ENQUIRIES INTO RAILWAY ACCIDENTS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21198, 23 June 1934, Page 19

ENQUIRIES INTO RAILWAY ACCIDENTS

TO TIIE EDITOR OX' THE TRESS^ Sir,—l have read with some interest a correspondence on the subject of railway accidents and the secret nature of the enquiries into them. The wonder to me is that this matter has not been ventilated long ago. Until I perused this correspondence it had never occurred to me that when I take my seat in a railway carriage my person and safety are the total and sole concern of the department, and that only if I am killed does the public begin to show any interest. I am afraid the department must feel safer behind closed doors. Else why have recourse to those "hole in a corner" methods which we of this generation so healthily detest? But there is more for us to detest than secrecy about how we were so nearly killed. Accidents occur too frequently to seem unavoidable. A veil of secrecy is drawn over the enquiry after the accident itself has been reported in the papers and very completely photographed. Maybe the reporter gives theories in explanation of how the smash took place, but all we definitely know is that several important railway officials arrived by ferry, sat in conclave, and then departed. And we are still urged in advertisements in mere colour and coloured lights to use the railways because they are public property, are economical, comfortable, and—safe. The sad part of it is that when the public grow scared receipts fall and the taxpayer pays the deficit. It hits us either in our persons or our pockets, and although this latter is less objectionable, still it is objectionable enough. May I offer my own explanation of. or at least express my own fears about this Hornby smash? Is the colour light system of signals, such as is installed in these parts, completely reliable? If not it may speed up the service but also the accidents. Reliability is, of all things, the one thing necessary in a signal. It is useless if it functions well, save in wet or moist and misty weather, since that is just the time that it is most wanted. I have wondered about these signals for some time now, and seeing that the enquiry into the last crash was behind closed doors I am still wondering—Yours, etC " ! L.B.S.C. June 22, 1934.