Crime & Corruption on the Michigan Railroad: Stories from the Victorian Era

Description

Tracks of Deceit & Vice

As the Michigan Central Railroad company became a juggernaut, the nineteeth century rail line also devolved into a bastion for crime as morality was often set aside for profit. In 1850, a grand jury indicted fifty men in Jackson County for conspiracy to commit arson after a freight depot in Detroit was set ablaze. When two Grand Trunk locomotives collided in Battle Creek in 1893, killing twenty-seven people, a conductor and an engineer each accused the other, avoiding conviction. A Mineral Range train robbery of $70,000 in payroll money destined for miners on the Keweenaw Peninsula was exposed by a former railroad worker involved in the heist, allowing him to escape prosecution and sending four others to prison.

Author Michael Delaware unfolds dark stories of railroad corruption and crime from Michigan’s Victorian age.

This book is available for pre-order only until August 25, 2026.