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My fascination with trains may have been due to living within earshot of steam engines shunting cars in a train yard for the first seven years of my life. My mother was not so enamored since she had to try to keep a house and children clean in such a smokey environment; she did not miss them when we moved away; I didn’t know I missed them until a decade later when I realized they were gone from the railroad scene forever.

Much is said of the American love affair with cars, but before internal combustion, little boys (and big boys) were enamored with the noisy behemoths. But gender had nothing to do with a fascination with train wrecks – the destructive realities were spectacular and every photographer knew there was money in a good train wreck: if you could get there and take some shots, they were a guaranteed sell, especially in the form of postcards!

Collectors vie for train disaster images, and the amazing thing is the prevalence of crowds of people of all ages climbing upon the wreckage (imagine authorities allowing that kind of thing today!) Here is an exception: only a few workers tend to the laborious process of cleanup – after the crowds have done with gawking and have gone away.