Speed of the Norwalk Train

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In the first despatches sent to this city respecting the speed of the train which ran into the draw at Norwalk, and by which so many of our fellow beings lost their lives, it was stated that the locomotive passed over the gap, which is 60 feet wide, and struek the abutment a short distance only, below the horizontal line. Since that time the locomotive has been raised and it had never struck the abutment at all, consequently it did not leap over the gap. A question has arisen, then, as to the speed of the train, as some said it was going 40, others 25, and others only 15 miles per hour. It is difficult to tell at what rate it was going, but if it had been running at the rate of 4715+ miles per hour it would have struck the middle abutment 16 feet below its top. Bodies tall by the attraction of gravity at the rate ot 16 teet the first second, and a train running at the rate of 47'15+ miles per hour, has a velocity of 60 feet per second, which is the width of the draw. As the abutment is stated to be about 40 feet high, and as the engine did not strike it, the probability is, that the train was running at the rate of about 20 miles per hour.

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