Shepherdsville Train Tragedy | Kentucky Studies

An express train with steel cars collided with a local train with wooden cars in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, five days before Christmas, on Dec. 20, 1917, killing 49 people. It is the worst train crash in state history.

Many people traveled regularly by train in the early years of the 20th century.Train travel was popular because of its speed and convenience. It was not without danger, however. Train crashes had made the news from the beginning of rail travel, and crashes became more deadly in the early 1900s. Trains could go faster than ever before, and old-fashioned wooden cars were sharing the tracks with new and heavier steel cars, making impacts more deadly.

Hundreds of Americans died in train crashes each year in the first decade of the 20th century, reaching a peak in 1907 with 571 passengers killed. After new laws designed to improve safety went into effect, passenger deaths nationwide began to decline.