Though wholly attributable to his own carelessness, the death of so prominent a character as Mr. Huskisson, on such an occasion, could not but make a deep impression on the public mind. The fact that the dying man was carried seventeen miles in twenty-five minutes in search of rest and medical aid, served rather to stimulate the vague apprehension which thereafter for a time associated itself with the new means of transportation, and converted it into a dangerous method of carriage which called for no inconsiderable display of nerve on the part of those using it. Indeed, as respects the safety of travel by rail there is an edifying similarity between the impressions which prevailed in England forty-five years ago and those which prevail in China now; for, when as recently as 1875 it was proposed to introduce railroads into the Celestial Empire, a vigorous native protest was fulminated against them, in which, among other things scarcely less astounding, it was alleged that "in all countries where railroads exist they are considered a very dangerous mode of locomotion, and, beyond those who have very urgent business to transact, no one thinks of using them."
On this subject, however, of the dangers incident to journeys by rail, a writer of nearly half a century back, who has left us one of the earliest descriptions of the Manchester & Liverpool road, thus reassured the public of those days, with a fresh quaintness of style which lends a present value to his words: "The occurrence of accidents is not so frequent as might be imagined, as the great weight of the carriages" (they weighed about one-tenth part as much as those now in use in America) "prevents them from easily starting off the rails; and so great is the momentum acquired by these heavy loads moving with such rapidity, that they easily pass over considerable obstacles. Even in those melancholy accidents where loss of life has been sustained, the bodies of the unfortunate sufferers, though run over by the wheels, have caused little irregularity in the motion, and the passengers in the carriages have not been sensible that any impediment has been encountered on the road."
Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson's death, during a period of over eleven years, railroads enjoyed a remarkable and most fortunate exemption from accidents. During all that time there did not occur a single disaster resulting in any considerable loss of life; an immunity which seems to have been due to a variety of causes. Those early roads were, in the first place, remarkably well and thoroughly built, and were very cautiously operated under a light volume of traffic. The precautions then taken and the appliances in use would, it is true, strike the modern railroad superintendent as both primitive and comical; for instance, they involved the running of independent pilot locomotives in advance of all night passenger trains. Through all the years between 1830 and 1841, nevertheless, not a single really serious railroad disaster had to be recorded. This happy exemption was, however, quite as much due to good fortune as to anything else, as was well illustrated in the first accident at all serious in its character, which occurred, – an accident in its every circumstance, except loss of life, almost an exact parallel to the famous Revere disaster which happened nearly forty years later in Massachusetts. It chanced on the Manchester & Liverpool Railway on December 23, 1832. The second-class morning train had stopped at the Rainhill station to take in passengers, when those upon it heard through the dense fog another train, which had left Manchester forty-five minutes later, coming towards them at a high rate of speed. When it first became visible it was but one hundred and fifty yards off, and a collision was inevitable. Those in charge of the stationary train, however, succeeded in getting it under a slight headway, and in so much diminished the shock of the collision; but, notwithstanding, the last five carriages were injured, the one at the end being totally demolished. Though quite a number of the passengers were cut and bruised, and several were severely hurt, one only, strange to say, was killed.
Indeed, the luck – for it was nothing else – of those earlier times was truly amazing. Thus on this same Manchester & Liverpool road, as a first-class train on the morning of April 17, 1836, was moving at a speed of some thirty miles an hour, an axle broke under the first passenger coach, causing the whole train to leave the track and throwing it down the embankment, which at that point was twenty feet high. The cars were rolled over, and the passengers in them tumbled about topsy-turvey; nor, as they were securely locked in, could they even extricate themselves when at last the wreck of the train reached firm bearings. And yet no one was killed. Here the corporation was saved by one chance in a thousand, and its almost miraculous good fortune has since received numerous and terrible illustrations. Among these two are worthy of a more than passing mention. They happened one in America and one in England, though with some interval of time between them, and are curious as illustrating very forcibly the peculiar dangers to which those travelling by rail in the two countries are subjected under almost precisely similar circumstances. The American accident referred to was that popularly known on account of its exceptionally harrowing details as the "Angola horror," of December 18, 1867, while the English accident was that which occurred at Shipton-on-Cherwell on December 24, 1874.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANGOLA AND SHIPTON ACCIDENTS
On the day of the Angola accident the eastern bound express train over the Lake Shore road, as it was then called, consisted of a locomotive, four baggage, express and mail cars, an emigrant and three first-class passenger coaches. It was timed to pass Angola, a small way station in the extreme western part of New York, at 1.30 P.M., without stopping; but on the day in question it was two hours and forty-five minutes late, and was consequently running rapidly. A third of a mile east of the station there is a shallow stream, known as Big Sister creek, flowing in the bottom of a ravine the western side of which rises abruptly to the level of the track, while on the eastern side there is a gradual ascent of some forty or fifty rods. This ravine was spanned by a deck bridge of 160 feet in length, at the east end of which was an abutment of mason work some fifty feet long connecting with an embankment beyond. It subsequently appeared that the forward axle in the rear truck of the rear car was slightly bent. The defect was not perceptible to the eye, but in turning round the space between the flanges of the wheels of that axle varied by three-fourths of an inch. As long as the car was travelling on an unbroken track, or as long as the wheels did not strike any break in the track at their narrowest point, this slight bend in the axle was of no consequence. There was a frog in the track, however, at a distance of 600 feet east of the Angola station, and it so happened that