58 Fun Facts About Railroad

Which engineer built the locomotive for the world's first railway train, at Penydarren in 1804?

Richard Trevithick, born near Camborne in Cornwall, pioneered high-pressure steam; on 21 February 1804 his engine hauled ten tons of iron and about seventy men along the Penydarren tramroad.

Which 1825 English railway was the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives?

Stockton and Darlington: it opened on 27 September 1825 between the Durham coalfield and the River Tees; regular passenger coaches were horse-drawn until 1833.

Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?

The Rainhill Trials, held in October 1829 on a level stretch near Rainhill, Lancashire; ten engines were entered, five competed, and Rocket alone met every condition to take the £500 prize.

The Liverpool and Manchester, the world's first inter-city railway, opened in which year?

1830: the line opened on 15 September 1830 with a procession of trains hauled by Stephenson locomotives, and it was the first railway to rely entirely on steam power.

What is the width of standard-gauge track, used by about 60 percent of the world's railways?

1,435 mm, or 4 ft 8½ in, is the Stephenson gauge inherited from early English colliery lines; Russian railways use 1,520 mm and India's broad gauge is 1,676 mm.

Where was the ceremonial last spike of America's first transcontinental railroad driven on May 10, 1869?

Promontory Summit, Utah, north of the Great Salt Lake, where the two lines met; the ceremonial spike was tapped in with a silver maul and the single word 'done' went out by telegraph.

Which US president signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 that authorised the transcontinental line?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Act on 1 July 1862; it chartered a new company to build west from the Missouri River and granted land and government bonds for every mile of track laid.

Which immigrant workforce did the Central Pacific favour for the brutal Sierra Nevada work?

Chinese labourers, most from Guangdong, made up the bulk of the company's workforce by 1867, some 10,000 to 12,000 men; they were paid less than white workers and bought their own food.

Which museum holds the original golden spike of 1869?

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University holds it; the 17.6-karat spike, weighing about 14 troy ounces, was pulled out right after the ceremony and replaced with an iron one.

Which 9,289 km line from Moscow to Vladivostok is the longest in the world?

The Trans-Siberian, completed in 1916, runs 9,289 km from Moscow's Yaroslavsky station to Vladivostok on the Pacific; the through train takes about six days.

The Orient Express began service in 1883 between Paris and, eventually, which eastern terminus?

Istanbul, then called Constantinople: the 1883 service reached it only by ferry and steamer from the Danube, with through trains running from 1889; the last timetabled Orient Express ran in December 2009.

Under what title was Agatha Christie's 1934 Orient Express mystery first published in the United States?

Murder in the Calais Coach was the Dodd, Mead title in the United States, chosen to avoid confusion with Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, published in America as Orient Express.

What did George Pullman invent after a miserable night trying to sleep in a train seat?

The sleeping car: Pullman converted two day coaches into sleepers at Bloomington in 1859, and his luxurious Pioneer car of 1865 set the pattern for the Pullman Company's fleet.

The Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential in US labour history, took place in which year?

1894: the strike began in May after wage cuts without rent cuts in the company town, spread through Eugene Debs's American Railway Union and was broken by federal troops in July.

Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 just before which event?

The Tokyo Summer Olympics: the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka opened on 1 October 1964, nine days before the Games began on 10 October.

What speed did Japan's experimental L0 Series maglev reach on its 2015 record run?

603 km/h was recorded on 21 April 2015 on the Yamanashi test line, beating the 590 km/h set a week earlier; the Chūō Shinkansen was designed for 505 km/h service.

The 574.8 km/h wheeled-train world record was set in 2007 by a modified version of which train?

France's TGV: the V150 test train, two power cars and three trailers with larger wheels and 25 kV boosted to 31 kV, hit 574.8 km/h on the new LGV Est on 3 April 2007.

The world's first commercial maglev opened in 1984 as a short airport shuttle in which city?

Birmingham: the low-speed maglev shuttle ran 600 metres between Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International station from 1984 to 1995, at up to 42 km/h.

The Shanghai maglev, once the fastest passenger service at 431 km/h, uses technology from which country?

It runs from Pudong airport to the outskirts of central Pudong on German Transrapid technology.

Which steam locomotive set the world steam speed record of 126 mph in 1938?

Mallard, an LNER A4 Pacific designed by Nigel Gresley, reached 126 mph on Stoke Bank south of Grantham on 3 July 1938; Gresley named his A4s after birds because he bred waterfowl.

Which famous locomotive became the first officially authenticated to reach 100 mph, in 1934?

Flying Scotsman, LNER A3 No. 4472, was timed at 100 mph on a test run near Little Bytham on 30 November 1934; its 1989 tour set a 422-mile non-stop steam record.

Union Pacific's Big Boy locomotives were designed to haul freight over which mountains?

The Wasatch Range: the 4-8-8-4s were built from 1941 to lift freight unassisted up the Wasatch grade between Ogden and Evanston, Wyoming; No. 4014 returned to steam in 2019.

Amtrak began operating most US intercity passenger trains in which year?

1971: Amtrak took over the routes on 1 May 1971, after Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act in October 1970; many in Washington expected it to be a short-lived 'last hurrah'.

Amtrak's Acela, the fastest train in the Americas, reaches 160 mph on which route?

The Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's electrified Washington-New York-Boston main line; Acela reaches its top speed only on short stretches, mainly in New Jersey and southern New England, while most of the 457-mile route is slower.

Which line opened in London on 10 January 1863 as the world's first underground passenger line?

The Metropolitan Railway ran from Paddington to Farringdon Street with steam trains in gas-lit cut-and-cover tunnels; its route survives within the Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines.

Who designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931, later voted a national design icon?

Harry Beck, an Underground draughtsman, drew the diagram in his spare time in 1931, treating the lines like an electrical circuit; it was first issued as a pocket map in January 1933.

Which British rail company first standardised its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in 1840?

The Great Western Railway adopted London time across its system in November 1840; before 'railway time' every town kept its own local sun time, several minutes apart between London and Bristol.

North American railroads introduced standard time zones on 18 November 1883, a date nicknamed what?

The Day of Two Noons: on 18 November 1883 clocks were reset as standard noon reached each zone, and in the eastern parts of each zone local noon had already passed, so noon struck twice.

The Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994, links Folkestone in England with which French town?

Coquelles, just west of Calais, holds the French terminal where shuttle trains load cars and lorries; the tunnel's 37.9 km undersea section is the longest of any tunnel's.

Which 57 km Swiss tunnel became the world's longest rail tunnel on opening in 2016?

The Gotthard Base Tunnel, 57 km between Erstfeld and Bodio, opened on 1 June 2016 after 17 years of construction, giving a flat route under the Alps with more than 2,000 m of rock above.

Which line holds the record for the highest point on any railroad, the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m?

The Qinghai–Tibet railway, opened to Lhasa in 2006, crosses the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m; more than 960 km of the line lies above 4,000 m and carriages are supplied with oxygen.

India's first passenger train ran in 1853 between Bombay and which town?

Thane: on 16 April 1853 the train left Bori Bunder for Thane, 34 km away, hauled by the locomotives Sahib, Sindh and Sultan with 14 carriages and about 400 passengers.

The world's longest straight stretch of railway, across the Nullarbor Plain, is in which country?

Australia: the 478 km dead-straight section of the Trans-Australian Railway lies on the Nullarbor Plain, and the Indian Pacific crosses it on its run between Sydney and Perth.

The Adelaide-to-Darwin passenger train takes its name from which group?

Afghan camel drivers: the cameleers who carried supplies through the outback from the 1860s were collectively called 'Afghans', and the train was nicknamed the Afghan Express, shortened to The Ghan.

Which Swiss train between Zermatt and St. Moritz is nicknamed 'the slowest fast train in the world'?

The Glacier Express, run by the Rhaetian Railway and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn, crosses 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and the 2,033 m Oberalp Pass on its roughly 291 km, all-day run.

Which New York station has 44 platforms, more than any other railway station in the world?

Grand Central Terminal, opened in 1913 on 42nd Street, has 44 platforms and 67 tracks on two levels; its four-faced opal concourse clock and painted zodiac ceiling are New York icons.

The cowcatcher on American locomotives is credited to which computing pioneer?

Charles Babbage, designer of the Difference Engine, is credited with proposing the wedge-shaped 'pilot' in the 1830s while studying railway safety; he also built a dynamometer car to record a train's performance.

Railroad engineer Casey Jones died in 1900 at Vaughan, Mississippi, driving for which railroad?

Illinois Central: Jones was driving its New Orleans Special, train No. 1, when it ran into a stalled freight at Vaughan on 30 April 1900; he was the only person killed.

The Great Train Robbery of 1963 stopped a Royal Mail train travelling from which city to London?

Glasgow: the overnight travelling post office from Glasgow Central to Euston was stopped at a rigged signal near Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, on 8 August 1963, and the gang took about £2.6 million.

The first peacetime train robbery in the United States took place in 1866 in which state?

Indiana: on 6 October 1866 the Reno Gang boarded an Ohio & Mississippi train as it left Seymour and threw a safe from the express car, taking more than $10,000.

The Great Locomotive Chase of 1862 saw Union raiders steal a Confederate train named what?

The General, a Western & Atlantic locomotive, was seized at Big Shanty, Georgia, on 12 April 1862 by James Andrews's raiders and chased down by crews aboard the Texas; Keaton's 1926 comedy took its name.

Glenn Miller's 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' from 1941 was the first recording to receive what?

A gold record: RCA Victor sprayed a master disc gold and presented it to Miller on 10 February 1942 after the song, from the film Sun Valley Serenade, passed 1.2 million sales.

Thomas the Tank Engine works on the North Western Railway on which fictional island?

Sodor, an imaginary island between Barrow-in-Furness and the Isle of Man; Awdry invented it after noting that the Anglican diocese of 'Sodor and Man' had no actual Sodor.

Which actor played multiple roles in Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture film The Polar Express (2004)?

Tom Hanks played six parts, including the conductor, the boy's father, Santa Claus and the hobo; the film adapted Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 picture book.

The 'toy train' Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in India runs on track of what gauge?

UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1999; Ghum, at 2,260 m, is India's highest station.

The Semmering line in Austria, completed in 1854, is generally called the world's first true what?

Mountain railway: the Semmering, built 1848-54 under Carl von Ghega with some 20,000 workers, climbs to 898 m over 41 km with 16 viaducts and 14 tunnels; UNESCO listed it in 1998.

Which country has the world's longest high-speed rail network, at more than 50,000 km?

China: its dedicated high-speed network grew from the 2008 Beijing-Tianjin line to more than 45,000 km by 2024, more than the rest of the world combined.

In which year did Japan's first railway open, between Shimbashi and Yokohama?

1872: the 29 km line from Shimbashi to Yokohama opened on 14 October 1872 with British-built locomotives and British engineers, and 14 October is marked as Japan's Railway Day.

Which privately owned intercity passenger railroad began service in Florida in 2018?

Brightline opened between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018 and reached Orlando airport in 2023, running mostly on Florida East Coast Railway tracks it shares with freight.

A caboose was traditionally coupled where on a North American freight train?

At the end: the caboose brought up the rear so the conductor and flagman could watch the train ahead for shifting loads and hot axle boxes and protect it from behind.

What was Locomotion No. 1, built by the Stephensons in 1825, the first steam locomotive to do?

Haul passengers on a public railway: on 27 September 1825 it pulled the opening train, with an experimental passenger coach and wagons of coal and flour, at up to about 15 mph; it was first named Active.

Who was killed at the 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first widely reported rail fatality?

William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool, had climbed down to greet the Duke of Wellington at Parkside when Rocket came along the other line and crushed his leg; he died that evening at Eccles.

Eurostar began running from London to Paris and Brussels in November 1994 from which London station?

Waterloo: Eurostar ran from the Waterloo International terminal from 14 November 1994 until the move to St Pancras in November 2007, when the completed high-speed line cut London-Paris to about 2 hours 15 minutes.

Rudolf Diesel was granted his US patent for the compression-ignition engine in which year?

1898: Diesel's US patent 608,845 was granted on 9 August 1898, six years after his original German application; the first successful diesel-electric locomotive in America, Central Railroad of New Jersey No. 1000, entered service in 1925.

The Panama line, the first rails to link the Atlantic and Pacific, opened in which year?

Its first full-length revenue train ran on 28 January 1855, well before the canal.

Which Canadian railway's last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, in 1885?

Canadian Pacific: Donald Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie on 7 November 1885, completing the transcontinental line promised to British Columbia when it joined Confederation in 1871.

The Diolkos, a grooved stone trackway from around 600 BC, carried boats across which isthmus?

Corinth: the Diolkos let ships or their cargoes be dragged on wheeled cradles across the Isthmus of Corinth, saving the voyage round the Peloponnese; grooves cut into the limestone guided the wheels.

Matthew Murray's Salamanca of 1812, the first commercially successful steam locomotive, solved adhesion how?

With a cog-wheel on a toothed rail: Blenkinsop's patent rack, cast along one rail of the Middleton Railway in Leeds, let an engine light enough to spare the brittle cast-iron track pull heavy coal trains.