An Electric Switch.
The electric switches now in use on so many street-car lines must be a great convenience to the motormen and conductors—when they work; provided they do not work too well. I have just been reading of a case in which one of them worked too well.
It was in Brookline, Mass. The car went out over the point at which the electric switch is operated. It kept on full current, and therefore the switch was not thrown. Close behind it, however, came a car, which, passing over the operating point, turned off its current, which had the effect of throwing the switch and swinging the rail. The forward truck of the first car had passed the switch, but the rear truck had not. That truck, therefore, was thrown off on tracks that ran at a sharp angle to the tracks on which the front truck was running. The result was that the rear wheels jumped the track, there was a tremendous crash, and the whole set of tracks was blocked for three-quarters of an hour, till the wrecking-car could set matters right.
This is a complicated world in which we live, friends. What a network of tracks, with all these myriads of lives running here and there, all these millions of aims, and plans, and ambitions cutting across one another in every direction! Every rod or so there are switches. Lives can pass very easily from one track to another. It is all free and easy. And the switches work at a touch.
The wonder is that more mishaps do not occur. The wonder is that life-cars do not oftener crash into each other, and that electric switches are not oftener turned under us.
And the lesson is: Go slowly! Remember that there are other cars on the same life-tracks. Look out for the next man as well as for yourself -for the man ahead of you; also for the man behind you. You will get to the terminus quite as soon for it. Perhaps you will get there sooner. That Brookline car gained a few seconds by its precipitancy—and it lost forty-five minutes.