Train robbery

Trivia
Famous train robbers include Bill Miner, Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. Jesse James is mistakenly thought to have completed the first successful train robbery in the American West when on July 21, 1873 they took US $3,000 from the Rock Island Railroad after derailing it southwest of the town of Adair, Iowa. However, the first peacetime train robbery in the USA actually 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 peacetime train robbery in the United States.

Train robberies involved planning and the staking out of a train route and schedule. Methods of detaining the train included derailing it using explosives to destroy track (violent derail), removing the track beforehand and forcing the train to stop (light derail), or having a gang member pose as a passenger and commandeer the train.