14 14

Misplaced switches 5
Obstacles on rails 6
Boiler explosions 1
__ ___
88 100

Eighty-eight per cent. being from those causes which are aggravated
by increase of speed; and if we suppose the amount of aggravation to
augment as the speed, the danger of travelling is eighty-eight per
cent. greater by a fast than by a slow train.

These are the direct evils of high speeds; there are also indirect
evils, which are full as bad.

All trains in motion at the same time, within a certain distance of
the express, must be kept waiting, with steam up, or driven at extra
velocities to keep out of the way.

Where the time-table is so arranged as to call for speed nearly
equal to the full capacity of the engine, it is very obvious that
the risks of failure in "making time" must be much greater than at
reduced rates; and when they do occur, the efforts made to gain the
time must be correspondingly greater and uncertain. A single example
will be sufficient to show this.

A train, whose prescribed rate of speed is thirty miles per hour,
having lost five minutes of time, and being required to gain it in
order to meet and pass an opposing train at a station ten miles
distant, must necessarily increase its speed to forty miles per hour;
and a train, whose prescribed rate of speed is forty miles per hour,
under similar circumstances, must increase its speed to sixty miles
per hour. In the former case it would probably be accomplished,
whilst in the latter it would more probably result in failure,--or,
if successful, it would be so at fearful risk of accident.

However true it may be that many of our large roads are well, some
of them admirably, managed, it is none the less a fact that the
greater portion are directed in a manner far from satisfactory,--many,
indeed, being subjected to the combined influence of ignorance and
recklessness.

Many people wonder at the bad financial state of the American
railroads; the wonder is, to those who understand the way in which
they are managed, that they should be worth anything at all. It is
useless to disguise the fact, says a writer in one of our
railroad-papers, that the great body of our railroad-directors are
entirely unfit for their position. They are, personally, a very
respectable class of men, (Schuylerisms and Tuckermanisms excepted,)
--men who, after having passed through the