Ezra Miller Saved Lives

Sixty-four passengers were killed on the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Mud Run station, Kidder Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania at 2002hr on 10 October 1888, when the Seventh Section (powered by two engines) ran into the stopped Sixth Section of an excursion special.

... with those details, once we're done here we can take off and check out the disaster on Wikipedia, Google maps, and other on-line references! But beware, there is more than one Mud Run in Pennsylvania!

By the sounds of it, the train order office was being used as a block signal to maintain the ordered 10 minute spacing between sections. The sunset there at that time of year is 1830hr - so it would have been good and dark in the forest in the valley. As you might expect, there were problems with rules observance pertaining to the train order signal ... the flagman failed to go out the prescribed distance to flag ... and so on ...

But that's not the point of this post, it's this frequently-reproduced photograph ...

from: History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; Random House.

The engineering of passenger cars in that very early period of railroad technology had resulted in the invention of the Miller Hook system - two decades earlier - which had been invented to help prevent tragedies such as this.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

Above, is a drawing from circa 1870 or so, representing contemporary passenger car architecture or engineering. 

'Architecture' was probably a better description because passenger coaches were generally built like wooden sheds with windows on wheels. Coaches were not engineered to mitigate buff (compressive) forces - particularly during collisions. 

In terms of passenger comfort, it looks as if this car has a link-and-pin coupling system which would 'accordion' the train consist in or out whenever there was a change in train dynamics. For example, when starting or stopping, with a careless engineer, there could be a jolting change in coupler slack, particularly in the second half of the train. 

(I enjoyed standing and working on hay wagons in high school. A hay wagon was coupled to the tractor using a single pin. This link-and-pin passenger train jolt would have been quite an experience, particularly if a passenger was standing at the time.)

The end sill (at floor level) is set at a different level than the coupler. This is normal today. However, this design does not seem to employ a strong metal fabrication which combines the end sill AND the coupler.  

... If strong buff forces from a colliding engine were applied to the back of this car at the end of a stationary train ... you can imagine that the 'wooden shed' would be easily separated from any metal structures attached to the bottom of its wooden floor. 

... The front of the stationary train would have significant inertia, so the 'back wooden shed' and the 'next wooden shed' would become the 'crumple zones' which absorbed the shock of the collision. 

Whether or not the cars interact 'perfectly' like a telescope is not particularly the issue - it is the fact that the wooden passenger compartment is not engineered to protect the people inside.

from: Train Wrecks; Robert C Reed; 1968; Superior Publishing.

Here is a little historical background on the issue of link-and-pin couplers

from: Railroad Album; John O'Connell; 1954; Popular Mechanics.

from: Yonder Comes the Train; Lance Phillips; 1965; AS Barnes & Co.

Above, is a display model of a Miller Hook from above or below. 

You can see the model drawbar is anchored by slot screws.

This is a pretty rough image in the book.

 

The model shows how two couplers would automatically couple.

The worker would avoid the link-and-pin danger associated with standing between the coupling cars. 

They would not have to manually insert the link into the stationary pocket and drop the pin to secure it.

The model also shows how a cut lever would be used to uncouple, 

by pulling one of the hooks toward the side of the car.

*  *  *

from: Cars, Their Construction, Handling & Supervision; Marshall M Kirkman; 1908; World Railway Publishing Co.
Note: The following 'aged paper' images also come from this publication.

The exhaustively-labelled diagram, above, identifies item 319 as a Miller Hook. 

Like early Janney-style couplers this one has 'backward compatibility' ... 

A link can be inserted in the 'knuckle cutaway', and a pin dropped into the hook.

(The diagram shows a standard Janney-style coupler on the other end of the car.)

*  *  *

On breaks, while writing this, I was skimming the minutes of a session of the US Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce from 1892. It dispels any idea that we had link-and-pin, then we changed to Janney-style, and we all lived happily ever after.

In his testimony, the AAR representative indicates that their member railroads have converted 20% of their freight equipment to 'automatic' couplers. The AAR represents something like 2/3 of the US route miles. I assume the rest of the miles were not 'interstate' railroads or these railroads elected to be otherwise outside of the AAR. The AAR says ... Don't legislate, many of our members are doing well with their conversion. 

The switchman-representative of the body which provides benevolent disability insurance to injured switchmen says Lehigh Valley 'hook-and-link' (maybe a European design import) is his preference. Link-and-pin are pretty good if you know what you're doing. Automatic couplers are a mess. There are hundreds of different patent designs of 'knuckle couplers'. You can wreck yourself lining the drawbar up for a coupling. The cut rod can snag on your coat and drag you along. When we have problems with different patents being incompatible, we resort to link-and-pin to couple them. So there! The railroad officials who call the shots 'wouldn't do our job for $100 a minute'.

So, considering all of this in 1892, you can understand why lives were lost between the invention of the Miller Hook (1869), the Janney-type (1868) and their universal adoption on all interchanged railcars. 

Delaying factors included ... the inertia of large companies with massive investments in diverse rolling stock ... the cautious views of their association which doesn't represent all of the railroads anyway ... the conflicting evidence from the workers (including the significant disability and death statistics) ... and the reluctance of legislators to become very unpopular, by dictating a standard which all parties condemn. 

To some extent, some of the parties are looking expectantly to the Master Car Builders to declare a preferred standard for Janney-style couplers.

And, as a reminder, the Mud Run disaster occurred in 1888.

*  *  *

We continue with technical details and illustrations from The Science of Railways (1908) ...

MCB stands for Master Car Builders

Above: I believe this is the Miller Hook as seen from below the car.

Above: I believe this is the Miller Hook as seen from above the car.

*  *  *

In the second paragraph below, 'hool' is hook - it's not some Gaelic or Olde English railroadin' talk.

The upper diagram above shows a 'phantom' pin inserted into the hook (backward compatibility).

The lower diagram above shows a cross-section view.

The coupler/drawbar is the piece protruding at the left, a spring loaded buffer appears above it at the 'sill' (floor) level.

*  *  *

Sometimes, a second reference helps clarify complex diagrams and concepts ...

from: Train Wrecks; Robert C Reed; 1968; Superior Publishing.

There is a small community of us which believes that the flying switches ... made with three-coach consists ... performed by Forneys in suburban commuter service at Dorval, Quebec ... in the late 1950s ... are unique and fascinating. However, Advantage 9, above, is bragging that you can kick coaches all day long if they are fitted with Miller Hooks. Just heave the big bar over to release the hook on the fly.

At the US Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, the switchman-representative of the benevolent insurance organization said that Miller Platforms were a problem with some of the sharper curves in the yard. He stated that an interim joint must be made with link-and-pin in that case.

... He went on to say that passenger cars are switched very gently to avoid damage, including breaking glass ... long before safety glass, we assume ... Add glass to the list of safety features taken for granted today. 

... Considering his freight car specialty (in contrast to passenger car switching) he gives a very thorough description of the 'human experience' of being a switchman. He said that freight cars get very rough treatment. There is great pressure to switch a high volume of cars quickly with hazardous footing ('dirt') in the yards and usually with inadequate resources. He points out the difficulty of operating at night with an oil lantern. And ... he says that freight cars often come together at speeds ... up to 10 to 12 miles per hour (!!). 

*  *  *

Some photos of Miller Hooks/Platforms

I had always wondered what 'that big bar' on the rear platform of some observation and private cars did. 

From my image search in my own books, it turns out that old coach photos often have their couplers cropped away during photo layout editing. Visible couplers in photos are often lost in the dark end-of-car murk, making them unhelpful as crisp illustrations of Miller Hooks. And no one putting a book together is particularly interested in showing a detailed rear view of a plain coach. 

There were no Miller Hooks to be seen in the core fleets of Canada's major railways, as far as I could see - just on the odd imported car. As we've just heard, these imports can be temporarily coupled using link-and-pin technology. 

You can imagine that many American roads in the business of hauling long passenger trains in dense urban corridors would have chosen Miller Hooks and Platforms for their obvious advantages. My guess from my image search is that Canadian passenger equipment probably skipped a generation of technology and went directly from link and pin to a suitable Janney-type. 

From an American perspective, British railways were believed to have been relatively free from coach telescoping in the late 1800s because of their own slack-controlling couplings which featured the familiar buffers to keep the couplings under tension. With the Grand Trunk and the CPR British Empire affinity, one might speculate that rough slack action and coach telescoping risk resulted in quick adoption of the Janney-type.

Given what we'll see below, I checked Van Horne's car at Craigellachie (the photo with his son driving his own last spike) and his car had a link-and-pin coupler pocket.

The clearest surviving photos of Miller Hooks and Platforms I have found are in books showing business and observation cars. Unfortunately, they were not always photographed plumb, but we'll take what we can get.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

An unidentified car in an undated image.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

The car above was used on the Boston & Lowell Railroad in the 1870s.

In this case, it seems the desire for symmetry caused the large telltale lever to be replaced with a handwheel which matched the handbrake handwheel.

from: Mansions on Rails; Lucius Beebe; 1959; Howell-North Press.

Burlington, Number 200, La Rabida, was the private car used by railroad president Charles Elliott Perkins from 1881 to 1901.

This was the nicest photo I could find to illustrate a Miller Hook and Platform.