In any event, however, the general introduction of the interlocking apparatus into the American railroad system may be regarded as a mere question of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So long as every road terminating in our larger cities indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stockholders, in independent station buildings far removed from business centres, the train movement can most economically be conducted as it now is. The expense of the interlocking apparatus is avoided by the very simple process of incurring the many fold heavier expense of several station buildings and vast disconnected station grounds. If, however, in the city of Boston, for instance, the time should come when the financial and engineering audacity of the great English companies shall be imitated,—when some leading railroad company shall fix its central passenger station on Tremont street opposite the head of Court street, just as in London the South Eastern established itself on Cannon street, and then this company carrying its road from Pemberton Square by a tunnel under Beacon Hill and the State-house should at the crossing of the Charles radiate out so as to afford all other roads an access for their trains to the same terminal point, thus concentrating there the whole daily movement of that busy population which makes of Boston its daily counting-room and market-place,—then, when this is attempted, the time will have come for utilizing to its utmost capacity every available inch of space to render possible the incessant passage of trains. Then also will it at last be realized that it is far cheaper to use a costly and intricate apparatus which enables two companies to be run into one convenient station, than it is to build a separate station, even at an inconvenient point, to accommodate each company.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE WESTINGHOUSE BRAKE.
In March, 1825, there appeared in the pages of the Quarterly Review an article in which the writer discussed that railway system, the first vague anticipation of which was then just beginning to make the world restless. He did this, too, in a very intelligent and progressive spirit, but unfortunately secured for his article a permanence of interest he little expected by the use of one striking illustration. He was peculiarly anxious to draw a distinct line of demarcation between his own very rational anticipations and the visionary dreams of those enthusiasts who were boring the world to death over the impossibilities which they claimed that the new invention was to work. Among these he referred to the proposition that passengers would be "whirled at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour by means of a high pressure engine," and then contemptuously added,—"We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate; their property perhaps they may trust."
Under the circumstances, the criticism was a perfectly reasonable one. The danger involved in going at such a rate of speed and the impossibility of stopping in time to avoid a sudden danger, would naturally suggest themselves to any one as insuperable objections to the new system for any practical use. Some means of preserving a sudden and powerful control over a movement of such unheard of rapidity would almost as a matter of course be looked upon as a condition precedent. Yet it is a most noticeable fact in the history of railroad development that the improvement in appliances for controlling speed by no means kept pace with the increased rate of speed attained. Indeed, so far as the possibility of rapid motion is concerned, there is no reason to suppose that the Rocket could not have held its own very respectably by the side of a passenger locomotive of the present day. It will be remembered that on the occasion of the Manchester & Liverpool opening, Mr. Huskisson after receiving his fatal injury was carried seventeen miles in twenty-five minutes. Since then the details of locomotive construction have been simplified and improved upon, but no great change has been or probably will be effected in the matter of velocity;—as respects that the maximum was practically reached at once. Yet down to the year 1870 the brake system remained very much what it was in 1830. Improvements in detail were effected, but the essential principles were the same. In case of any sudden emergency, the men in charge of the locomotive had no direct control over the vehicles in the train; they communicated with them by the whistle, and when the signal was heard the brakes were applied as soon as might be. When a train is moving at the rate of forty miles an hour, by no means a great speed for it while in full motion, it passes over fifty-eight feet each second;—at sixty miles an hour it passes over eighty-eight feet. Under these circumstances, supposing an engine driver to become suddenly aware of an obstruction on the track, as was the case at Revere, or of something wrong in the train behind him, as at Shipton, he had first himself to signal danger, and to this signal the brakemen throughout the train had to respond. Each operation required time, and every second of time represented many feet of space. It was small matter for surprise, therefore, that when in 1875 they experimented scientifically in England, it was ascertained that a train of a locomotive and thirteen cars moving at a speed of forty-five miles an hour could not be brought to a stand in less than one minute, or before it had traversed a distance of half a mile. The same result it will be remembered was arrived at by practical experience in America, where both at Angola and at Port Jervis,[22] it was found impossible to stop the trains in less than half-a-mile, though in each case two derailed cars were dragging and plunging along at the end of them.
The need of a continuous train-brake, operated from the locomotive and under the immediate control of the engine-driver, had been emphasized through years by the almost regular recurrence of accidents of the most appalling character. In answer to this need almost innumerable appliances had been patented and experimented with both in Europe and in America. Prior to 1869, however, these had been almost exclusively what are known as emergency brakes;—that is, although the trains were equipped with them and they were operated from the locomotives, they were not relied upon for ordinary use, but were held in reserve, as it were, against special exigencies. The Hudson River railroad train at the Hamburg accident was thus equipped. Practically, appliances which in the operation of railroads are reserved for emergencies are usually found of little value when the emergency occurs. Accordingly no continuous brake had, prior to the development of Westinghouse's invention, worked its way into general use. Patent brakes had become a proverb as well as a terror among railroad mechanics, and they had ceased to believe that any really desirable thing of the sort would ever be perfected. Westinghouse, therefore, had a most unbelieving audience to encounter, and his invention had to fight hard for all the favor it won; nor did his experience with master mechanics differ, probably, much from Miller's. His first patents were taken out in 1869, and he early secured the powerful aid of the Pennsylvania road for his invention. The Pullman Car Company, also, always anxious to avail themselves of every appliance of safety as well as of comfort, speedily saw the merits of the new brake and adopted it; but, as they merely furnished cars and had nothing to do with the locomotives that pulled them, their support was not so effective as that of the great railroad company. Naturally enough, also, great hesitation was felt in adopting so complicated an appliance. It added yet another whole apparatus to a thing which was already overburdened with machinery. There was, also, something in the delicacy and precision of the parts of this new contrivance,—in its air-pump and reservoirs and long connecting tubes with their numerous valves,—which was peculiarly distasteful to the average practical railroad mechanic. It was true that the idea of transmitting power by means of compressed air was by no means new,—that thousands of drills were being daily driven by it wherever tunnelling was going on or miners were at work,—yet the application of this familiar power to the wheels of a railroad train seemed no less novel than it was bold. It was, in the first place, evident that the new apparatus would not stand the banging and hammering to which the old-fashioned hand-brake might safely be subjected; not indeed without deranging that simple appliance, but without incurring any very heavy bill for repairs in so doing. Accordingly the new brake was at first carelessly examined and patronizingly pushed aside as a pretty toy,—nice in theory no doubt, but wholly unfitted for rough, every-day use. As it was tersely expressed during a discussion before the Society of Arts in London, as recently as May, 1877,—"It was no use bringing out a brake which could not be managed by ordinary officials,—which was so wonderfully clever that those who had to use it could not understand it." A line of argument by the way, which, as has been already pointed out, may with far greater force be applied to the locomotive itself; and, indeed, unquestionably was so applied about half a century ago by men of the same calibre who apply it now, to the intense weariness and discouragement no doubt of the late George Stephenson. Whether sound or otherwise, however, few more effective arguments against an appliance can be advanced; and against the Westinghouse brake it was advanced so effectively, that even as late as 1871, although largely in use on western roads, it had found its way into Massachusetts only as an ingenious device of doubtful merit. It was in August, 1871, that the Revere disaster occurred, and the Revere disaster, as has been seen, would unquestionably have been averted had the colliding train been provided with proper brake power. This at last called serious attention there to the new appliance. Even then, however, the mere suggestion of something better being in existence than the venerable hand-brakes in familiar use did not pass without a vigorous protest; and at the meeting of railroad officials, which has already been referred to as having been called by the state commissioners after the accident, one prominent gentleman, when asked if the road under his charge was equipped with the most approved brake, indignantly replied that it was,—that it was equipped with the good, old-fashioned hand-brake;—and he then proceeded to vehemently stake his professional reputation on the absolute superiority of that ancient but somewhat crude appliance over anything else of the sort in existence. Nevertheless, on this occasion also, the great dynamic force which is ever latent in first-class railroad accidents again asserted itself. Even the most opinionated of professional railroad men, emphatically as he might in public deny it, quietly yielded as soon as might be. In a surprisingly short time after the exhibition of ignorance which has been referred to, the railroads in Massachusetts, as it has already been shown, were all equipped with train-brakes.[23]
In its present improved shape it is safe to say that in all those requisites which the highest authorities known on the subject have laid down as essential to a model train brake, the Westinghouse stands easily first among the many inventions of the kind. It is now a much more perfect appliance than it was in 1871, for it was then simply atmospheric and continuous in its action, whereas it has since been made automatic and self-regulating. So far as its fundamental principle is concerned, that is too generally understood to call for explanation. By means of an air-pump, attached to the boiler of the locomotive and controlled by the engine-driver, an atmospheric force is brought to bear, through tubes running under the cars, upon the break blocks, pressing them against the wheels. The hand of the engine-driver is in fact on every wheel in the train. This application of power, though unquestionably ingenious and, like all good things, most simple and obvious when once pointed out, was originally open to one great objection, which was persistently and with great force urged against it. The parts of the apparatus were all delicate, and some injury or derangement of them was always possible, and sometimes inevitable. The chief advantage claimed for the brake was, however, that complete dependence could be placed upon it in the regular movement of trains. It was obvious, therefore, that if such dependence was placed upon it and any derangement did occur, the first intimation those in charge of the train would have that something was wrong might well come in the shape of a failure of the brake to act, and a subsequent disaster. Both in Massachusetts and in Connecticut, at the crossing of one railroad by another at the same level in the former state and in the approach to draws in bridges in the latter, a number of cases of this failure of the original Westinghouse non-automatic brake to act did in point of fact occur. Fortunately they, none of them, resulted in disaster. This, however, was mere good luck, as was illustrated in the case of the accident of November 11, 1876, at the Communipaw Ferry on the New Jersey Central. The train was there equipped with the ordinary train brake. It reached Jersey City on time shortly after 4 P.M., but, instead of slacking up, it ran directly through the station and freight offices, carrying away the walls and supports, and the locomotive then plunged into the river beyond. The baggage and smoking car followed but fortunately lodged on the locomotive, thus blocking the remainder of the train. Fortunately no one was killed, and no passengers were seriously injured.
Again, on the Metropolitan Elevated railroad in New York city, on the evening of June 23, 1879, one of the trains was delayed for a few moments at the Franklin street station. Meanwhile the next train came along, and, though the engine-driver of this following train saw the danger signals and endeavored to stop in time, he found his brake out of order, and a collision ensued resulting in the injury of one employé and the severe shattering of a passenger coach and locomotive. It was only a piece of good fortune that the first of these accidents did not result in a repetition of the Norwalk disaster and the second in that of Revere.