Railroad Trivia
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107 free Railroad trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
58 free Railroad trivia questions with answers. Railroads shrank the world, invented time zones and gave us everything from the sleeping car to the cowcatcher. This railroad trivia quiz covers all of it: Trevithick's 1804 locomotive and Stephenson's Rocket, the Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool and Manchester lines, the American transcontinental railroad and its golden spike, the Trans-Siberian, the Orient Express, and the modern speed kings, from the Shinkansen and TGV to Japan's 603 km/h maglev. There are questions on record-breaking locomotives like Mallard, Flying Scotsman and Big Boy, on tunnels and mountain lines from the Gotthard to Tibet, on London's Underground and New York's Grand Central, and on the stories that made trains famous: Casey Jones, the Great Train Robbery, Murder on the Orient Express, Thomas the Tank Engine and the Chattanooga Choo Choo. It starts easy and works up to questions that will stretch serious railfans. Every answer has been checked against railway histories and official records and carries a linked source, so it holds up for a pub quiz, a classroom or a long ride with the window seat.
30 of 107 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Cornish engineer built the steam locomotive that made the world's first railway journey, at Penydarren in 1804?
Richard Trevithick
Richard Trevithick's engine hauled ten tons of iron and seventy men along the tramroad, but it proved too heavy for the brittle iron rails and the line went back to horses.
Q 02Which English railway, opened in 1825 to carry coal to the coast, was engineered by George Stephenson?
Stockton and Darlington
Stockton and Darlington's promoter Edward Pease planned to pull the coal wagons with horses until Stephenson persuaded him to use steam locomotives.
Q 03Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?
The Rainhill Trials
The Rainhill Trials offered £500 to settle whether locomotives, rope-hauling stationary engines or horses should work the line; five engines competed and Rocket won.
Q 04Which raw material was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway built to carry to Manchester's mills?
Cotton
Cotton poured into Liverpool's docks for Manchester's mills, and merchants backed a railway because canal carriage between the two towns was costly.
Q 05What is the width of standard-gauge track, used by about 60 percent of the world's railways?
1,435 mm
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.
Q 06Where was the ceremonial last spike of America's first transcontinental railroad driven on May 10, 1869?
Promontory Summit, Utah
Promontory Summit, Utah: the gold spike was only tapped with a silver-plated maul, and when officials swung at the real iron spike they missed, yet the telegraph flashed 'done' anyway.
Q 07Which US president signed the Pacific Railroad Act that authorised the first transcontinental line?
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Q 08Which immigrant workforce did the Central Pacific favour for the brutal Sierra Nevada work?
Chinese labourers
Chinese labourers, most recruited from Guangdong, were paid less than white crews and had to buy their own food; in June 1867 some 3,000 of them downed tools for a week to demand better terms.
Q 09The golden spike of 1869 is now displayed at which university, founded by the railroad president who tapped it?
Stanford University
Stanford University's art museum holds it: the gold spike was lifted out right after the ceremony so an ordinary iron one could take its place, and donor David Hewes gave it to the new campus in 1892.
Q 10Which line of more than 9,000 km from Moscow to Vladivostok is the longest in the world?
The Trans-Siberian
The Trans-Siberian once had a gap in the middle: until a line around Lake Baikal was built, an icebreaking ferry carried passengers and freight across the water.
Q 11The Orient Express began service in 1883 between Paris and, eventually, which eastern terminus?
Istanbul
Istanbul, then called Constantinople: in 1883 passengers left the train at the Black Sea port of Varna and finished the trip by steamer, and the whole journey went by rail only from 1889.
Q 12Under what title was Agatha Christie's 1934 Orient Express mystery first published in the United States?
Murder in the Calais Coach
Murder in the Calais Coach reached American readers first as a Saturday Evening Post serial in autumn 1933, months before the book appeared in Britain under its now-famous title.
Q 13George Pullman's name became a byword for which kind of American railway car?
The sleeping car
Q 21Which famous steam locomotive became the first officially authenticated at 100 mph, in 1934?
Flying Scotsman
Flying Scotsman reached 100 mph on a test run on 30 November 1934; when British Railways retired it in 1963, businessman Alan Pegler bought it and saved it from the scrapyard.
Q 22Which president signed the law that created Amtrak?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act in 1970, and the next spring almost every private railroad handed its dwindling passenger trains to the new federally backed corporation.
Q 23As of 2025, Amtrak's Acela, America's fastest train, runs on which route?
The Northeast Corridor
The sleeping car: sleepers already existed but were cramped and stuffy, so Pullman rebuilt two day coaches in 1859 and went on to make comfortable overnight travel his business.
Q 14Which American Railway Union leader was jailed for defying a court order during the Pullman Strike?
Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs led a boycott of Pullman cars after the company cut wages by about a quarter but left rents in its company town unchanged; troops broke the strike and he served six months.
Q 15Japan's first Shinkansen line opened just nine days before which event?
The Tokyo Summer Olympics
The Tokyo Summer Olympics opened on 10 October 1964, nine days after the first bullet trains cut the trip between Tokyo and Osaka from nearly seven hours to four.
Q 16Which country's L0 Series maglev set the world rail speed record of 603 km/h in 2015?
Japan
Japan's L0 Series broke its own week-old record on a test track near Mount Fuji; it is being built for a new maglev line meant to link the capital with Nagoya in about 40 minutes.
Q 17The 574.8 km/h wheeled-train world record was set in 2007 by a modified version of which train?
France's TGV
France's TGV: the record train, a special set called V150, ran on larger wheels than usual, and the overhead line was boosted from 25,000 to 31,000 volts for the attempt.
Q 18The world's first commercial maglev opened in 1984 as a short airport shuttle in which city?
Birmingham
Birmingham: the shuttle floated passengers 600 metres between the airport and the main-line station from 1984 until 1995, when it had grown so unreliable that a bus took its place.
Q 19The Shanghai maglev, once the fastest passenger service at about 430 km/h, uses technology from which country?
Germany
Germany's Transrapid technology floats the trains from Pudong airport on magnets, yet the line planned at home for Munich's airport was scrapped in 2008 when its costs soared.
Q 20Which steam locomotive set the world steam speed record of 126 mph in 1938?
Mallard
Mallard hit 126 mph on Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938, but the effort overheated its middle bearing, and it had to come off the train at Peterborough for repairs.
The Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston lets Acela reach top speed only in short bursts: curves, century-old bridges and tunnels, and tracks shared with slower trains hold it back.
Q 24Which line opened in London on 10 January 1863 as the world's first underground passenger line?
The Metropolitan Railway
The Metropolitan Railway was built by trenching the streets, lining the cut with brick and roofing it over; its steam engines filled the tunnels with fumes, yet the line was a success from the start.
Q 25Who designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931?
Harry Beck
Harry Beck, a draughtsman who drew electrical schematics for the Underground, saw his diagram rejected at first as too radical before it was issued as a pocket map in January 1933.
Q 26Which British rail company first standardised its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in 1840?
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway put its whole system on London time in November 1840; until then every town kept its own local time, and Bristol's clocks ran about ten minutes behind London's.
Q 27North American railroads introduced standard time zones on 18 November 1883, a date nicknamed what?
The Day of Two Noons
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.
Q 28The Channel Tunnel's French terminal at Coquelles sits beside which port city?
Calais
Calais: at the Coquelles terminal beside the city, cars and lorries drive onto shuttle trains that reach Folkestone in about 35 minutes; some 38 km of the tunnel runs under the sea.
Q 29Which 57 km Swiss tunnel became the world's longest rail tunnel on opening in 2016?
The Gotthard Base
The Gotthard Base Tunnel runs more than 2 km beneath the Alps at its deepest, so trains take a flat, straight path in place of the old winding climb to a higher tunnel.
Q 30Which line holds the record for the highest point on any railway, 5,072 m above sea level?
Qinghai–Tibet railway
The Qinghai–Tibet railway tops out at the Tanggula Pass, and with some 960 km of track above 4,000 m its carriages carry an oxygen supply for passengers.