For a list of 1950-1999 rail accidents, see List of 1950-1999 rail accidents. For a list of post-2000 rail accidents, see List of rail accidents.
Pre 1830
1815
1830s
1830
1831
1832
1833
1837
 August 11, 1837 – Suffolk, Virginia, United States: First head-on collision to result in passenger fatalities occurs on the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad near Suffolk when an eastbound lumber train coming down a grade at speed rounds a sharp curve and smacks into the morning passenger train from Portsmouth, Virginia. First three of thirteen stagecoach-style cars are smashed, killing three daughters of the prominent Ely family and injuring dozens of the 200 on board. They were returning from a steamboat cruise when the accident happened. An engraving depicting the moment of impact is published in Howland's "Steamboat Disasters and Railroad Accidents" in 1840.
1838
 August 7, 1838 – Harrow, Middlesex, England: From a memorial in the parish churchyard of Harrow-on-the-Hill, "To the memory of Thomas Port, son of John Port of Burton-upon-Trent in the County of Stafford, Hat Manufacturer, who near this town had both legs severed from his body by the railway train. With great fortitude he bore a second amputation by the surgeons and died from loss of blood, August 7th 1838, aged 33 years."
1840s
1840
1841
- December 24, 1841 – Sonning Cutting, England: nine passengers killed and seventeen injured when a Paddington to Bristol train ran into a landslide caused by heavy rain. The extent of the casualties in this accident called into question the practice of mixing passenger and freight wagons in fast trains. The dead were stone masons travelling in open wagons, so had no protection from either accidents or the weather, and the accident led to a public outcry, and new legislation which insisted on better carriages for passengers.
1842
Versailles train disaster
1844
1847
The Dee bridge after its collapse
- May 24, 1847 – Chester, England: Five passengers killed and many injured when a Chester to Ruabon train crashed 36 feet (11 m) into the River Dee following the collapse of a bridge. One of the girders carrying train had cracked in the middle and gave way, with most of the train ending up in the river below. The engine and tender managed to reach the other side of the bridge. The accident is important because the bridge was engineered by Robert Stephenson, and his reputation was questioned. The Dee bridge disaster led to a re-evaluation of the use of cast-iron in railway bridges, and many new bridges had to be demolished or reinforced.
1850s
1853
- January 6, 1853 – Andover, Massachusetts, United States: The Boston & Maine noon express, traveling from Boston to Lawrence, Massachusetts, derails at forty miles an hour when an axle breaks at Andover, and the only coach goes down an embankment and breaks in two. Only one is killed, the twelve-year-old son of President-elect Franklin Pierce, but it is initially reported that Pierce is also a fatality. He was on board but is only badly bruised. The baggage car and the locomotive remain on the track. President Pierce's inaugural ball is cancelled as the family grieves over the loss of their son.
- March 4, 1853 – Mount Union, Pennsylvania, United States: A Pennsylvania Railroad emigrant train stalls on the main line with engine problems in the Allegheny Mountains near Mount Union, and when the brakeman sent to flag protect the rear of the stopped train falls asleep in a shanty, an oncoming mail train shatters the rear car, killing seven, most by scalding from steam from the engine's ruptured boiler, the highest single U.S. accident toll up to this time.
- April 16, 1853 – Cheat River, West Virginia, United States: Two Baltimore & Ohio passenger cars tumble down a hundred foot ravine above the Cheat River in West Virginia, west of Cumberland, Maryland, after they are derailed by a loose rail.
- April 23, 1853 – Rancocas Creek, New Jersey: Engineer of Camden & Amboy's 2 p.m. train out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania misses stop signals and runs his train off of an open drawspan at Rancocas Creek. Fortunately, there are no fatalities.
- April 25, 1853 – Chicago, Illinois, United States: An eastbound Michigan Central Railroad express bound for Toledo, Ohio, rams a Michigan Southern Railroad emigrant train at level Grand Crossing on the city's South Side at night. Twenty-one German emigrants are killed. The Michigan Southern engineer, who was running without a headlight, could have avoided the accident by either observing a stop signal or by accelerating his train, but did neither. Grand Crossing will be grade-separated after this accident.
- May 6, 1853 – Norwalk, Connecticut, United States: First major U.S. railroad bridge disaster occurs when a New Haven Railroad engineer neglects to check for open drawbridge signal. The locomotive and four and one half cars run through the open drawbridge and plunge into the Norwalk River. Forty-six passengers are crushed to death or drowned and some thirty others are severely wounded.
- May 9, 1853 – Secaucus, New Jersey, United States: A Paterson & Hudson River Railroad emigrant train has a cornfield meet with an Erie Railroad express in Hackensack Meadow near Secaucus, killing two brakemen, but no passengers.
- August 12, 1853 – Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States: Thirteen passengers are killed and fifty injured in a head-on collision on the main line of the Boston & Worcester between a seven-car excursion train with 475 on board, bound for Narragansett Bay via Providence, and a two-car train bound from Providence to Worcester. They collide at the Valley Falls station, near Pawtucket. Believed to be the earliest wreck photographed, with the daguerreotype taken by a Mr. L. Wright of Pawtucket forming the basis for an engraving a fortnight later in the New York Illustrated News.
 5 October 1853 –Straffan, Ireland; 16 killed after a rear-end collision when a train breaks down and the crew were accused of neglecting to place any warning signals to the rear.- December 1853 – Secaucus, New Jersey, United States: The same two trains that crashed on May 9, 1853, a Paterson & Hudson River Railroad emigrant train and an Erie Railroad express, collide again, within one mile (1.6 km) of last spring's wreck site near Secaucus. A brakeman and one passenger die, 24 others are injured.
1854
1855
- November 1, 1855 – Gasconade, Missouri, United States: With more than 600 passengers aboard a Missouri Pacific Railroad excursion train celebrating the railway line's opening, a bridge collapsed above the Gasconade River, and the locomotive plus 12 of the 13 attached cars plunged into the water and embankment below. 31 people died and hundreds were seriously injured. Known as the Gasconade Bridge train disaster.
- December 15, 1855 – Massachusetts/New Hampshire, United States: The locomotive Dewitt Clinton, the third built in the United States, exploded on the Worcester and Nashua Railroad, killing the engineer and fireman.[1]
1856
- July 17, 1856 – Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, United States: In one of the most infamous train wrecks to ever occur in the USA, two North Pennsylvania Railroad trains collided. One train was carrying 1,500 Sunday School children enroute to a picnic. Upon impact, the boiler of the passenger train exploded and the train carrying the children derailed. 59 were instantly killed, and dozens more died from their injuries. The conductor of the passenger train committed suicide the same day, although he was later absolved of any responsibility. Also known as The Great Train Wreck of 1856.
1857
1858
- /
 May 11, 1858 – Utica, New York, United States: Two New York Central trains, a westbound freight and the eastbound Cincinnati Express, pass on a forty-foot wood trestle over Sauquoit Creek, three miles (5 km) from Utica. It collapses under their weight, utterly destroying the passenger consist, killing nine and injuring 55.
- / August 23, 1858 – near Round Oak railway station, Stourbridge, England: Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. Part of a passenger train ran away downhill after a coupling failure and collided with a following passenger train. Fourteen fatalities, 50 serious injuries, 170 minor injuries.
1859
1860s
1861
1863
 February 19, 1863 – Chunky Creek Train Wreck of 1863: A Mississippi Southern train was headed for the battlefield at Vicksburg where the Confederate forces were in desperate need for reinforcements in the defense of the city against the assault of Sherman and the Union Army.
1864
An immigrant train runs through an open swing bridge near Beloeil, Quebec, in 1864.
1865
1867
- December 18, 1867 – Angola, New York, United States: The Angola Horror - The Buffalo-bound New York Express of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern derails its last coach, due to poor track maintenance, and it plunges forty feet off a truss bridge into Big Sister Creek just after departing Angola. The next car is also pulled from the track and rolls down the far embankment. Stoves set both coaches afire and fifty are killed - three manage to crawl from the wreckage. Forty more are injured. The train actually continues for some distance before the crew realizes an accident has happened. {One reference reports 44 were killed. See [2]}.
1868
1870s
1871
1873
Wood River Jct. accident, 1873
1874
- September 10, 1874 – Thorpe, Norfolk, England: Head-on collision on single line track, in which 25 were killed and more than 100 injured. The cause was administrative error which led to both trains being given permission to run in opposite directions at the same time. The accident led directly to the introduction of automatic control systems to manage traffic on single-track railways.
1875
Lagerlunda rail accident, 1875
 November 16, 1875 – Lagerlunda, Östergötland: Unclear signalling between a station master and a steam engine driver leads to a train leaving the station although another train is approaching on the single line track. 9 people were killed in the head-on collision shortly after. The station master was sentenced to 6 months of prison.[2]
1876
- January 21, 1876 – Abbots Ripton rail disaster, Cambridgeshire, England: Icy conditions cause signals to jam in clear position when they were set at danger. Thirteen passengers lost their lives in the collisions while 53 passengers and 6 crew members were injured.
- August 7, 1876 – Radstock rail accident, Somerset, England: Catalogue of errors on mismanaged line result in head-on collision on single line. Fifteen passengers killed.
 December 26, 1876 – Hansted, Denmark: The two locomotives in a snow plough train separate under unclear circumstances and crash, killing nine locomotive crew and injuring 26 workmen.- December 29, 1876 – Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster, Ashtabula, Ohio, United States: As Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Train No. 5, The Pacific Express, crosses the Ashtabula River bridge, the Howe truss structure collapses, dropping second locomotive of two and 11 passenger cars into the frozen creek 70 feet (21 m) below. A fire is started by the car stoves, and of the 159 people onboard, 64 are injured and 92 killed.
1878
- January 14, 1878 – Tariffville, Connecticut, United States: A double-headed ten-car Connecticut Western Railroad special train of the faithful, returning from a revival held in Hartford, crosses the Tariffville Bridge over the Farmington River near midnight, and the structure collapses. Both locomotives and the first four cars plunge into the ice-covered river, killing seventeen and injuring 43.
 January 30, 1878 – Emu Plains, New South Wales, Australia: Two goods trains collide at Emu Plains when the guard of the train heading east went down the Lapstone Zig Zag instead of waiting for the train from Penrith to come up first. Five people were killed.
1879
Fallen Tay Bridge from the north
 December 28, 1879 – Scotland: The Tay Rail Bridge collapses in a violent storm while a train is crossing it. Seventy-five lives are lost (estimate-60 victims' names are known of whom about 46 remains were recovered). The subsequent investigation concludes that "the bridge was badly designed, badly constructed and badly maintained" and lays the major blame on the designer, Sir Thomas Bouch. William Topaz McGonagall produces his epic poem The Tay Bridge Disaster to commemorate the event. It is the worst ever train disaster to date, and shocks engineers into creating an improved crossing both on the Tay, as well as the famous Forth bridge.
1880s
1881
- July 6, 1881 – Boone, Iowa, United States: A Chicago and North Western Railway locomotive runs tender-first, westbound over the line out of Boone to check the tracks during a heavy summer rainstorm in the Des Moines River Valley and plunges into Honey Creek as the weakened bridge collapses. Spunky, Irish-born, seventeen-year-old Kate Shelley, who lives close by the accident site, realizes that the late night eastbound express coming from Moingona, a mile to the west, has to be flagged down, lest it pile into gap at Honey Creek. To reach the station, she must cross the long bridge over the Des Moines River in the storm. Arriving at the depot, she relates what she has seen, and the express train is halted. She then accompanies the rescue train to the failed bridge and helps locate the surviving engine crew, two of whom had survived the 25 foot plunge into the flood and who have found refuge above the waters on tree limbs. For her part in keeping a small accident from becoming much worse, Kate Shelley becomes a national folk heroine. The new bridge over the Des Moines River is named in her honor as the 'Kate Shelley High Bridge'. As of mid-2007, the bridge is due to be replaced by a new structure capable of higher capacity and speed by the Union Pacific which absorbed the Chicago & Northwestern. The old alignment may become a road bridge.
1882
- January 13, 1882 – Spuyten Duyvil, New York, United States: Hudson River Railroad's Tarrytown Special collides with rear of the halted Atlantic Express near Spuyten Duyvil at night, telescoping the last two coaches which also catch fire. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper publishes full front-page engraving on January 21, 1882 showing trainmen, passengers, and local farmers rolling giant snowballs in an attempt to extinguish the blaze. State Senator and sleeping car magnate Webster Wagner was among the dead.
 September 3 1882; Hugstetten, Germany: After heavy weather the rail became washed out and the train most probably was running too fast. About 180 people killed.
1883
1884
1887
- January 4, 1887 – Republic, Ohio, United States: A westbound Baltimore & Ohio passenger express train hits a stalled eastbound freight which was supposed to have taken a siding for it to pass, on a bitterly cold night, one half mile west of Republic. The forward cars of the express telescope and then burn completely, the last two sleepers are spared. The exact count of fatalities remains unknown but at least nine victims who perish in the fire are counted.
- February 5, 1887 – Hartford, Vermont, United States; Worst rail accident in Vermont history when the Central Vermont Montreal Express goes off the White River bridge at White River Junction at 2 a.m. on a bitter winter night; 38 are killed and 40 injured.
- March 14, 1887 – West Roxbury, Massachusetts, United States: "The Forest Hills Disaster"; also, "The Forest Ridge Disaster" - A morning Boston & Providence Railroad train, inbound to Boston, is passing over the "Tin Bridge", a Howe truss, at Bussey Street in the Roslindale section of West Roxbury when it collapses, killing twenty-three commuters and school children and injuring several hundred. Bridge design was found to be faulty.
- August 10-August 11, 1887 – The Great Chatsworth Train Wreck in Chatsworth, Illinois, United States: Fifteen car train of fully-occupied Pullman sleepers and coaches on the Toledo, Peoria and Western bound for Niagara Falls, comes to a wooden trestle over a shallow "run" just before midnight; the engineer sees that it is on fire too late to stop the double-headed train from crossing the weakened structure and the consist with over 600 on board crashes to a stop as the lead engine collapses it. The cars in the front half telescope into one another and some 84 are killed with injuries estimated at 279. This accident inspires morbid ballad "The Chatsworth Wreck" that includes the verse, "the dead and dying mingled with the broken beams and bars; an awful human carnage, a dreadful wreck of cars."
- August 17, 1887 – Washington, D.C., United States: Baltimore & Ohio Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Express enters the city from Maryland, out of control. At sixty miles an hour it derails on curve at Terracotta, demolishing several buildings as well as the train set. The engineer had been trying to make up time when he discovered that his brakes had failed. The engineer is killed and many passengers injured.
1888
Blackshear trestle wreck, 1888
- March 17, 1888 – Blackshear, Georgia, United States: Most of the West India Fast Mail Train from New York to Jacksonville is wrecked when two-thirds of a 300 foot long, 25 foot high trestle collapses. The accident is caused by a broken rail under the lead baggage car, which gets off the track. The train safely crosses the bridge over the Hurricane River, but at about 9:30 a.m. the baggage car suddenly whirls over and strikes the subsequent trestle, which gives way. All but the detached engine tumbles below -- a combination car, 3 baggage cars, a smoking car, a coach, 2 Pullman sleepers, and the private car of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Killed are 20, with 35 injured. Among the latter is Elisha P. Wilbur, president of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who together with members of his family and friends was traveling in the private car. George Gould and his wife escape serious injury. The engine runs into town for help.
- October 10, 1888 – Mud Run, Pennsylvania, United States: Following a mass meeting held by the Total Abstinence Union in the Pennsylvania mountains at Hazelton, in which eight special temperance trains are operated from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, by the Lehigh Valley Railroad carrying some 5,000 conventioneers, the consists are directed to keep a ten-minute interval between them upon return. At about 8 p.m., the sixth train with 500 on board stops near Mud Run along the banks of the Lehigh River and shortly thereafter the following section plows into it, telescoping the last car of the stopped train halfway through the coach ahead, killing 64 of the 200 in these two wooden cars outright. Another 100 are injured. Newspaper accounts suggest that temperance pledges were forgotten by some of the victims after they returned to the train.
1889
1890s
1890
- November 11, 1890 – Norton Fitzwarren, England: A passenger train collides with a goods train that had been shunted onto the main line - the signalman had forgotten that the line was obstructed. Ten people killed, eleven seriously injured.
1891
- April 19, 1891 – Kipton, Ohio, United States: A passenger train and a freight train collide just east of the Kipton depot, 8 dead. This accident was attributed to one of the engineers' watches having stopped and being four minutes behind. Webster C. Ball, watch dealer and inspector of Cleveland, Ohio is later appointed as Watch Inspector for the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad.
 June 14, 1891 – Munchenstein, Basle, Switzerland: An iron girder bridge collapses as a crowded passenger train passes over it, 71 dead, 171 injured. Switzerland's worst ever railway accident.- December 4, 1891 – East Thompson, Connecticut, United States: Four trains collide on the New York and New England Railroad. Two freight trains collide due to sloppy dispatching, jack-knifing several cars. The Long Island & Eastern States Express passenger train then hits the wreckage, killing the engineer and fireman. Shortly thereafter, despite an attempt to flag it down, the Norwich Steamboat Express also piles into the rear of the Eastern States Express, setting the last sleeper on fire as well as the locomotive cab although both engine crew survive. In all, only two deaths are confirmed although the body of one passenger is never found and presumed dead. See Great East Thompson Train Wreck.
1892
1895
1896
 Easter Monday, April 6, 1896 – Llanberis, Wales: On the opening day of the Snowdon Mountain Railway, locomotive No. 1 "Ladas" runs away and derails before plummeting down a steep slope where it is destroyed. The driver and fireman jumped clear and the carriages were stopped by the guard. One passenger jumped off the moving train and fell beneath the wheels. He later died from his injuries. The line then closed for over a year before re-opening on April 19, 1897.- July 30, 1896: 1896 Atlantic City rail crash - two trains collide at a crossing just west of Atlantic City, New Jersey, crushing five loaded passenger coaches, killing 50 and seriously injuring around 60.
- September 15, 1896: The Crash at Crush - Showman William George Crush convinces officials of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT, known as "the Katy"), to let him stage a colossal train wreck for a crowd that will ride to the site near the town of West, Texas, producing much passenger revenue for the company. A one-day town is thrown up and named Crush, boasting a 2,100 foot platform and tank cars supplying 100 faucets. Two six-car trains of obsolete rolling stock, pulled by dolled-up locomotives are let loose at each other over a one-mile (1.6 km) course with spectacular result. When the wrecked engines' boilers explode, flying shrapnel kills at least three of the 30,000 spectators (some sources estimate 40,000) and injures many more.
1897
1899
1900s
1900
- April 30, 1900 – Vaughan, Mississippi, United States: Illinois Central passenger train No. 1, the Cannonball, crashes into the rear of freight train No. 83 which is fouling the main line out of a siding at 3:52 a.m. on the Water Valley District of the Mississippi Division. Engineer of 2-6-0 Mogul No. 382, John Luther "Casey" Jones, the only fatality, is found to be solely at fault by the ensuing investigation for having disregarded safety warnings behind the stalled train. The accident spawns the vastly popular "Ballad of Casey Jones" by roundhouse worker and friend of the deceased, Wallace Saunders, and the root theme for a Grateful Dead song titled "Casey Jones".
- May 22, 1900 – Oakland, California, United States: Southern Pacific passenger local is mistakenly switched into a narrow gauge track. The iron rail curls up beneath the locomotive, flipping it over and killing the engineer and fireman. The engineer, Frank Shaw, is last seen shutting down the locomotive’s steam and is credited with saving the lives of the passengers, none of whom are killed or seriously injured.
- August 13, 1900 – Gwynn's Falls, Maryland, United States: Baltimore & Ohio 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive and tender are knocked off the Carrollton Viaduct at Gwynn's Falls by a side-strike and land inverted in the stream below.
- September 2, 1900 – Hatfield, Pennsylvania, United States: Going from Souderton to Philadelphia, a milk train collided with an excursion train, killing 13 people and injuring 45.
1902
1903
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May 8, 1842 – Meudon (Versailles), France: During the inauguration ceremonies of the Paris to Saint-Germain railway, a returning train caught fire at Meudon after the locomotive broke an axle and the train derailed. 55 passengers were killed trapped in the carriages, including the explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. This led to the abandonment of the then-common practice of locking passengers in their carriages in France. This was the first really major world railway disaster, usually referred to as the Versailles train crash.
- October 27 - A Great Western Railway passenger train collides with the tail end of gravel train at Baptiste Creek, Canada West. At least 52 people are killed.
May 13, 1897 – A military train derails in Puka, Estonia. 61 people are killed in the accident.
The aftermath of the Wreck of the Old 97.
