Fun Facts 618-622 (Train Robberies)
Fun Fact #618 Coaching Advice
A common trope in certain fictional works is for a forgotten piece of technology to be rediscovered and change the world. Yet has this ever happened in real life? Surprisingly, yes! From the printing press, to Nasa’s forgotten recipe for the rocket fuel used on The Apollo rockets, rediscovering advancements is part of life (and why engineering notebooks are so important). However, once advancement may surprise you to also fit in this category: The Stagecoach.
Interestingly we don’t actually know when the first “Stagecoach” was invented, but when a manuscript from 1200 describing a carriage lifted off its axles by green wood, and animal hide which would bend to absorb shock was found during the early 1600s Britain took it seriously. Using this “New” tech, they were able to make trips of people, and cargo between towns much easier in short periods of time, allowing for the first recorded Stagecoach route in England, 1610. This also made them perfect for war supply shipments, Mail carriers, and more.
As time went on the Stagecoach’s tech was only improved with steel springs replacing the former shock absorbers (See “The Flying-Coach”), and other inventions such as The McAdam road, whose style is the basis for the modern Method of American road Construction in use today.
Image of a Flying Coach in the 1884 painting "The Mail Coach" by John Charles Maggs
Fun Fact #619 Those Blasted Boilers______________________________________
As Sage Coaches continued to advance in technology, they faced the problem of success. They were now the largest method for moving Mail, People, and most importantly Payroll, across the World’s Frontiers, yet that success brought with it people hoping to leech off that success committing highway robbery.
How did criminals keep finding the coaches? Simple; The newly constructed but limited system of roads would funnel coach drivers into the same couple of paths, and both the Mail and payroll were held to be incredibly consistent as to when they were shipped making it easy for criminals and outlaws to plot their attacks well in advance. It actually got so bad that some stagecoach drivers would purposefully delay their departure and pay the late fine, just to experience a safer journey.
Worse yet was the system of “Stages” along routes allowing riders to quickly switch horse teams to continue. While great at its job, it provided a local hub criminals could attack. They didn't even need any coaches to be present when robbed either as the horses' provisions were valuable, yet relatively unguarded. They even kept schedules for expected coaches months in advance, providing a way for criminals to plan their Highway robberies with even greater accuracy than by pattern recognition.
Finally to resolve this issue Countries began adopting the newly developed trains quickly overthrowing Coaches for moving freight and people. Yet now a new issue arose, it was even easier to discover routes, and schedules for criminals thanks to the more limited tracks, loading stations, and even Stages having to be specifically modified to accommodate Trains at major hubs. Despite these shortfalls, Rail still took over leading to the last Stage Coach robbery happening in 1916 for $4,000 (about $119,0000 in today’s money).
Image of a 1831 "Dewitt Clinton" wood burning train still used Stagecoaches as Train Cars. Image from The Milwaukee Sentinel files
Fun Fact #620 Feeling Railroaded_____________________________________-
Thanks to the push to avoid the dangers of Stagecoaches, early Railroad companies in The US moved quickly with little oversight. To meet demand most companies tried to use the existing roads of the day as locations where they would build their tracks. The main issue with this is most of that land near settlements, mines, cities, and even stages, was privately owned.
The only reason many of these roads existed where they did was because of Public Access Easements, meaning people were allowed to move through to access needed areas and resources (like water, or property not accessible through other means). Not realizing this some early companies just began laying track, which forced people to either sell to the companies at prices the companies set, or just have it stolen with little being done to protect the land owners. Thus the term “Being Railroaded" was invented. The people worst off were Stages, as while companies owned the Stages, they didnt own the homes which housed the workers, but those too were often seized to expand the Stages into Stations. Train companies then had to deal with large amounts of unhappy former employees resulting in private contractors like the Pinkertons running security at a number of stations.
Yet here we run into an interesting situation, since the people the companies had just displaced, also happened to be highly skilled at moving product quickly, and held intimate knowledge of when goods, services, and payroll were scheduled to move through their area. Yup, this is going is exactly where you think, as 1866 saw The Reno Gang used dynamite to derail and conduct one of the first major Railroad robberies near Seymour, Indiana making international news. This accidentally exposed just how vulnerable railroads were, leading to an explosion of railroad robberies worldwide.
The Epidemic of Railroad robberies only really ended when WW2 led to countries guarding their logistics much more closely. Additionally many Rail Robber organizations across the world were recruited by the Allies to be saboteurs behind Axis lines, in return for pardons and jobs in the Post war period, effectively ending large scale railroad robberies for almost 80 years.
Fun Fact #621 Eminent Domain_____________________________________________________
An interesting side effect to the whole Rail debacle was the curious court case of Khol V. United States in 1875. The case came up because the US sought to acquire land for Federal buildings along with in the city of Columbus Ohio, but the land owner sought to block this. He argued that under the 4th and 8th amendments the seizure was unjust and constituted Theft. During the trial a counter point was made that railroad companies had been seizing land for years for common use without legal issues.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Government since the ability of Federal Courts to seize land for Governmental use was allowed by the Judiciary Act of 1789 (during congress’s first session where they passed the Bill of rights), however to not violate the 4th and 8th amendments the Land owner must be justly compensated for the land. To allow this the 4th amendment does not apply to Federal investigations of property value to find the “just amount owed”. Additionally the Land MUST be used to a public interest to avoid an 8th amendment violation, but how it accomplishes this can change after being taken (such as given to a private company to better the local Economy often ComEd in terms of the energy sector). Thus this ruling established Eminent Domain as a power of the Federal Government.
An interesting tidbit is the dissenting opinion (Field's Dissent) raised the issue of Jurisdiction which has never been legally addressed. The Act of 1789 only established land Seizure power with the Federal Government and not State or local governments, so theoretically if a state seizes land (outside of a foreclosure, or condemnation) it’s technically illegal. Additionally only the Federal Courts were granted this authority so even if the order must come from a Federal Court. Although this issue has never been challenged since it’s generally assumed the court would rule in favor of the Government so long as it complies with the restrictions laid out by the 1875, 1992, and 1998 Court decisions (those other two clarified what a "Taking" was and if Private companies could trigger Eminent Domain which is a whole other rabbit hole).
This decision did result in several Railroad companies retroactively paying people they seized land from to avoid lawsuits.
The Last Spike by Thomas Hill 1881
Fun Fact # 622 Industrial Covid___________________________________________-
Today railroads are in a much different state than they were just 5 years ago. The Main reason for this was the Global Shutdown pushed in response to Covid-19. These shutdowns reduced the volume of freight being shipped and caused a decrease in Public transit. Additionally Investors during that time pushed for the mass adoption of PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) which lowers the volume of trains in movement in favor of longer more efficient trains while also lowering maintenance costs. Together this reduced demand, and increased efficiency allowed railroad companies to reduce their employees by almost 1/3rd EACH YEAR between 2020 and 2023.
While this all sounds good on paper this has created some issues similar to the conditions when Rail was first introduced: Namely a large group of people who are intimately familiar with how and when freight moves finding themselves suddenly without work. Thanks to the PSR system trains often can reach multiple miles in length and are often only guarded by a basic fence and making theft easy. The operators on the trains might not even realize goods were missing until unloading days later. They also conducted “Strategic Theft” where documents are modified to divert shipments or pose as carriers. Additionally some gangs have even begun using unique Graffiti to track Train Car movements which allows them to better estimate what a car is loaded with without needing to look at the shipping information since specific goods are loaded at specific sites. They do this by taking a picture and then using AI to check where that Graffiti was last sighted. This information is then spread to thieves in the area where the train will be robbed. All of which has led to some of the world's first large scale (>$100,000) train robberies since 1945.
Worst of all there currently seems to be an acceleration in Rail Theft as 2024 alone saw a 40% increase in theft in The US alone (> 650,000 separate incidents) and the advancements in this trade are increasing with some devices found recently to cause unexpected stops where goods can be removed in remote locations. This is why some companies are selling off their Rail segments to focus on their core Client Services (Wells Fargo for example). The issue has recently gotten even worse as ITAR equipment set to be received by The National Guard started falling victim to theft just a few weeks ago out in California and Arizona. As a result The Government has started sending The National Guard to assist in securing Trains in the short term, while policy changes (such as train length limits, security minimums, changing shipping standards and more) are being researched and implemented. Interestingly this along with other issues stemming from The Covid Shutdowns such as delays from suppliers has begun being referred to as "Industrial Covid".
Image of a Modern Train by TriStar Plastics
