DERAILMENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Derailment

... involuntary crimes, which are committed by some positive act. But what about involuntary crimes of omission? In a railway station, where the movements of trains represent the daily whirl of traffic in men, things, and ideas, every switch is a delicate instrument which may cause a derailment. The railway management places a switchman on duty at this delicate post. But in a moment of fatigue, or because he had to work inhumanly long hours of work, which exhausted all his nervous elasticity, or for other reasons, the switchman forgets to set the switch and ...

— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... divide at the head of the latter was laboriously surmounted; and then, one of our two engines shooting ahead and piloting us, we slid speedily down to Cimarron. It is in such descents that the unaccustomed traveler usually feels alarmed. But the experience of the Rio Grande Railroad people is, that derailment is likely to occur on up-grades, and almost never in ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various