Railroad Fatalities

Someone on WONDIR asked a question on the number of railroad fatalities in 1941. I thought this would be an easy question to answer. Turns out it is not easy to located this kind of information. All the on-line almanacs and encyclopedias seem to go back no further than 1960. I THINK the reason may be that US government re-organized itself and didn't keep good track of history (National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration, Interstate Commerce Commission, etc, etc). Anyway to find statistics such as this?

In case you have not seen it yet, WONDIR is a search engine that gives the usual responses but also ask's its viewers to help.
You can go directly to the railroad section of WONDIR:
http://www.rosshorwood.com/wondir.html

Send a message to the Librarian of the U. S. Department of Transportation Library at

http://dotlibrary.dot.gov/forms/asklib.asp

They have a complete set of ICC annual reports, which include the fatality statistics for each year until 1967, when the Federal Railroad Administration took over the railroad safety functions. And, of course, they have all the FRA annual reports since 1967.

Be sure to ask the right question, because there are different groups enumerated, like railroad employees on duty, passengers on trains, trespassers and highway crossing accidents.