Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1916 — SHOULD BE AUTOMATIC [ARTICLE]

SHOULD BE AUTOMATIC

'GREAT NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT - -—r- —— op “STOP** SIGNALS. Cannot Be Considered Perfect Until the “Human Element" In Engine Cab Has Been Entirely Done Away With. - When one stops to consider, aside from the loss of life occasioned, the amount of momentary loss from damaged and destroyed property, lawsuits, etc., caused by railroad wrecks, it is parent that the railroad managements would gladly expend an equal or greater amount to prevent them. The question here arises, why do the engineers disregard signals? In the case of the Milford wreck, and this applies equally well to others of the same character, the engineer evidently did not see the second or stop signal, if he did the first, which was set at caution. The oversight or neglect of the caution signal might have been through absent-mindedness, but surely not that of the second, writes a correspondent of the New York Sun. From former wide experience as an observer in the locomotive cab I am aware that through temporary absentmindedness or mental fatigue the retina or eye picture of a semaphore in a certain position may not be recorded in the brain at the time of passing. The habits of the locomotive engineer are controlled now to a large extent by the railroad management. He must be a man of temperate habits, physically and mentally sound. His work hours are so apportioned as to insure freedom from physical and mental fatigue. He is well paid. Every possible precaution has been taken to insure the reliability of this one man, yer, many investigations report that "the wreck was not caused by a defective signal, but through failure of the dead engineer to obey the signal set against him.” He might have been suffering from faintness caused by temporary Indigestion or irregular heart action, from one of a hundred human equation contingencies. Any engineer In his right senses would no more pass a "stop" signal than he would deliberately run onto a bridge which he knew had been rendered unsafe by a washout. The safety of every passenger on a railroad journey is dependent on an essential which is beyond the control of any railroad management and which is known as the human element. It is this element which constitutes the _‘final and essential feature of the succesbtul operation of the present day railroad signal system. Considering the above facts, it seems that, of the different railroad signals constituting a system, the imperative “stop” should be so designed as to eliminate the human element, fin other words, that- it should be so arranged as to stop the train irrespective of the action of the man at the throttle. That this not only can be but has been accomplished by modern day railroad engineering is witnessed by the fact that a successful automatic train stopping device has been in successful operation for three years past on a railroad operating west out of Chicago and through the Rocky mountains, where in extreme winter blizzards the engine cab windows are so covered with ice and the air so filled with flying snow that the engineer would be obliged to bring his train to a stop in order to observe whether a signal were set against him or not.