Robbing Trains in the Days of the Old West

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In Shotguns and Stagecoaches: The Brave Men Who Rode for Wells Fargo in the Wild West (no, the book was not published by Wells Fargo), John Boessenecker describes several train robberies, a few in some detail. As a result, aficionados get a sense of how outlaws managed to rob trains—not an easy task, when you think about it.

Although this painting is dramatic, it's also probably unrealistic, as trains were not often, if ever, robbed in this manner.

(Click the image to enlarge it.)

For example, Andrew Johns (“Big Jack”) Davis and five of his gang “slipped aboard a Central Pacific train,” and, after capturing the crew, uncoupled the passenger cars from “the engine, coal tender, and express car,” thereby preventing “the many passengers, some of whom were armed, from” assisting the crew. The engine continued to a rendezvous point farther along the track, where an accomplice waited with horses and mules, and the robbers made off with $46,000 from the express car (108).

Another robbery was more complicated and protracted. After breaking into a section house, Frank Hawley, David Francis, and their gang of three captured, gagged, and bound five Chinese workers, locking them and four captured “white section bosses . . . in the water-tank building.” As the eastbound passenger train approached, at 1:00 AM, a gang member, using a red lantern, flagged down the engineer (221).

Section house

After the train stopped, the gang captured and bound the crew, leaving them inside the section house (a small building for storing tools and equipment needed to maintain a railroad section) with the gang's other captives. The gang next ordered Aaron Ross, the express messenger, to vacate the express car, but Ross refused, arming himself with a shotgun. Despite exchanges of gunfire between Ross and the gang, despite the gang's attempt to “batter” their way through the wall of the car using coal picks, and despite the gang's forcing the brakeman to uncouple the express car from the “mail and baggage coach” and repeatedly ram the express car in an effort to get to Ross or to force him out of the express car, Ross continued to resist the gang. Their hope of burning the express care was dashed when the gang realized that its engine burned coal, not wood (222-223).

Baggage coach

During the gang's unsuccessful two-hour-long siege, Ross held out, wounding two of the robbers, one seriously. When the gang learned that the next passenger train would arrive at the station within half an hour, they finally gave up and left (224).

Other train robberies are described as well, including an unsuccessful “trestle robbery” (291-297), which is similar in some ways to an incident in my novel-in-progress, tentatively called Bound for Glory.