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Train Wrecks by Robert C. Reed -- A pictorial history of accidents on main line
Train Wrecks by Robert C. Reed -- A pictorial history of accidents on the main line.
Hard cover with Dust Jacket
183 pages
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket, publisher Bonanza
Over 100 years of rail catastrophes, illustrated with more than 250 photos and engravings
Contents:
Early Railroad accidents
The year the disasters began 1853
Horrors of travel
Derailments
Head on collistions
rear end collistions
Bridge disasters
Telescopes
Fires
Running gear failures otboxes and broken parts
Runaways
Crossing accidents
Boiler explosions
In 1853 forty-six people were killed in a head-on collision between two trains of different lines running on the same track at Secaucus, N. J. and the early safety record of railroads came to a sickening halt . . . only to suffer another crash three months later involving a Rhode Island excursion train. American railroading was expanding with tentative fingers and having them run over.
Here is the absorbing story of wrecks on the right-of-way-wrecks which brought on "horror" articles, songs, and scare-sketches frightening travelers and even making for more accidents. One man, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who "hated railroads," after almost dying in a wreck, lived to dominate the scene and control the New York Central.
The railroads survived but grim echoes followed the first multiple casualties in the early railroad era and alarm bells were set off with dire warnings, which both curtailed and stimulated travel. In this definitive chronicle Robert Reed present~ a major historical work in the field of railroad accidents with a wealth of photographs and public prints of the day.
PREFACE
I feel particularly close to the subject of this book, having survived a frightening rail derailment in the wilds of West Virginia, in which my coach toppled off the rails, turned over, and slid on its side for several hundred feet. But personal experience is no prerequisite for reading this book. Mr. Reed has prepared a concise history of American railroad accidents, which is embellished with enough contemporary accounts to give the reader a feeling of the times. He has also assembled a remarkable collection of photographs and engravings to illustrate the more important types
of accidents.-
The railway as the first means of mechanical transportation ushered in an era of fast and comparatively comfortable travel. At first the public seemed ready to accept the dangers inherent in this new technology, but eventually many of the difficulties and dangers were corrected by experience gained from a decade or two of trial and error. Some problems were never completely solved, of course, and train wrecks continued to plague the traveller despite the great engineering advancements made during the last half of the nineteenth century.
Although accidents began with the first railroad operations in this country, the early years were generally free from serious disasters. Light traffic and slow speeds account for this good early safety record. By mid-century, however, the enormous growth of the rail network and the corresponding growth in traffic together with the introduction of nighttime travel reduced the margin of safety considerably. Primitive signaling systems, laminated iron rails, and brittle cast iron wheels contributed their hazards to railroading in this country. But as always human error was the main cause of accidents. It might be suggested here that the public outcry against the dangers of rail travel took a vengeful personal note compared to the fatalistic acceptance of road and sea disasters that were somehow considered as natural calamities.
Late in the nineteenth century a number of important technical inventions combined to improve the safety of rail travel. Cheap steel brought sound rails, axles, and bridges. Automatic electric signals, double track, and the Westinghouse brake made their contributions. The fire hazard was banished by the adoption of electric lighting and steam heating about the turn of the century. All of these efforts were culminated by the adoption of the all steel passenger car in 1907. Today railroads are the safest mode of travel available to Americans.
John H. White
Curator of Transportation
United States National Museum
Smithsonian Institution
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