Portal:Trains/Anniversaries/July 8/More

19th century

 * 1853 – The Northern Indiana Railroad is formed through the merger of several smaller railroads in Indiana and Ohio.
 * 1886 – Russian Tsar Alexander III establishes Railway Worker Day as a national holiday on the anniversary of the name day of Nikolai I, who first commissioned Russian railroad construction.
 * 1895 – The Delagoa Bay Railway, in South Africa, opens.

20th century

 * 1905 – Death Valley Scotty pays $5,500 in cash to Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway general passenger agent J. J. Byrne to charter the Scott Special.
 * 1908 – Construction begins on the Belt Line railway in Hull, Ontario.

Births

 * 1881 – Mantis James Van Sweringen, American financier who, with his brother Oris, controlled the Nickel Plate Road and other eastern US railroads, is born (d. 1935).

Deaths

 * 1928 – Howard Elliott, president of Northern Pacific Railway 1903-1913, president of New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad beginning in 1913, dies (b. 1860).