1903 in rail transport
Events
January events
- January 20 – The Grand Trunk Western Railroad opens a passenger depot in Lansing, Michigan.
- January 28 – Esmond Train Wreck: fourteen people are killed when the Crescent City Express (No. 8, bound for Benson, Arizona) collides head-on with the bound Pacific Coast Express (No. 7, bound for Tucson).
February events
- February 12 – North British Locomotive Company established as a locomotive builder in Glasgow, Scotland, by merger of Dübs and Company, Neilson, Reid and Company, and Sharp Stewart and Company.[1] In April it receives its first new order for steam locomotives, from India.[2]
March events
- March 3 – Baker valve gear for steam locomotives is first patented in the United States.[3]
April events
- April 7 – Apalachicola Northern Railroad, later to become AN Railway, is chartered.
May events
- May 3 – The Mersey Railway, operating between Birkenhead and Liverpool by tunnel beneath the River Mersey, England, converts from steam to electric traction.[4]
- May 13 – The Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad (later to become part of Chicago and North Western Railway) begins passenger train service to Casper, Wyoming.[5]
- May 25 – The Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad opens, becoming the first railroad in the United States to use an electrified third rail to power its trains.
July events
- July – Regular passenger traffic from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok over the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways begins.
- July 1 – Opening of the Albula Railway portion of the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) (metre gauge) in Switzerland, passing through the Albula Tunnel, the highest of the principal Alpine tunnels at 1370 m.[6]
- July 13 – Danbury Union Station in Danbury, Connecticut, on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, opens.[7]
- July 27
- Construction begins on the Baghdad Railway with the 200-kilometre (120 mi) segment between Konya and Bulgurlu in the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey).[8]
- Glasgow St Enoch rail accident, Scotland: sixteen killed when a train crashes into the buffers.
August events
- August 10 – Paris Metro train fire, France: electric fire on Paris Métro at Couronnes; 84 killed.
- August 17 – The Great Western Railway becomes the first British railway company to operate its own "road motor services" (i.e. buses), between Helston and The Lizard in Cornwall.[9]
September events
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Aftermath of the Wreck of the Old 97 a few days after the accident.
- September 27 – Wreck of the Old 97, Danville, Virginia, United States: A southbound Southern Railway passenger train derails on a trestle in Danville; eleven people are killed.[10][11]
October events
- October – Experimental electric trains, built by AEG and Siemens & Halske, reach 210.2 km/h (130.6 mph) between Marienfelde and Zossen in Germany.
- October 1
- The first railway in Norway rebuilt to double track, from Bryn to Lillestrøm on the Hovedbanen, is opened.[12]
- The Gold Coast Government Railway is extended from Obuasi to Kumasi.
- October 21 – Howard Elliott succeeds Charles Sanger Mellen as president of Northern Pacific Railway.[13]
- October 31 – The Purdue Wreck, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA: A Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad football special carrying the Purdue University football team and fans to the annual game with Indiana University collides with a coal train. Fourteen of the team and three other passengers are killed.
November events
- November 9 – The 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge Kalka-Shimla Railway opens in India.[14]
December events
- December 14 – The New York, New Haven and Hartford introduces the all-parlor car Merchants Limited between Boston and New York City.[15]
Unknown date events
- The British Engineering Standards Committee draws up specifications for eight standard steam locomotive designs for the broad gauge Indian Railways.[16]
- Southern Pacific Railroad gains 50% control of the Pacific Electric system in Los Angeles, California.
- The Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton Railway opens as the first railroad to have a guarded third rail.
- The provisions of the US Railroad Safety Appliance Act, enacted in 1893, are extended to include all railroad cars whether or not the cars themselves are used in interchange service.
- Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway introduces the first 2-10-2 compound locomotives (built by Baldwin Locomotive Works) into service.[17]
- E. H. Harriman becomes president of the Union Pacific Railroad.
- George Whale succeeds Francis William Webb as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Western Railway.
Births
April births
- April 10 – Edward T. Reidy, last president of Chicago Great Western Railway 1957–1968.
Deaths
March deaths
- March 29 – Gustavus Franklin Swift, founder of Swift and Company which pioneered the use of refrigerator cars in late 19th century America (born 1839)
July deaths
- July 27 – Frederick J. Kimball, American civil engineer who was instrumental in the formation of Norfolk and Western (born 1844).
Unknown date deaths
- J. Elfreth Watkins, railroad civil engineer and first curator for the Smithsonian Institution's railroad artifacts including John Bull.
References
- Lowe, James W. (1975). British Steam Locomotive Builders. Cambridge: Goose and Son. ISBN 0-900404-21-3.
- Nicolson, Murdoch; O'Neill, Mark (1987). Glasgow: Locomotive Builder to the World. Edinburgh: Polygon. ISBN 0-948275-46-4.
- Blake, LeRoy W. (May–June 1979). "Remembering the A.D. Baker Company". Farm Collector: 4. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
- Gahan, John W. (1983). The Line Beneath the Liners – a hundred years of Mersey Railway sights and sounds. Birkenhead: Countyvise. ISBN 0-907768-40-7.
- "BP Amoco Timeline". Casper Star-Tribune. June 22, 2005. Retrieved June 22, 2005.
- Marshall, John (1989). The Guinness Railway Book. Enfield: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-8511-2359-7. OCLC 24175552.
- Gulder, Bill. "A Brief History of the Danbury Railway Museum". Archived from the original on 2005-07-25. Retrieved 2005-07-12.
- "Baghdad Railway". Trains of Turkey. 2004-12-01. Retrieved 2005-07-22.
- Cummings, John (1980). Railway Motor Buses and Bus Services in the British Isles 1902-1933, volume 2. Oxford: Oxford Publishing Company. ISBN 0-86093-050-5.
- "Many People Killed". The Anglo-Saxon. Rockingham, NC. October 1, 1903. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
- "Nine Are Killed". The Topeka State Journal. Topeka, KS. September 28, 1903. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
- Norsk Jernbaneklubb (1994). Banedata '94 (in Norwegian). ISBN 82-90286-15-5.
- Railway Age Gazette (August 1, 1913) pp. 177-8.
- Northern Railways of India. "Kalka-Shimla Railway". Archived from the original on November 18, 2005. Retrieved November 8, 2005.
- Lynch, Peter E. (2005). New Haven Railroad passenger trains. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing Company. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7603-2288-8.
- Bhandari, R.R. (2000). "Steam in History". Indian Railways Fan Club. Archived from the original on 26 September 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-07.
- Balkwill, Richard; Marshall, John (1993). The Guinness Book of Railway Facts and Feats (6th ed.). Enfield: Guinness Publishing. ISBN 0-85112-707-X.
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