List of rail accidents (before 1880)
17th century 1650 England – Whickham, County Durham. Two boys die when they are run over by a wagon on a wooden coal train way. While such tramway accidents are not generally listed as rail accidents (note the lack of accidents listed for the next 163 years) this is sometimes cited as the earliest-known railway accident. 1810s 1813 February – United Kingdom – A 13-year-old boy named Jeff Bruce is killed whilst running alongside the Middleton Railway tracks. The Leeds Mercury reports that this would "operate as a warning to others". 1815 15 July – United Kingdom – Thirteen or sixteen people, mainly spectators, are killed, and 40 are injured by the boiler explosion of the experimental locomotive "Brunton's Mechanical Traveller" on the Newbottle Waggonway at Philadelphia, County Durham. 1818 28 February – United Kingdom – The driver is killed on the Middleton Railway in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire when Salamanca's boiler explodes, as a result of the force of the explosion, he was "carried, with great violence, into an adjoining field the distance of one hundred yards." "This was the result of the driver tampering with the safety valves." 1820s 1821 5 December – United Kingdom – David Brook,