Indeed, from the time of Mr. Huskisson's death, during a period of over eleven years, railroads enjoyed a remarkable and most fortunate exemption from accidents. During all that time there did not occur a single disaster resulting in any considerable loss of life; an immunity which seems to have been due to a variety of causes. Those early roads were, in the first place, remarkably well and thoroughly built, and were very cautiously operated under a light volume of traffic. The precautions then taken and the appliances in use would, it is true, strike the modern railroad superintendent as both primitive and comical; for instance, they involved the running of independent pilot locomotives in advance of all night passenger trains. Through all the years between 1830 and 1841, nevertheless, not a single really serious railroad disaster had to be recorded. This happy exemption was, however, quite as much due to good fortune as to anything else, as was well illustrated in the first accident at all serious in its character, which occurred,--an accident in its every circumstance, except loss of life, almost an exact parallel to the famous Revere disaster which happened nearly forty years later in Massachusetts. It chanced on the Manchester & Liverpool Railway on December 23, 1832. The second-class morning train had stopped at the Rainhill station to take in passengers, when those upon it heard through the dense fog another train, which had left Manchester forty-five minutes later, coming towards them at a high rate of speed. When it first became visible it was but one hundred and fifty yards off, and a collision was inevitable. Those in charge of the stationary train, however, succeeded in getting it under a slight headway, and in so much diminished the shock of the collision; but, notwithstanding, the last five carriages were injured, the one at the end being totally demolished. Though quite a number of the passengers were cut and bruised, and several were severely hurt, one only, strange to say, was killed.