[8] The Angola was probably the most impressively horrible of the many "stove accidents." That which occurred near Prospect, N. Y., upon the Buffalo, Corry & Pittsburgh road, on December 24, 1872, should not, however, be forgotten. In this case a trestle bridge gave way precipitating a passenger train some thirty feet to the bottom of a ravine, where the cars caught fire from the stoves. Nineteen lives were lost, mostly by burning. The Richmond Switch disaster of April 19, 1873, on the New York, Providence & Boston road was of the same character. Three passengers only were there burned to death, but after the disaster the flames rushed "through the car as quickly as if the wood had been a lot of hay," and, after those who were endeavoring to release the wounded and imprisoned men were driven away, their cries were for some time heard through the smoke and flame. But a few days more than a year after the Ashtabula accident another catastrophe, almost exactly similar in its details, occurred on the Connecticut Western road. It is impossible to even estimate the amount of overhauling to which bridges throughout the country had in the meanwhile been subjected, or the increased care used in their examination. All that can be said is that during the year 1877 no serious accident due to the inherent weakness of any bridge occcurred on the 70,000 miles of American railroad. Neither, so far as can be ascertained, was the Tariffville disaster to be referred to that cause. It happened on the evening of January 15, 1878. A large party of excursionists were returning from a Moody and Sankey revival meeting on a special train, consisting of two locomotives and ten cars. Half a mile west of Tariffville the railroad crosses the Farmington river. The bridge at this point was a wooden Howe truss, with two spans of 163 feet each. It had been in use about seven years and, originally of ample strength and good construction, there is no evidence that its strength had since been unduly impaired by neglect or exposure. It should, therefore, have sufficed to bear twice the strain to which it was now subjected. Exactly as at Ashtabula, however, the west span of the bridge gave way under the train just as the leading locomotives passed onto the tressel-work beyond it: the ice broke under the falling wreck, and the second locomotive with four cars were precipitated into the river. The remaining cars were stopped by the rear end of the third car, resting as it did on the centre pier of the bridge, and did not leave the rails. The fall to the surface of the ice was about ten feet. There was no fire to add to the horrors in this case, but thirteen persons were crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three others injured.[9]