Train robbery is a type of robbery, in which the goal is to steal money or other valuables being carried by trains.
Train robberies were common in the American Old West where trains slowly carrying valuable cargo,likepayroll shipments, were a frequent target. These shipments would be guarded by an expressman whose duty was to protect the cargo of the "express car".
Before the invention of dynamite, it was almost impossible to break into safes. Criminals required the combination lock to open safes, and often relied on the expressman to provide it. Following its invention and widespread use, it became much easier to break into safes and rob trains. Criminals sometimes robbed passengers of the train's carriages at gunpoint stealing their jewelry or currency.
Contrary to the method romanticized by Hollywood, outlaws were never known to jump from horseback onto a moving train. Usually, they would either board the train normally and wait for a good time to initiate the heist, or they would stop or derail the train and then begin the holdup.
Famous train robbers include Butch Cassidy, Bill Miner and Jesse James.[1] Jesse James is mistakenly thought to have completed the first successful train robbery in the American West when on July 21, 1873 the James-Younger Gang took US$3,000 from a Rock Island Railroad train after derailing it southwest of the town of Adair, Iowa.[2] However, the first peacetime train robbery in the United States occurred on October 6, 1866, when robbers boarded the Ohio & Mississippi train shortly after it left Seymour, Indiana. They broke into one safe and tipped the other off the train before jumping off. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency later traced the crime to the Reno Gang. There was one earlier train robbery in May 1865, but because it was committed by armed guerrillas and occurred shortly after the end of the Civil War, it is not considered to be the first train robbery in the United States.
In 2021, train robberies in Los Angeles resulted in hundreds of discarded packages to be strewn about the tracks. Trains were targeted on a section of tracks that they must slow down on and that are easy to access. Thieves are using bolt cutters to cut open the locks on shipping containers and taking the packages inside. Union Pacific estimated that losses were in the millions from all the stolen merchandise.[3]
Some of the most notable train robbers are:
In two robberies on the Bristol and Exeter Railway two passengers climbed from their carriage to the mail van and back. They were discovered at Bridgwater after the second robbery.[4] One was Henry Poole, a former guard on the Great Western Railway, dismissed for misconduct (possibly on suspicion of another robbery);[5] the other was Edward Nightingale, the son of George Nightingale, accused, but acquitted,[6] of robbing the Dover mail coach in 1826,[7] when two thieves had dressed in identical clothes to gain an alibi for the other.[8] They were transported for 15 years.[9] Henry was sent to Bermuda on the Sir Robert Seppings (ship) in December 1850 whilst Edward was transported to Fremantle on the Sea Park in January 1854.[10][11]
