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Death Rode the Rails American RR accidents & safety 1828-1965 by M Aldich w/ DJ
Death Rode the Rails
American Railroad Accidents and safety, 1828-1965
By Mark Aldrich
Hardbound with dustjacket 446 pages
Copyright 2006
Contents
List of Figures Ix
List of Tables xi
Preface xiii
Introduction 1
1. In the Beginning: American Railroad Dangers and Safety, 1828-1873 II
2. Off the Tracks: The Changing Pattern of Derailments, 1873-1900 42
3. MIL. Collisions and the Rise of Regulation, 1873-1900 70
4. The Major Risks from Minor Accidents, 1873-1900 97
5. Engineering Success and Disaster: Bridge Design and Failure, 1840-1900 130
6. Coping with the Casualties: Companies, Workers, and Injuries, 1850-1900 155
7. Safety Crisis and Safety First, 1900-1.920 181
8. Lobbying for Regulation: Transporting Hazardous Substances, 1903-1930 216
9.. Private Enterprise and Public Regulation: Safety between the Wars, 1922-1939 237
1O. Safety in War and Decline, 1940-1965 271
Conclusion. The Political Economy of Railroad Safety, 1830-1965 303
Appendix One. Nineteenth-Century Railroad Accident and Casualty Statistics 309
Appendix Two. Casualties and Accidents from Interstate Commerce Commission Statistics,
1888-1965 321
List of Abbreviations 341
Notes 343
Essay on Sources 421
Index 439
Photo gallery appears following page 236
For most of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads also had become the leading cause of violent death in the country, claiming that year the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety of incidents: spectacular train wrecks, smaller accidents in shops and yards which devastated the lives of workers and their families, and the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children killed while walking on or crossing the street-grade tracks.
The evolution of railroad safety, Aldrich demonstrates, involved the interplay of market forces, science and technology, and legal and public pressures. He considers the railroad system in its entirety: operational realities, technical constraints, economic history, internal politics, and labor management. Aldrich shows that economics initially encouraged American carriers to build and operate cheap and dangerous lines. Only over time did labor markets and public policy bring about a fresh appraisal of the trade-off between safety and output-motivating carriers to develop technological improvements that enhanced both productivity and safety.
A fascinating account of one of America's most important and dangerous industries, Death Rode the Rails will appeal to students of economics and the history of transportation, technology, labor, regulation, and business, as well as to railroad enthusiasts.
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