Travel over the Eastern railroad is of a some what exceptional
nature, varying with the different seasons of the year. During the
winter months the railroad provided for regular passenger movement of
about seventy-five thousand a week, but in the summer what is known
as the excursion and pleasure travel the number increased to one
hundred and ten thousand, and even more. As a natural consequence,
during certain weeks of each summer, and more especially towards the
close of August, it was no unusual thing for the railroad to find
itself taxed beyond its resources.
During the week ending with that Saturday evening when the disaster
occurred the rolling stock of the railroad had been heavily taxed,
not only to accommodate the usual tide of summer travel, then at its
peak, but also those attending a military muster and two large camp
meetings upon its line. The number of passengers had risen from about
one hundred and ten thousand, the full summer average, to over one
hundred and forty thousand; while instead of the one hundred and
fifty-two trains a day provided for in the running schedule, there
were no less than one hundred and ninety-two.
It had never been the custom with those managing the railroad to
place any reliance upon the telegraph in directing the train
movement, and no use whatever appears to have been made of it towards
straightening out the numerous hitches inevitable from so sudden an
increase in ridership. If an engine broke down, or a train got off
the track, there had accordingly throughout that week been nothing
done, except patient and general waiting, until things got in motion
again; each conductor or station-master had to look out for himself,
under the running regulations of the railroad, and need expect no
assistance from headquarters. This, too, in spite of the fact that,
including the Saugus branch, no less than ninety-three of the entire
one hundred and fifteen miles of road operated by the railroad were
supplied only with a single track. The whole train movement, both of
the main line and of the branches, depended solely on the schedule
arrangement and the watchful intelligence of individual employees. As
the week drew to a close the confusion became so great that the
trains reached and left the Boston station with an almost total
disregard of the schedule; while towards the evening of Saturday the
employees of the road at that station directed their efforts almost
exclusively to dispatching trains as fast as cars could be procured,
thus trying to keep it as clear as possible of the throng of
impatient travellers which continually blocked it up.
According to the regular schedule, four trains should have left the
Boston station in succession during the hour and a half between 6:30
and eight o’clock PM: a Saugus branch train for Lynn at 6.30; a
second Saugus branch train at seven; an accommodation train, which
ran eighteen miles over the main line, at 7:15; and finally the
express train through to Portland, also over the main line, at eight
o’clock. The collision at Revere was between these last two trains,
the express overtaking and running into the rear or the accommodation
train; but it was indirectly caused by the delays and irregularity in
movement of the two branch trains.
According to the schedule both of the branch trains should have
preceded the accommodation train. In the prevailing confusion,
however, the first of the two branch trains did not leave the station
until about seven o’clock, thirty minutes behind schedule, and it was
followed forty minutes later, not by the second branch train, but by
the accommodation train, which in its turn was twenty-five behind
schedule. Thirteen minutes later the second Saugus branch train,
which should have preceded, followed it, being nearly an hour late.
Then at last came the Portland express, which got away practically on
time, at a few minutes after eight o’clock. All of these four trains
went out over the same track as far as the junction at Everett, but
at that point the first and third of the four were to go off on the
branch, while the second and fourth kept on over the main line.
Between these last two trains the running schedule of the road
allowed an ample time-interval of forty-five minutes, which, however,
on this occasion was reduced, through the delay in starting, to some
fifteen or twenty minutes. No causes of further delay, therefore,
arising, the simple case was presented of a slow accommodation train
being sent out to run eighteen miles in advance of a fast express
train, with an interval of twenty minutes between them.
Unfortunately, however, the accommodation train was soon subjected to
another and very serious delay. Since the Saugus branch was a single
track road, the rules of the railroad were explicit that no outbound
train was to pass onto the branch at Everett until any inbound train
due there should have arrived and passed off it. There was no siding
at the junction, where an outbound branch train could be temporarily
placed to wait for the inbound train, thus leaving the main track
clear, and accordingly, under a strict construction of the rules, any
outbound branch train while awaiting the arrival at Everett of an
inbound train was to be kept standing on the main track, completely
blocking it. The outbound branch trains were often delayed at the
junction, but no practical difficulty had arisen from this cause, as
the employee in charge of the signals and switches there, exercising
his common sense, had been in the custom of moving any delayed train
temporarily out of the way onto the branch or the other main track,
under protection of a flag, and thus relieving the block. The need of
a siding to permit the passage of trains at this point had not been
felt, simply because the employee in charge there had used the branch
or other main track as a siding. On the day of the accident this
employee happened to be sick, and absent from his post. His
substitute either had no common sense or did not feel called upon to
use it, if its use involved any increase of responsibility.
Accordingly, when a block took place, the simple letter of the rule
was followed; and it is almost needless to add that a block did take
place on the afternoon of August 26th.
The first of the branch trains, it will be remembered, had left
Boston at about seven o’clock, instead of at 6:30:, its schedule
time. On arriving at Everett this train should have met and passed an
inbound branch train, which was timed to leave Lynn at six o’clock,
but which, owing to some accident to its locomotive, and the general
confusion of the day, on this particular afternoon did not leave the
Lynn station until 7:30 o’clock, or one hour and a half after its
schedule time, and one half-hour after the other train had left
Boston. Accordingly, when the Boston train reached the junction its
conductor found himself confronted by the rule forbidding him to
enter upon the branch until the Lynn train then due should have
passed, and so he quietly waited on the outward track of the main
line, blocking it completely to traffic. He had not waited long
before a special locomotive, on its way from Boston to Salem, came up
and stopped behind him. This was followed by the accommodation train.
Then the next branch train came along, and finally the Portland
express. At such a time, and at that period of railroad development,
there was something ludicrous about the spectacle. Here was a road
utterly unable to accommodate its passengers with cars, while, a
succession of trains were standing idle for hours, because a
locomotive had broken down ten miles away. The telegraph was there,
but the railroad was not in the custom of putting any reliance on it.
A simple message to the branch trains to meet and pass at any point
other than that fixed in the schedule would have solved the whole
problem. The telegraph was a new-fangled device and considered
unreliable by the railroad. And so the lengthening procession stood
there long enough for the train which caused it to have gone to its
destination and come back dragging the disabled locomotive from Lynn
behind it to again take its place in the block.
At about ten minutes after eight o’clock, the long expected Lynn
train made its appearance, and the first of the branch trains from
Boston immediately went off the main line. The road was now clear for
the accommodation train, which had been standing some twelve or
fifteen minutes in the block, but which was running on the schedule
time of the Portland express. This, its conductor did not know. Every
minute was vital, and yet he never thought to look at his watch. He
had a vague impression that he had been delayed some six or eight
minutes, when in reality he had been delayed fifteen; and, though he
was running wholly out of his schedule time, he took not a single
precaution, so persuaded was he that every one knew where he was.
The confusion among those in charge of the various engines and trains
was complete. As the Portland express was about to leave the Boston
station, the superintendent of the road, knowing by the non-arrival
of the branch train from Lynn that there must be a block at the
Everett junction, had directed the depot-master to caution the
engineer to look out for the trains ahead of him. The order, a merely
verbal one, was delivered after the train had started by the
depot-master walking along by the side of the slowly-moving
locomotive, was either incorrectly transmitted or not fully
understood. The engine-driver thought it to apply to the branch train
which had started just before him, out of both its schedule time and
schedule place. Presently, at the junction, he was stopped by the
signal man of this train. When the engine-driver saw the tail-lights
immediately before him disappear on the branch, he concluded that the
main line was now clear, and dismissed the depot-master’s caution
from his mind. He was convinced that the only other train in his
front had gone off on the branch. The conductor of the accommodation
train was equally persuaded that the head-light immediately behind
him in the block at the junction had been that of the Portland
express which consequently should be aware of his position. Both were wrong.
Thus when they left Everett the express was fairly chasing the
accommodation train, and overtaking it with terrible rapidity. Even
then no collision ought to have been possible. Unfortunately,
however, the road had no system, even the crudest, of interval
signals; and the utter irregularity prevailing in the train movement
seemed to have demoralized the employees along the line, who, though
they noticed the extreme proximity of the two trains to each other as
they passed various points, all sluggishly took it for granted that
those in charge of them were fully aware of their relative positions
and knew where they were. Thus, as the two trains approached the
Revere station, they were so close together as to be on the same
piece of straight track at the same time, and a passenger standing at
the rear end of the accommodation train distinctly saw the head-light
of the express locomotive. The night, however, was not a clear one,
for an east wind had prevailed all day, driving a mist in from the
sea which lay in banks over the marshes, lifting at times so that
distant objects were quite visible, and then obscuring them in its
heavy folds. Consequently it did not at all follow, because the
powerful reflecting head-light of the locomotive was visible from the
accommodation train, that the dim taillights of the latter were also
visible to those on the locomotive. The tail-lights in use by the
company were ordinary red lanterns without reflecting power.
The station house at Revere stood at the end of a tangent, the track
curving directly before it. In any ordinary weather the tail-lights
of a train standing at this station would have been visible for a
very considerable distance down the track in the direction of Boston,
and even on the night of the accident they were probably visible for
a sufficient distance in which to stop any train approaching at a
reasonable rate of speed. Unfortunately the engineer of the Portland
express did not see them, his attention being wholly absorbed in
looking for other signals. Certain freight train tracks to points on
the shore diverged from the main line at Revere, and the
engine-drivers of all trains approaching that place were notified by
signals at a masthead close to the station whether the switches were
set for the main line or for these freight tracks. A red lantern at
the masthead indicated that the main line was closed; in the absence
of any signal it was open. In looking for this signal as he
approached Revere the engine-driver of the Portland express was
simply attending closely to his business, for, had the red light been
at the masthead, his train must at once have been stopped.
Unfortunately, however, while peering through the mist at the
masthead he overlooked what was directly before him, until, when at
last he brought his eyes down to the level, to use his own words at
the subsequent inquest, “the tail lights of the accommodation
train seemed to spring right up in his face.”
When those in charge of the two trains at almost the same moment
became aware of the danger, there was only an interval of some eight
hundred feet between them. The express train was, however, moving at
a speed of some twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, and was equipped
only with the old-fashioned hand-brake. In response to the sharply
given signal from the whistle these were rapidly set, but the rails
were damp and slippery, so that the wheels failed to grip them, and,
when everything was done which could be done, the eight hundred feet
of interval sufficed only to reduce the speed of the colliding
locomotive to about ten miles an hour.
In the rear car of the accommodation train there were at the moment
of the accident some sixty-five or seventy human beings, seated and
standing. They were of both sexes and of all ages; for it was a
Saturday evening in August, and many persons had, through the
confusion of the trains, been long delayed in their return from the
city to their homes at the seaside. The first intimation the
passengers had of the danger impending over them was from the sudden
and lurid illumination of the car by the glare from the head-light of
the approaching locomotive. One of them who survived the disaster,
though grievously injured, described how he was carelessly watching a
young man standing in the aisle, laughing and gayly chatting with
four young girls, who were seated, when he saw him turn and instantly
his face, in the sudden blaze of the head-light, assumed a look of
frozen horror which was the single thing in the accident indelibly
impressed on the survivor’s memory; that look haunted him. The car
was crowded to its full capacity, and the colliding locomotive struck
it with such force as to bury itself two-thirds of its length in it.
At the instant of the crash a panic had seized upon the passengers,
and a sort of rush had taken place to the forward end of the car,
into which furniture, fixtures and human beings were crushed in a
shapeless, indistinguishable mass. Meanwhile the blow had swept away
the smokestack of the locomotive, and its forward truck had been
forced back in some unaccountable way until it rested between its
driving wheels and the tender, leaving the entire boiler inside of
the passenger car and supported on its rear truck. The valves on the
boiler had been so broken as to admit the free escape of scalding
steam. The coals from the fire-box were scattered among the debris,
and coming in contact with the fluid from the broken car lamps
kindled the whole car into a rapid blaze. Neither was the fire
confined to the last car of the train. It has been mentioned that in
the block at Everett a locomotive returning to Salem had found itself
stopped just in advance of the accommodation train. At the suggestion
of the engine-driver of that train this locomotive had been coupled
to it, and consequently made a part of it at Revere. When the
collision took place, the four cars of which the accommodation train
was made up were crushed between the weight of the entire colliding
train on one side and that of two locomotives on the other. That they
were not wholly demolished was due simply to the fact that the last
car yielded to the blow, and permitted the locomotive of the express
train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, the remaining cars
were jammed and shattered, and, though the passengers in them
escaped, the oil from the broken lamps ignited, and before the flames
could be extinguished the cars were entirely destroyed,
This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine persons, and in
more or less severe injuries to fifty-seven others. No person, except
those in the last car of the accommodation train was killed, and only
one was seriously injured. Of those in the last car more than half
lost their lives; many instantly by crushing, others by inhaling the
scalding steam which poured from the locomotive boiler into the
wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted frightful
injuries. Indeed, for the severity of injuries and for the
protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if
ever, been exceeded. Crushing, scalding and burning did their work together.
The disaster at Revere marked an epoch in the history of railroad
development in New England. At the moment it called forth the deepest
expression of horror and indignation, which, was more noticeable for
its force than for its wisdom.