Train wreck

Montparnasse derailment, train wreck at Gare Montparnasse, Paris, France, 1895

Wheels from Engine Tender #013 which was destroyed in a wreck in 1907 on a bridge over Village Creek between Silsbee and Beaumont, Texas. The wheels are on display in the Arizona Railway Museum.

A train wreck or train crash is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track; or an accident, such as when a train wheel jumps off a track in a derailment; or when a boiler explosion occurs. Train wrecks have often been widely covered in popular media and in folklore.

Legal consequences

Because train wrecks usually cause widespread property damage as well as injury or death, the intentional wrecking of a train in regular service is often treated as an extremely serious crime.

For example, in the U.S. state of California, the penalty for intentionally causing a non-fatal train wreck is life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.^[1] For a fatal train wreck, the possible sentences are either life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or death.

The unusual harshness of California's train wrecking statute has been expressly recognized by its appellate courts. The Supreme Court of California explained in 1972 that train wrecking is one of only eight crimes in the California Codes for which a capital sentence is authorized.^[2] The California Court of Appeal pointed out the next year that (at that time) train wrecking was the only other crime besides aggravated kidnapping in the Penal Code for which the Legislature had expressly established the punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.^[3]

See also

Versailles rail accident in 1842, 55 people were killed including the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville.

• Lists of rail accidents

• List of accidents and disasters by death toll

• Classification of railway accidents

• Boiler explosion
• Bridge disaster
• Derailment
• Runaway
• Signal passed at danger
• Tram accident

• The crash at Crush, Texas, an intentional train wreck conducted as a publicity stunt
• Emergency management
• Head-on collision
• Railroad accident victims
• "Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train", folk song about politicians and bank failures

References

1. ↑ "Section 219". California Penal Code. Retrieved 2011-03-30. 
2. ↑ People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, 652 (1972).
3. ↑ In re Maston, 33 Cal. App. 3d 559, 564 (1973).

Further reading

• Aldrich, Mark. Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965 (2006) excerpt

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Train wrecks.

• BBC News: World's worst rail disasters
• A signalman (1874). A voice from the signal-box: or, railway accidents and their causes. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 

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