• On March 28, 1907, the Southern Pacific
Sunset Express, descending the grade out of the
San Timoteo Canyon, entered the
Colton rail yard traveling about , hit an open switch and careened off the track, resulting in 24 fatalities. Accounts said 9 of the train's 14 cars disintegrated as they piled on top of one another, leaving the dead and injured in "a heap of kindling and crumpled metal". Of the dead, 18 were Italian immigrants traveling to jobs in
San Francisco from
Genoa, Italy. • The
Coast Line Limited was heading for
Los Angeles, on May 22, 1907, when it was derailed just west of
Glendale, California. Passenger cars reportedly tumbled down the embankment. At least 2 people were killed and others injured. "The horrible deed was planned with devilish accurateness" the
Pasadena Star News reported at the time. It said spikes were removed from the track and a hook placed under the end of the rail. The
Star coverage was extensive and its editorial blasted the criminal elements behind the wreck:The man or men who committed this horrible deed near Glendale may not be anarchists, technically speaking. But if they are sane men, moved by motive, they are such stuff as anarchists are made of. If the typical anarchist conceived that a railroad corporation should be terrorized, he would not scruple to wreck a passenger train and send scores and hundreds to instant death. • On April 8, 1935, following torrential rains and flooding that washed out sections of track, a 14 man Southern Pacific work crew in railcars
collided with a gravel car in the darkness in
Roseville, California, resulting in 11 deaths. • On New Year's Eve 1944, a
rear-end collision west of Ogden in thick fog killed 48 people. • On January 17, 1947, the Southern Pacific Nightflier wrecked outside of Bakersfield; 7 people were killed and over 50 injured. Four coaches and a tourist sleeper were overturned, landing far off the tracks; the other seven cars remained upright. The locomotive stayed on the tracks and its crew was uninjured. A 29-year-old passenger, Robert Crowley from Miami, Florida, had been conversing with a man across the aisle who was killed instantly. Crowley, who was a combat war veteran, said “I never saw such a mess” even on a battlefield. • On May 8, 1948, in
Monterey, California, a Southern Pacific passenger train, the
Del Monte Express, struck a car driven by influential marine biologist
Ed Ricketts at the now defunct railroad crossing at Drake Avenue. Ricketts succumbed to his injuries three days later in the hospital. • On September 17, 1963, a Southern Pacific freight train
crashed into an illegally converted bus at a grade crossing in
Chualar, California, killing 32
bracero workers. It would later be a factor in the decision by Congress in 1964 to terminate the bracero program, despite its strong support among farmers. It also helped spur the Chicano civil rights movement. As of 2014, it was the deadliest automobile accident in United States history, according to the
National Safety Council. • On April 28, 1973, a Southern Pacific freight train carrying munitions
exploded in Roseville Yard injuring 52 people, the cause of this was due to a hot box on a railcar setting the floor ablaze, heating a bomb until it detonated. • On May 12, 1989, a Southern Pacific train,
SP 7551 East carrying
trona derailed in
San Bernardino, California. The train failed to slow while descending a nearby slope, and sped up to about before derailing, causing the
San Bernardino train disaster. The crash destroyed 7 homes along Duffy Street and killed 2 train workers and 2 residents. Thirteen days later on May 25, 1989, an underground pipeline running along the right-of-way ruptured and caught fire due to damage done to the pipeline during cleanup from the derailment or from the derailment itself, destroying 11 more homes and killing 2 more people. • On the night of July 14, 1991, a Southern Pacific train derailed into the upper
Sacramento River at a sharp bend of track called "the Cantara Loop", upstream from
Dunsmuir, California, in
Siskiyou County. Several cars made contact with the water, including a tank car. Early in the morning of July 15, it became apparent that the tank car had ruptured and spilled its entire contents into the river – approximately of
metam sodium, a soil fumigant. Ultimately, over a million fish, and tens of thousands of
amphibians and
crayfish were killed. Millions of aquatic invertebrates, including insects and
mollusks, which form the basis of the river's ecosystem, were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of
willows,
alders, and cottonwoods eventually died; many more were severely injured. The accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history. At the time of the incident, metam sodium was not classified as a hazardous material. ==Preserved locomotives==