Page 31 - Leisure Living Magazine June 2018

Ohio legislature convened a joint committee to investigate the wreck. Three engineers were ap- pointed to examine the bridge’s design, construc- tion and the iron used to build it.
The committee took testimony from nu- merous people, including Mr. Amasa Stone, the president of the railroad and chief designer of the bridge, and Charles Collins, the construction engineer who inspected the bridge. Just hours af- ter he had testified before the committee, Collins committed suicide.
The investigation led the committee to sever- al conclusions. The iron used to build the bridge was not at fault; the bridge went down under an ordinary load by reason of defects in its original construction. The defects could have been dis- covered at any time after its erection “by careful and analytical inspection ... and thus the sacrifice of life and property prevented.”
Although the committee also determined that snow on the bridge hastened its collapse, its members made clear the real culprit was the faulty design and construction. “The truth is,” the committee wrote, “the bridge was liable to go down at any time during the last ten or elev- en years under the loads that might at any time be brought upon it in the ordinary course of the company’s business, and it is most remarkable that it did not sooner occur.”
As the committee noted, “the legislature has no power to punish, it can only, if possible, pro-
vide laws which shall render less frequent such frightful calamities as that at Ashtabula.” To that end the committee prepared a bill to regulate the construction and inspection of bridges in Ohio.
The law that was eventually enacted was meant to provide greater safety for “Public Trav- el over Bridges.” The new law set weight-bear- ing standards for bridges; it required that every bridge “shall be so constructed as to be capable of carrying on each track, in addition to its own weight, two locomotives coupled together, each weighing ninety-one thousand and two hundred pounds...”
The law also established what material should be used in construction and that all bridges over a certain length “shall be inspected once every month by some competent person appointed by and in the employment of the corporation owning or using the bridge.” The reports of those inspec- tions had to be submitted to the commissioner of railroads and telegraphs. And the commissioner had the duty to stop the running of trains on all railroads where the company operating the rail- roads neglected to comply with the regulations.
Those early decades of rail travel gave rise to dozens of cases, many of which ended up here – at the Ohio Supreme Court. Those cases cov- ered a range of issues, from cattle on the tracks to accidents causing death and bodily harm. Through the years, the case law established here – combined with legislation and better engineer-
Wood engraving published in Harper’s Weekly, January 20, 1877, depicting the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster. The artist is not known.
ing techniques – helped to improve the safety of rail travel in Ohio.
If silver linings can be found in the darkest clouds, the Ashtabula train wreck provided a leap forward in the standards of bridge design, construc- tion and safety. That is, of course, of little solace to the poor souls who perished on that cold December
night in 1876.
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