 20 years that the training of the railroad man has reached anywhere near perfection. To judge what the result of this training has been, we are obliged to resort to the figures compiled of accidents resulting from collisions and derailments during the year ending June 30, 1912. The interstate commerce commission report gives these as 13,698; of this number 3,847 accidents were due to defect of equipment and 1,877 due to defect of roadway, leaving 7,974 accidents unclassified. It Is to be presumed that these were due to error of employes, and from them a more correct idea of the railroad man’s efficiency can be obtained than from regarding the number of casualties, which represent the results of error or defect, only. In fact, the totals of the list are in a great measure pure luck, mitigated somewhat by the Introduction of modern equipment. — Pennsylvania Grit.