Railroad Accident Lawyer Says: Buckle Your Seatbelts

Massive train crashes seem the dramatic stuff of movies and novels, billowing steam engines destined for disaster, fixed irreversibly on track to collide. Indeed, in the 19th century train companies used head-on train collisions as a publicity stunt. The Crush Crash in Waco, Texas drew so many observers that Waco became, for one night, the second largest city in the state. Even this staged event ended in disaster, however, when a boiler burst and the flying debris killed two in the crowd. Unfortunately, this less-than-dramatic conclusion represents the reality of train wrecks, and these days that reality is represented in lawsuits as soon as the smoke clears.

Perhaps modern day railroads do not encounter anything so catastrophic as the rerouted steam locomotive that caused a mountain to collapse in Ayn Rand