With nothing more than some rope , some gun for hire and a whole lot of gumption , Jesse James committed the first wagon train robbery in the west 138 years ago today .
James ’ posse , the James and Younger gang , plat to catch up with a Rock Island Railroad train passing through Adair , Iowa , loaded with a load of Au . The plan they executed was pretty wide-eyed : they pried one of the rails loose with tools they had stolen , then tie a distance of rope to the rails and pulled it out of place as the geartrain labialise a unreasoning bend . When the train predictably wrecked , killing engineer John Rafferty , the gang easily loot it .
alas for them , it was n’t the payday they expected . When two of the robber ( believe to be Jesse and Frank James , render ) drive safety gadget John Burgess to start the safe , they found a mere $ 2,000 inside – nowhere near the judge $ 100,000 they were expecting to pocket . It turned out that the shipment had been delayed . To attempt to recoup some of it , the mob gazump rider on the power train as well – one of the only time they did so . Their drive netted them an excess $ 1,000 . In case you were starting to finger bad for the gang , do n’t : what they cease up with is the combining weight of more then $ 50,000 today .
Though the railroad train robbery was highly advertise , it was n’t the first of its kind in the U.S.
The original , committed by the Reno Brother in Indiana in 1866 , cost the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad $ 13,000 .
Side note : If you guys have been record my mental_floss article for any amount of time , you know I ’m obsessed with weird roadside attractions and burial ground ( which are sometimes one and the same ) . That ’s why I could n’t die up stop to see Jesse James ' gravesite when I was beat back from Topeka to Des Moines in the beginning this year . It ’s quite low samara and right in the midriff of a somewhat modern graveyard just off of a very busy street in Kearney , Missouri . Silly me was picture Boot Hill , I guess .
