Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
April 30, 1978A special preview run took place for a passenger train that would serve a recently authorized commuter rail line between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. This train was named the Chesapeake. It was one of three trains, each with four cars, leased by the Maryland Department of Transportation for Amtrak to operate on the... Continue Reading →
January 8, 1838 One of the first railroads to be built in New York -- and the entire northeastern United States, for that matter -- first went into service. The Auburn and Syracuse Railroad (A&S) was constructed to provide easy access for the village (present-day city) of Auburn and the factories in that area to the... Continue Reading →
December 9, 1941 Officials at the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway accepted the first of t0 large 2-6-6-6 Allegheny steam locomotives from the longtime Ohio-based manufacturer Lima Locomotive Works. This locomotive type’s numbers are due to the fact that it had two leading wheels, two sets of six driving wheels, and six training wheels. The “Allegheny” in... Continue Reading →
December 4, 1992 The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) retired the last of the 6000-series cars that had served the rapid transit system for that city and some of the surrounding suburbs for 42 years. “Best remembered for their green bodies and white tops, these were the first truly modern cars of the post-World War II... Continue Reading →
October 4, 2012 Bernard Holden, whose long life was devoted to railroads in a variety of contexts, died at the age of 104 in the English village and civil parish of Ditchling. Fittingly enough, he had been born in 1908 in the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway station house in the village of Barcombe... Continue Reading →
October 2, 1955 Operations began in Perambur, a neighborhood of India’s city of Madras (now known as Chennai), for a newly formed manufacturer of train coaches. Integral Coach Factory (ICF) was officially inaugurated by Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), who served as the first prime minister of India from 1947 until his death. The origins of... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 