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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 moving 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.
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