Portal:Trains/Anniversaries/January 8

Central Pacific locomotive

1855 – The first through train travels the entire distance from Chicago to the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois.
1863 – Ground is broken by the Central Pacific Railroad in Sacramento, California, on the western half of the First Transcontinental Railroad in North America (locomotive pictured).[1]
1944 – William Kissam Vanderbilt II, heir to Cornelius Vanderbilt and president of the New York Central system, dies (b. 1878).
1962 – The Harmelen train disaster, the worst railway accident in the history of the Netherlands, occurs when one passenger train driver misses a warning signal and passes a red signal to collide nearly head-on with another passenger train.

References

Ambrose, Stephen E. (2000). Nothing Like It in the World. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. p. 106. ISBN 0-7432-0317-8.

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