Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
February 11, 1888 Construction began on a new terminal building for Sirkeci railway station in the city of Constantinople (now known as Istanbul) in the present-day Republic of Turkey. (At the time, Turkey was part of the Ottoman Empire; Constantinople served as the empire’s capital.) With Constantinople straddling the Bosporus strait between Europe and Asia,... Continue Reading →
February 10, 1953 Narisimha Gopalaswami Ayyangar, who played a pivotal role in modernizing and improving India’s railway network, died in the city of Madras (present-day Chennai) in southern India at the age of 70. Ayyangar had been born in the region in 1882. His longtime public service career started in 1905; the first of those... Continue Reading →
January 16, 1984 In the Republic of South Africa, an experimental high-speed commuter train service began regular runs between the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg. This service was called MetroBlitz, and it was operated by the South African Transport Services (SATS). MetroBlitz replaced a commuter train service known as the Jacaranda Express, which had been... Continue Reading →
January 13, 2011 In south-central Africa, the Luanda Railway in the Republic of Angola officially resumed regular freight and passenger services after a long period of inactivity. This 263-mile (424-kilometer) railway, which is operated by state-owned company Caminho de Ferro De Luanda E.P. (CFL EP), connects the country’s capital of Luanda with the city of... Continue Reading →
December 26, 2017 In Indonesia, a new airport rail link made its debut on the island of Java. The 33.7-mile (54.3-kilometer)-long Soekarno-Hatta Airport Railink was built to reduce travel time for individuals between South Jakarta, an administrative subdivision of Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta (officially known as the Special Capital Region of Jakarta), and the... Continue Reading →
December 13, 1937 The Reading Railroad’s express passenger train Crusader made its first regular run along a 90.3-mile (145.3-kilometer) route between the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey. The train received its name thanks to a contest that offered $250 to the winning entry, which was selected by... Continue Reading →
December 6, 2015 In northeastern Japan, a new subway line began operations in the city of Sendai in the Tōhoku region. The east-west Tozai Line was the second of the Sendai Subway’s two lines to go into service, with the north-south Namboku Line having been opened in 1987. The Tozai Line encompasses a total of... Continue Reading →
December 2, 2018 In the state of Assam in northeastern India, a road-rail bridge began service when a freight train chugged across the newly built structure. Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of railways, used his Twitter account that same day to highlight this crossing. He tweeted that the inaugural train trip on December 2 was “a... Continue Reading →
November 26, 2017 In the Australian state of Victoria, a new railway station was officially opened on Bay Road in the Melbourne suburb of Cheltenham. Southland railway station, which is part of the Frankston railway line (a commuter rail passenger train service in the Melbourne area), made its debut more than 130 years after building... Continue Reading →
November 4, 1877 The Maria Pia Bridge in northern Portugal made its public debut. (At the time, the country was a constitutional monarchy formally known as the Kingdom of Portugal.) The railway bridge, which spans the River Douro and connects the city of Porto with the municipality of Via Nova de Gaia, resulted from a competition... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 