At the time it occurred the Shipton accident was the subject of a good deal of discussion, and both the brake system and method of car construction in use on English roads were sharply criticised. It was argued, and apparently with much reason, that had the "locomotives and cars been equipped with the continuous train-brakes so generally in use in America, the action of the engine drivers would have checked at the same instant the speed of each particular car, and probably any serious accident would have been averted." Yet it required another disaster, not so fatal as that at Shipton-on-Cherwell but yet sufficiently so, to demonstrate that this was true only in a limited degree,--to further illustrate and enforce the apparently obvious principle that, no matter how heavy the construction may be, or what train-brake is in use, to insure safety the proportion between the resisting strength of car construction and the train-weight momentum to which it may be subjected must be carefully preserved. On this point of the resisting power of modern car construction, indeed, it seemed as if a result had been reached which did away with the danger of longitudinal crushing. Between 1873 and 1878 a series of accidents had occurred on the American roads of which little was heard at the time for the simple reason that they involved no loss of life,--they belonged in the great category of possible disasters which might have happened, had they not been prevented. Trains going in opposite directions and at full speed had come in collision while rounding curves; trains had run into earth-slides, and had been suddenly stopped by derailment; in every such case, however, the Westinghouse brake and the Miller car construction had, when in use, proved equal to the emergency and the passengers on the trains had escaped uninjured. The American mechanic had accordingly grown firm in his belief that, so far as any danger from the crushing of cars was concerned,--unless indeed they were violently thrown down an embankment or precipitated into an abyss,--the necessary resisting strength had been secured and the problem practically solved. That such was not the case in America in 1878 any more than in England in 1875, except within certain somewhat narrow limits, was unexpectedly proven by a disaster which occurred at Wollaston near Boston, on the Old Colony road, upon the evening of October 8, 1878. CHAPTER III. THE WOLLASTON ACCIDENT.