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| The Reno Brothers gang |
Trains started running in the United States in the 1830s, but it wasn’t
until October 6, 1866, that some bad guys named John and Simeon Reno stopped a
moving train in Jackson County, Indiana, and grabbed $13,000 before making
their getaway.
History.com notes that parked trains in depots or rail yards had been
robbed before the Reno brothers started “the great train robbery” escapades.
Grabbing the cash boxes from trains in the middle of nowhere in the American West was profitable for a while, and the robbers piled up a lot of loot.
The railroad companies reacted and put armed guards (and sometimes
saddled horses in special box cars) on the trains to squelch the Reno brothers
and Jesse James and Butch Cassidy and their ilk. The thrill of shooting up a
moving train pretty much wore off after a few decades.
The last attempt to rob a train was carried out on November 24, 1937,
by Henry Loftus and Harry Donaldson, who bungled their plan to rob passengers
on the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Apache
Limited out of El Paso, TX. The youthful desperadoes pulled six-shooters
and grabbed some passengers’ watches, and then about 20 passengers attacked
them, “punching and kicking them in a frenzy,” and finally tying them in two
seats.
No one has made a movie about that robbery yet.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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