Were there any prisoner trains in america?rambo1.
sounds kinda cool but i dont think so.
Do you have any in Canada?
buses yes trains no.rambo1.
oh ok. well what gave you the idea of people being freight? LOL
What about the big white boxcars with shackles and “UN” reporting marks?
Hmm, can you supply me a picture zugmann?
Atlanta federal pen has a siding inside the walls.
Kurt
How was Al Capone routed from Chicago to Atlanta and later from Atlanta to Alcatraz?
do they really?
Generally convicted criminals being taken to prison, or people who had been arrested and were being extradicted back to another state, would be taken in regular passenger trains. Sing Sing prison is on the Hudson River maybe 20-30 miles north of New York City; New York Central’s mainline ran thru the prison and there was a secure stop there where prisoners could be removed from the train. It was so common for guys found guilty of crimes in courts in New York to be sent by train to Singsing that going to jail came to be called “being sent up the river”.
I spent my kindergarten through 5th grade years in Union Grove, WI (please don’t ask me what I think of that town [tdn]). One very humid, sticky summer night my parents and I were watchin’ TV when we heard a pop outside.
We looked and there was a Racine County deputy sheriff runnin’ through our backyard with his weapon drawn. He’d fired a warning shot in the air and they nabbed the crook just outside our front door (had him up against our garage handcuffin’ him).
My dad said they told him the guy was an escaped con, who’d jumped from a prison train onto a freight train headed the otherway while the prison train was stopped somewhere. Union Grove is on the MILW’s Southwest Division.
I have no idea if that’s the line he jumped from - this was ~1972 (I know Nixon was the president then since my mom made a career of complaining about Tricky Dicky everyday).
Southern Pacific did operate a prison train using modified Harriman cars (for Alcatraz). I don’t know if Capone was transported this way. I posted some pics of the cars a while back. I will see if I can dig them up again.
Edit: Here is the only pic that I could find fairly quickly. There are some more floating around out there, but it would take me a while to find them: http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00016117+OP-16117
Don’t know for sure. Do know that the Erie, the Lackawanna, and later the EL, did transport prisoners from New York City to Elmira via train. In the latter years a coach was put ahead of the head end cars or first car after head end of #5 but locked off from rest of train. It was usually Friday night, too.
If you want to go deep, deep into history, the anwwer would have to be yes, especially concerning the Civil War era. Holding Point in Horseheads, NY, near Elmira, was a Civil War POW camp. The Erie would bring trainloads of prisoners to the camp. One train of note enroute to Elmira derailed just west Shahola, PA along the Delaware killing many and wounding many more. The injured were carried back to an inn near the Shahola Station; the bar of that inn still serves imbibers today. Check Erie and Civil War histories for details as I am writing off the top of my head.
Actually, there have been many prison trains in America’s past. During the civil war many prisoners of war were transferred from the front to POW camps behind the lines on both sides.
Toward the end of the Indian wars out west, trains were again used to ship some tribal leaders to prison.
Again, during WW2 German POW’s were moved by train from US ports to POW camps inside the US.
inch
I see Herny beat me to it
Ever hear the song “The Midnight Special”?
It is about the Huntsville Texas State prisons practice of putting newly released prisoners on the midnight train to Houston from Huntsville.
The idea was to get the prisoner away from the small rural city of Huntsville after release.
The practice ended in the late 1960s, due to the large volume of prisoners being released and the ending of MoPac passenger train service between Dallas and Houston.
Now TDOC buses them into Houston, and dumps them at the downtown bus station.
Catching the midnight special is still a prison slang term for being released.
I am fairly certain the practice and the slang term are not unique to the Texas prison system.
I am not at liberty to say whether I have a photo or not…
he also has one of big foot…the lockness monster… and him and a few E.T.s haveing a group hug on the front of an NS locomotive…
csx engineer
Yes, Al Capone and others were the first prisoners moved from Atlanta to San Francisco. They were transported by rail to go to Alcatraz (The Rock). They were moved to a warf in San Francisco and the cars were barged to Alcatraz Island. I have been on the “Rock”: and it is like a nece place to visit BUT I DO NOT want to live there. Very secure, Fast current (up to 5 knots , eddies and whirlpools due to way the bottom of the bay lays out. The water averages about 55 degrees (VERY cold) and it is about 11/2 miles to the nearest land (Angel Island), but that is in the wrong direction for fhe current.
Are any of them waving in those photographs?
During WW II german and Italian Prisoners were transported by rail in prison cars to Leavenworth Kansas from East Coast ports and those same prisoners rode back to the ports when the war ended in ordinary Pullmans.