July 25, 1832

On this day in history on 1832 the first recorded railroad accident occurred.

History on the Rails

The east meets the west as the final spike is put into the railroad that united the two.

Railroads began to emerge in the United States in the 1830s and a decade later there were almost 3,000 miles of track. During the Civil War (1861-65) the country's rail system expanded rapidly to allow for quicker movement of supplies between the north and south as the two sides of the country fought each other. At the outbreak of the war the national rail network had 30,000 miles to it.

In 1869 transcontinental railroad service became possible when a golden spike united the tracks of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad. The over 1,700 miles of tracks allowed for rail transportation from the east to the west for the first time.

A Railway Accident

Granite Railway in Quincy, MA. One of the country's first rail systems.

The first railroad accident occurred in 1832 when four people were thrown from a vacant rail car in Quincy, Massachusetts on the Granite Railway. They were viewing the process of transporting stone when a cable on the vacant car snapped. The four victims were thrown off the train over a 34-foot cliff. One man was killed and the others were seriously injured.

Although this was the first railway accident it was far from the last. Over 2,000 crossing collisions and more than 1,000 train derailments occur each year in the U.S.!