Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
November 4, 1846 A railway station in the village and community of Ruabon in Wrexham County Borough in Wales was inaugurated. This structure -- the original version of Ruabon railway station -- was built in the Italianate style. It was designed by English architect and surveyor Thomas Mainwaring Penson (1818-1864). In 1860, this station was... Continue Reading →
October 9, 1980 A railway station in the town of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) was officially opened. This station replaced one that had first gone into service in 1929 as a link in the Central Australia Railway The present-day station was built as part of a segment spanning 515 miles (828 kilometers)... 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 →
September 20, 2015 Operations began for the first line of a light rail system in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital and largest city. The Addis Ababa Light Rail was officially inaugurated by Hailemariam Desalegn, who served as prime minister of Ethiopia from 2012 to 2018. In an article appearing in the Ethiopian Herald a couple of... Continue Reading →
September 9, 1963 More than a century after it had first gone into service, Linley Hall station on the Severn Valley Railway line in England’s West Midlands region was permanently closed. This railway station was opened on February 1, 1862. It had been built at the behest of Thomas C. Whitmore (1807-1865), a prominent local... Continue Reading →
September 5, 1986 A new light rail public transit system in the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon was officially opened. The launch of the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) Light Rail, which is owned and operated by the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet), signified the return of a type of transportation network that had been... Continue Reading →
August 21, 2021 Regular operations began for a one-mile (1.6-kilometer) extension of the rapid transit system serving the city of Nagpur in India’s state of Maharashtra. Uddhay Thackeray, who was chief minister of Maharashtra from 2019 to 2022, handled these inaugural duties. One of the key features of this new segment of Nagpur Metro’s Orange... Continue Reading →
August 20, 1977 In the Keihanshin metropolitan region of Japan’s island of Honshu, a passenger railway station in the city of Sakai in Osaka Prefecture first went into service. This station was named after Kōmyōike (Kōmyō Pond), an artificial lake in the area. That lake, in turn, had been named in memory of Empress Kōmyō... Continue Reading →
August 16, 1993 In the central part of Finland’s capital city, a newly built station in the district of Ruoholahti was opened for public use. Ruoholahti metro station is served by lines M1 and M2 of the Helsinki Metro, the northernmost metro system in the world. This underground station was designed by architects Jouko Kontio... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 