Portal:Trains/Did you know/February 2014

February 2014

 * ...that newspaper reports of the 1950s describing the "Turquoise Room" of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway's new Pleasure Dome cars, which were built for use on the Super Chief trains, noted that the cars constituted "the first private dining room on wheels"?


 * ...that Union Pacific Railroad's Pacific series fleet of fifty lightweight streamlined sleeping cars on various overnight streamliners in the 1950s and 1960s featured corrugated exteriors instead of smooth, which was uncommon for Union Pacific equipment?


 * ...that Odakyu Electric Railway is carrying out a major construction project on its Odawara Line between Yoyogi-Uehara and Mukōgaoka-Yūen stations in Japan to quadruple the tracks by stacking the tracks underground with construction expected to continue through 2018?


 * ...that from its opening in January 2011 until 31 December 2012, Zhuhai North Railway Station was the only open station in Zhuhai, China, and it served as the temporary southern terminus of the Guangzhou–Zhuhai Intercity Railway until the line was extended to the permanent southern terminus at the Zhuhai Railway Station?


 * ...that Welwyn North railway station in England is a rare survivor of architecture from the early days of the Great Northern Railway and the main station building, the footbridge, the tunnel portal to the north and Welwyn Viaduct to the south are all Grade 2 listed?


 * ...that in 2006 a memorial was installed at Stuttgart North station in Germany to commemorate the use of the station's freight loading tracks for the deportation of more than 2,200 Jews from all over Württemberg to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Riga and Izbica?


 * ...that Gare du Nord on Paris Métro's line 4 and line 5 is the busiest station in the system (not including RER), with 48 million entrances a year?


 * ...that when Dunstable North railway station in England was closed as part of the Beeching cuts in 1965, the station was still lit by gas lamps?


 * ...that Bucharest North railway station (București Gara de Nord), which originally opened in 1872 and is now the main railway station in Bucharest, is the largest railway station in Romania?


 * ...that the present Blackpool North railway station in England is based on the 1938 concrete canopy which covered the entrance to the former excursion platforms of the original 1846 Talbot Road station?


 * ...that due to its location in what became East Berlin, Berlin S-Bahn's Nordbahnhof, which was originally opened as part of Stettiner Bahnhof in 1936, remained an empty and barely lit ghost station from 1961 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990?


 * ...that Nishi-Eifuku Station, on the Keio Inokashira Line in Suginami, Tokyo, Japan, is only 700 m from neighboring Eifukucho Station, and both Eifukuchō Station and Hamadayama Station can be seen from the platform?


 * ...that although Navan Junction railway station in County Meath, Ireland, was closed in 1963, freight trains still pass through the site and the Midland Great Western Railway goods shed and the Great Northern Railway down platform still stand to mark the location of the former station?


 * ...that Namaqualand Railway's 0-4-2ST locomotive Pioneer was commandeered used by Boer forces in 1902 to propel a mobile bomb in the form of a wagon-load of dynamite into the besieged town of O'okiep, Cape Colony?


 * ...that the Mount Clare Shops complex, in Baltimore, Maryland, now the home of the B&O Railroad Museum, was originally founded by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1829, making it the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States?


 * ...that in 2010, JR East's Minami-Koshigaya Station in Koshigaya, Saitama, Japan, was used by an average of 65,740 boarding passengers daily, making it the second busiest station on the Musashino Line after Minami-Funabashi?


 * ...that the Mexican National Railway, a predecessor of Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, was originally incorporated in Colorado in 1880, headed by General William Jackson Palmer of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, then built as a narrow gauge main line from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo?


 * ...that Namaqualand Railway's 0-4-0WT Condenser locomotives featured a prominent steam condenser mounted overhead in a roof-like frame containing copper coils that formed an atmospheric radiator which then fed condensed steam back for re-use into the large water tank underneath the locomotive's copper boiler?


 * ...that the Hungarian State Railways Class 242 of 4-4-4T steam locomotives were highly unusual in that they were both streamlined, as was the fashion of the 1930s for fast express service, but they were also tank locomotives?