Portal:Trains/Did you know/February 2010

February 2010

 * ...that that the 20 m tall trestle bridge on the former Noojee railway line is the tallest surviving timber trestle bridge in Victoria, Australia, and was purchased for the sum of £1 from Victorian Railways for preservation after the line's closure?


 * ...that the Willem I Railway Station (now the Ambarawa Railway Museum in modern-day Indonesia) was originally a transshipment point for the break of gauge between the gauge branch from Kedungjati to the northeast and the  gauge line onward towards Yogyakarta via Magelang to the south?


 * ...that the prototype Tracked Hovercraft high-speed train was expected to reach 300 mi/h on its test track north of London, but had only broken 100 mi/h on a short portion before the program was cancelled in 1973?


 * ...that Kader Industrial Company Limited, founded in Hong Kong in 1948 and now one of the world's largest manufacturers of toy and hobby railways and manufacturing for brands including Bachmann Industries and Hornby Railways, originally started out as a maker of plastic flashlights?


 * ...that the Kaiping Colliery Tramway, the first standard-gauge railway in China, was operated by a steam locomotive (named Rocket of China) constructed using the boiler and other parts from a portable steam winding engine borrowed from the Kaiping colliery?


 * ...that the Airdrie–Bathgate rail link, the fourth direct railway connection between the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, will be built on the route of the former Bathgate and Coatbridge Railway between Airdrie and Bathgate, which was closed to passengers in 1956?


 * ...that the Chevrolet Vega had cast steel mounting points in its frame and redesigned underhood components to allow it to be shipped in purpose-built "Vert-A-Pac" railcars, which could hold 30 automobiles in a nose-down vertical position, compared to 18 in a normal three-level autorack?


 * ...that Lal Bahadur Shastri, later the Prime Minister of India, tendered his resignation as Minister of Railways in 1956 after a railway accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu that resulted in 144 deaths, accepting moral and constitutional responsibility in an unprecedented gesture that was cited as setting an example in constitutional propriety and which was greatly appreciated by Indian citizens?


 * ...that the Swiss Federal Railways was a relatively early adopter of alternative forms of traction to the steam locomotive, taking delivery of its last steam locomotive, the now-preserved C 5/6 class Number 2978, in 1917?


 * ...that the ADtranz low floor tram developed by MAN for the Bremen urban transport system and introduced in 1990 was the world's first tram with a completely low floor?


 * ...that Cityplace is the only one of all thirty-nine DART Light Rail stations in Greater Dallas, Texas, that is located underground?


 * ...that in response to repeated sexual harassment and/or sexual assault of India's women commuters, Minister of Railways Mamata Banerjee is introducing women-only train services?


 * ...that the Australian QR Tilt Train brand of rail services operated by Queensland Rail includes both electric multiple unit trainsets and diesel-hauled push–pull trains, with the exterior design of the two train types superficially similar to the untrained eye?


 * ...that Rail Baltica is a project to link Finland, the Baltic states and Poland by a continuous rail link from Tallinn (Estonia), to Warsaw (Poland), going via Latvia and Lithuania?


 * ...that Sadanori Shimoyama, appointed first President of Japanese National Railways on 1 June 1949, disappeared and was later found dead the day after releasing a list of 30,000 employees to be fired as part of cutbacks in keeping with the Dodge Line policy of financial and monetary contraction?
 * ...that like the Minuteman before it, the United States Air Force planned to be able to transport and launch the now-decommissioned LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM from specially equipped trains as a means of preventing the missiles from being disabled or destroyed in a Soviet first strike?


 * ...that the New South Wales Government Railways C38 class 4-6-2 locomotive 3820 (now preserved) had the distinction of operating the last steam-hauled regular express passenger service in Australia when it ran the Newcastle Flyer on 29 December 1970?


 * ...that the Spanish state-run railway company Renfe's AVE Class 103 high speed trains are supplied by Siemens who, after winning a tender to supply trains for the Madrid–Barcelona high-speed rail line by offering a modified version of the ICE 3 train used by Deutsche Bahn, had to spend €21 million to re-develop ICE 3 components that German manufacturers refused to supply or license to Siemens for the AVE?


 * ...that SNCF (French National Railways) 231 G class 4-6-2 locomotive 231 G 558, the only remaining member of a class that once numbered 283, was saved from scrap by the Sotteville depot manager who succeeded in getting the locomotive transferred to his depot, and the depot staff who convinced SNCF to sell the locomotive to them for preservation?


 * ...that although there were plans to equip squadrons of the United States Air Force with train-mounted launchers for the LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM under the name Mobile Minuteman, lack of support from the Kennedy administration caused the program's cancellation?


 * ...that although the 1948 Locomotive Exchange Trials conducted by the newly formed British Railways were intended to identify the best qualities of the different locomotive designs of the former "Big Four" constituent companies (GWR, LMS, LNER, SR), the testing had little scientific rigour, and political influence led to the adoption of LMS practices over the other companies' practices?


 * ...that among the nicknames for the Soviet-built Class Sr1 electric locomotives of VR (Finnish railways) are "Kaalihäkki" (Cabbage Cage) and "Sähköryssä" (Electric Russkie), and also "Siperian susi" (Wolf of Siberia, although in Finnish slang "susi" can also mean a poorly manufactured object)?


 * ...that the attempt in 1995 by incoming Prime Minister of France Alain Juppé to restructure national rail company SNCF and also remove the right of its workers to retire at age 55 led to a series of general strikes through November and December that year, with strike action spreading across the public sector around the country?


 * ...that the now-closed Glasgow Corporation Tramways, formerly one of the largest urban tramway systems in Europe, had a highly unusual track gauge of, to permit standard-gauge railway wagons to be operated over parts of the tram system using their wheel flanges running in the slots of the tram tracks?


 * ...that during the floods of 1976 and 1977, the 73 class shunting locomotives of Australia's New South Wales Government Railways saw some mainline use, as their hydraulic transmission allowed them to negotiate tracks flooded up to 300 mm deep, a depth impassable by diesel–electric locomotives?


 * ...that one of the causes of the 1998 Suonenjoki rail collision, in which an InterCity service ran through a red signal and collided head-on with a freight train south of the Suonenjoki railway station in Finland, was a general "obsession" among InterCity drivers to obey the timetable by the second?


 * ...that train numbers G1001 and G1003 running on the Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway in China, cover the 922 km journey in 2 hours, 57 minutes, to be the world's fastest passenger trains by commercial speed?