Robbing trains

True West has an article by Mark Boardman (of which this is only part, sorry) on train robbery:

Face it, nothing says 'Old West' quite like a good, old-fashioned, American train robbery.
The image is burned in our brains: a gang of masked men stops the locomotive, holds passengers and crew at bay with gleaming .45s, blows the express safe with some well-placed explosives, then rides hell-for-leather to safety astride the best horses money can buy (or that they could steal).
That’s not just a stereotype, sold by television and movie Westerns and ink-stained wretches over the past hundred and forty years.  It really happened that way, more or less.
Take the first train stick-up in US history, nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, which did not happen in the West.
It was just after 8 pm on 5 May 1865, and the Ohio & Mississippi train was a few minutes out of Cincinnati, Ohio, headed for St. Louis, Missouri.  At a remote location near North Bend, Ohio— within sight of the Ohio River and almost to the Indiana line— the train went off the tracks; somebody had pulled one of the rails.
The engine, express and baggage cars tipped over. The passenger cars stayed upright, but several of the riders were injured.  An estimated fifteen to twenty desperados jumped aboard, firing their pistols and ordering everyone to shell out.  Five of the outlaws went to the express car and used gunpowder to blow open the safes.
After about an hour, the robbers left, taking skiffs to cross the Ohio River into Kentucky, where they mounted horses and rode away. Nobody knows the exact take, although some reports said they got up to thirty thousand dollars in government bonds and bank notes, and several thousand dollars in cash and valuables from the passengers.
Federal troops pursued the thieves (technically, the Civil War was still on and civilian authorities lacked the power to cross state lines, especially into a border territory like Kentucky). For some reason, though, they didn’t head out for eight hours; some stories say the Union officer in charge had to be sobered up before they could start the chase.
When the posse got to Verona, Kentucky, they found that the robbers had celebrated with wine, women and song, and there were even some stolen bank notes dropped in the streets.  But the gang was never caught; the crime remains unsolved.
The North Bend train robbery set the standard for the countless railroad stick-ups that took place over the next sixty years.
Some of those historic train lines are still in operation (as well as several that never suffered the indignity of a hold-up).  They keep the Old West alive in interesting, informative, and fun fashion.
Seeing as we’re talking about some of those railroads, it seemed appropriate to tie those in with some of the more interesting train robberies in Old West history.
So climb aboard, and hide your valuables! 

Robbing the Rails from the Mountains to the PlainsThe first train robbery by the James-Younger Gang had some success and some failure— and showed just how little the outlaws knew about gold and silver bars.
It happened on 21 July 1873, and involved the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific Railway, about three miles east of Adair, Iowa.  As the train went around a bend, an unseen hand pulled one of the rails. The engine, tender, baggage, and express cars went off the track and rolled down an embankment, killing the engineer and injuring several passengers.
Three masked outlaws jumped into the express car, while two others held guns on the passengers and crew. The leader (who yanked off his mask) got into the safe and removed its contents, but kept asking: “Where’s the bullion?”  The postal clerk pointed to more than a ton of gold and silver bars underneath, but it didn’t compute with the bandit chief, who apparently thought bullion was coinage. It wouldn’t have done much good if he had understood what the term meant; the gang hadn’t brought a wagon to haul the bars away.
So the outlaws got about $2,300, not millions. They didn’t rob the passengers (which they would do in a couple of later train jobs). As they left, the leader expressed regret over the death of the engineer. The gang mounted horses and headed for Missouri. There were no arrests, although the St. Louis police identified the robbers as Frank and Jessie James, Cole Younger, George Sheppard, and Arthur McCoy. Descriptions of the outlaw chief matched Jessie James perfectly.

The 3 November 1887, robbery of a Denver & Rio Grande train near Grand Junction, Colorado is the stuff of legend, in that it was the first big criminal act by Butch Cassidy (along with pals Tom McCarty and Matt Warner).
Nice story. But here’s what actually happened:
The train was about five miles east of Grand Junction when it ran into a pile of rocks blocking the tracks. When the locomotive stopped, three masked men entered the express car, while another held a gun on the engineer.
Express messenger Dick Williams had guts. The robbers gained easy entry to a small safe (with almost nothing in it).  But when they ordered him to open the larger safe, Williams told them he couldn’t, that it could only be unlocked at the destination.  They threatened to kill him; he continued his bluff. The outlaws finally accepted his ruse and left, getting only about $150 in change and jewelry.
The railroad put up a three thousand dollar reward for capturing the outlaws, and the US government tossed in another thousand— a very big total for the time.  It had the desired effect, pushing several lawmen to go after the robbers. Gunnison County Sheriff Doc Shores, who had a reputation as a dogged pursuer, was among them.
Eventually, Shores and his deputies caught up with the four men in Utah; they confessed and did prison time for the job.
But Bob Smith, Bob Boyd, Ed Rhodes, and Jack Smith were definitely not Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. The Hole-in-the-Wall guys were still a few years away from troubling the trains.

You’ve seen the movie: Butch and Sundance rob the Union Pacific Flyer near Wilcox, Wyoming but, in trying to open the safe, they blow the express car to smithereens.
It’s a great scene, but it didn’t exactly happen that way.
Sure, members of the Wild Bunch did stick up that train on 2 June 1899. And a bit of mayhem ensued. But Butch wasn’t there; Harvey Logan (Kid Curry) led the Sundance Kid and George “Flatnose” Currie in the heist.
It started at 2:18 am, when two masked men, using red lanterns, flagged down the train. They forced the engineer to take the locomotive, tender, and express and mail cars down the track while they dynamited a trestle behind them. They then blew open the door of the express car, knocking the messenger unconscious (a third outlaw had joined them at this point). That was when they tried to open the safes. And they used too much explosive, and the express car was blown to pieces. The robbers then grabbed an estimated fifty thousand dollars in bank notes and currency, all of which were damaged in the blast, making them easy to identify.
What followed was one of the largest manhunts in the history of Wyoming, with dozens of lawmen in various posses going after the robbers (attracted by rewards totaling more than eighteen thousand dollars). During the pursuit, the outlaws shot and killed Converse County Sheriff Josiah Hazen. But they eluded capture; justice would have to wait for the three bad men.

Rico says that he's joining up with Six-Gun Justice to do just that (using a red lantern, too)...