TRAIN WRECKS A Pictorial History of Accidents on The Main Line By Robert C. Reed

Langue english

In 1853 fortv-six people were killed in a head-on collision between two trains of different lines running on the same track at Secaucus, N.J, and the early safety record of railroads came to a sickening halt…only to suffer another crash three months later involving a Rhode Island excursion train. American railroading was expanding with tentative fingers and having them run over

Here is the absorbing story of wrecks on the right-of-way – wrecks which brought on « horror » articles, songs, and scare-sketches frightening travelers and even making for more acci-dents. One man, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who « hated railroads » after almost dying in a wreck, lived to dominate the scene and control the New York Central.

The railroads survived but grim echoes followed the first multiple casualties in the early railroad era and alarm bells were set off with dire warnings, which both curtailed and stimulated travel. In this definitive chronicle Robert Reed presents a major historical work in the field of railroad accidents with a wealth of photographs and public prints of the day.