17th century

1650 England – Whickham, County Durham. Two boys died when they were run over by a wagon on a wooden coal wagonway. While such tramway accidents are not generally listed as rail accidents (note the lack of accidents listed for the next 163 years) this is sometimes cited as the earliest-known railway accident.

1810s

1813 February – United Kingdom – A 13-year-old boy named Jeff Bruce was killed whilst running alongside the Middleton Railway tracks. The Leeds Mercury reported that this would "operate as a warning to others".

1815 15 July – United Kingdom – 1815 Philadelphia train accident – Thirteen or sixteen people, mainly spectators, were killed and 40 injured by the boiler explosion of the experimental locomotive Brunton's Mechanical Traveller on the Newbottle Waggonway at Philadelphia, County Durham.

1818 28 February – United Kingdom – The engine-driver was killed on the Middleton Railway in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire when Salamancas boiler exploded. As a result of the force of the explosion, he was "carried, with great violence, into an adjoining field the distance of one hundred yards."Leeds Mercury 7 March 1818 "This was the result of the driver tampering with the safety valves."

1820s

1821 5 December – United Kingdom – David Brook, a carpenter, was walking home from Leeds, Yorkshire along the Middleton Railway in a sleet storm when he was run over and killed by the engine of a coal train.

1827 United Kingdom – An unnamed woman from Eaglescliffe, County Durham, England (believed to have been a blind beggar woman) was "killed by the steam machine on the railway". This is said to be the first case of a woman being killed in a railway collision.

1828 19 March – United Kingdom – The boiler of Stockton and Darlington Railway locomotive No. 5 exploded at Simpasture Junction, County Durham. One person was killed. July 1 – United Kingdom – The boiler of Stockton and Darlington railway locomotive Locomotion No. 1 exploded at station, County Durham. One person was killed.

1829 4 September – United Kingdom – "A poor fellow incautiously placed himself in the way of a locomotive engine, which was driving waggons on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Salford, when the wheel went over one of his legs, which was literally cut off. He was carried to a surgeon's in the neighbourhood, but no effectual aid could be given to him, nor the bleeding staunched, and he died."

1830s

1830 15 September – United Kingdom – William Huskisson becomes the first widely reported passenger train death. During the ceremonial opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, while standing on the track at Parkside, he was struck and fatally injured by the locomotive Rocket. (Locomotives did not yet have whistles.)

1831 8 February – United Kingdom – William Tewburn was a guard on an overnight goods train of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, pulled by the Twin Sisters locomotive which arrived at Liverpool Road, in Manchester at 2 am, where the unfortunate victim got aboard the tender unbeknownst to the engineer, who started moving the locomotive to take on coke and water. One of these short lurching trips caused the benumbed guard to lose his grip, and he fell under first the tender and then the locomotive, virtually cutting him in half. 17 June – United States – After its pressure safety valve had been tied down by the train's fireman, the locomotive Best Friend of Charleston suffered a boiler explosion at Charleston, South Carolina, killing him, scalding the engineer, and injuring three others. The locomotive was the first engine of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company. 21 October – United Kingdom – On the Warrington & Newton Railway. Mr. Kitchingman had a garden that backed onto the railway at Dallam-brook. He was on the train with a friend and decided to jump off as it passed his house, but was dragged under the wheels of the following coach which mangled his leg, requiring its amputation. He later succumbed to his injuries and expired.

1832 July 25 – United States – A cable-car ascending the Granite Railway incline broke loose after the chain snapped. The runaway car crashed at the bottom of the hill. Of the four on board, one was killed and two injured. November 25 – United Kingdom – At Rainhill station on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, a train moving fast in foggy conditions rear-ended an earlier one that had stopped for passengers. One person was killed and three injured.

1833 1 February – United Kingdom – At Parr Moss, west of Newton-le-Willows on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, an eastbound train was halted by the bursting of a fire tube in the locomotive. Passengers got off to see what had happened, some of them standing on the westbound track where the engine's escaping steam prevented them from seeing (or being seen from) a westbound train approaching from Bolton. Consequently, four of them were run over by the train, three being killed instantly and the fourth reported as unlikely to survive. Quoted in 8 November – United States – Hightstown rail accident – The carriages of a Camden & Amboy passenger train derailed in the New Jersey countryside between Spotswood and Hightstown when an axle of a car broke due to an overheated journal. One car overturned, killing two people and injuring fifteen. Among the injured was Cornelius Vanderbilt, later to head the New York Central Railroad. Uninjured in the coach ahead was former U.S. President John Quincy Adams, who continued on to the nation's capital the next day.

1834 12 February – United Kingdom – A boiler explosion on a Middleton Colliery locomotive at Hunslet, Yorkshire killed one person.

1836 2 October – United States – A broken axle of a Cincinnati-bound train threw a woman and a child onto the track where they were both dragged and run over. The woman perished, but the child managed to survive, though seriously injured. 11 October – France – An employee of the line from Saint-Étienne to Lyon fell on a track and was decapitated by a train. The first train accident in France.

1837 11 August – United States – 1837 Suffolk head-on collision - The first head-on collision to result in passenger fatalities occurred on the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad near Suffolk, Virginia, when an eastbound lumber train coming down a grade at speed rounded a sharp curve and smashed into the morning passenger train from Portsmouth, Virginia. The first three of the thirteen stagecoach-style cars were smashed, killing three daughters of the prominent Ely family and injuring dozens of the 200 onboard returning from a steamboat cruise. An engraving depicting the moment of impact was published in Howland's Steamboat Disasters and Railroad Accidents in 1840.

1838 7 August – United Kingdom – A ticket inspector, Thomas Port, fell from a moving London and Birmingham Railway passenger train at Harrow, Middlesex. Both his legs had to be amputated following the accident. October – United Kingdom – A collision involving an experimental engine which Dionysius Lardner had been permitted to operate on the Great Western Railway killed a "pupil" of Lardner.

1839 2 February – United Kingdom – Charlotte Carrad was killed by a train heading for Slough on the Great Western Railway, eight months after this section, the first of the GWR, had opened. She was trying to cross the track at Langley to pick turnip tops in a field. She had seen the train, Hurricane, with three carriages, coming at about but hurried down the public footpath to get across the track. She reached the further rail when the engine struck her on the shoulder. Her friend, who was with her, found her in the ditch on the other side of the track. There was a little sign of life, but she died a minute or two later, her neck vertebrae having been dislocated.

1840s

1840 4 May – United States – One passenger was killed and several others injured when a lattice bridge over rain-swollen Catskill Creek collapsed under the weight of a Canajoharie and Catskill Railroad train en route from Catskill, New York, to Cairo, New York. 7 August – United Kingdom – Howden rail crash, Five passengers were killed when a casting fell from a wagon and derailed the carriages of a Hull and Selby Railway passenger train. September – United Kingdom – A North Midland Railway passenger train was derailed between South Wingfield and , Derbyshire. Two passengers were killed. September – United Kingdom – An Eastern Counties Railway passenger train collided with the rear end of another at Old Ford, Essex. One person was killed. 10 November – United Kingdom – Two employees of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway lost their life when the boiler of the 2-2-0 steam locomotive Surprise exploded at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. 11 November – United Kingdom – A York and North Midland Railway luggage train collided with the rear end of a passenger train at Taylor's Junction, Yorkshire. Two passengers were killed.

1841 5 October – United States – Two Western Railroad passenger trains collided head-on between Worcester, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. A conductor and a passenger were killed and seventeen passengers injured. 24 December – United Kingdom – Sonning Cutting railway accident – a Great Western Railway Paddington to Bristol train including goods-wagons and open passenger-wagons ran into a landslide in a cutting. Nine passengers were killed and sixteen injured, leading to calls for better protection for passengers.

1842 8 May – France – Versailles rail accident – Following the King's fete celebrations at the Palace of Versailles, a train returning to Gare Montparnasse, Paris derailed at Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine due to a broken axle on the leading locomotive. The wreckage caught fire, killing between 52 and 200 people, including the explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville.

1843 6 January – United Kingdom – A collision between two North Midland Railway trains at Barnsley, Yorkshire killed one person. The only passenger to be killed travelling by train in the United Kingdom that year. 10 March – Netherlands – During a test drive a locomotive derailed on an incompletely closed railway bridge near Warmond. One person was killed. This was the first railway accident in the Netherlands.Handleiding tot de kennis van de verschillende soorten van locomotieven, C.C. van Hall, 1844 (in Dutch) United Kingdom – A locomotive boiler explosion on the Hartlepool Railway killed one person - a member of the public travelling illegally on the footplate.

1844 1 May – United Kingdom – The boiler of Newcastle and Carlisle Railway locomotive Adelaide exploded at Carlisle, Cumberland. Two people were injured. December 11 – United Kingdom – The boiler of South Eastern Railway locomotive No. 78 Forrester exploded while hauling a freight train near , Surrey. Its two crewmen were killed.

1845 28 January – United Kingdom – The boiler of Newcastle and Carlisle Railway locomotive Venus exploded whilst it was hauling a freight train. 28 January – United Kingdom – The boiler of Manchester and Leeds Railway locomotive No. 27 Irk exploded at Miles Platting, Lancashire. 28 July – United Kingdom – A passenger train is run into by a steam locomotive at , Kent, injuring about 30 people.

1846 20 January – United Kingdom – A bridge over the River Medway between and , Kent, England, collapsed while a South Eastern Railway freight train was passing over it. Its driver was killed. 9 July – United Kingdom – A Clarence Railway engine standing in a branch line of the Stockton and Darlington Railway suddenly began to move down the incline and collided with some waggons of another Clarence engine. Four men were crushed between the carriages and were severely injured; one died at the scene.