Portal:Trains/Anniversaries/January 8


 * January 8


 * 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).
 * 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.