1909 in rail transport

Last updated August 06, 2023

Events

January events

January 1 - The Chemins de fer de l'Ouest in France is incorporated into the state-owned Chemins de fer de l'État.
January 26 - The Jamestown, Franklin and Clearfield Railroad, a predecessor of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, is formed from the merger of four smaller railroads in Pennsylvania.^[1]
January 29 - The final spike is driven in the construction of the Virginian Railway at Glen Lyn, Virginia.

March events

March 7 - The Winona Interurban Electric Railway (Indiana) is forced by its major creditor to begin operations on Sundays, a move resisted by its Sabbatarian founders, including H.J. Heinz and J. M. Studebaker.^[2]

April events

April 1 - Great Central Railway places turbine steamships on its Grimsby-Rotterdam service.
April 4 - Passenger service begins on the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railroad (predecessor of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad) between Hammond, Indiana, and Pullman, Illinois.^[3]
April 12 - Gary, Indiana, United States: a westbound Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railroad train runs past a meet point and causes a head-on collision with an eastbound train, killing twelve.^[3]

May events

May 17 - Firemen on the Georgia Railroad strike to protest the hiring of African-Americans.
May 26 – Los Angeles Pacific Railroad begins passenger service over the Santa Monica Air Line.^[4]

June events

June - George Whale retires as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London & North Western Railway; he is succeeded by Charles Bowen-Cooke.
June 19 - Shadyside, Indiana, United States: an eastbound Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad train runs past a meet point and causes a head-on collision with a westbound train.

July events

July 10 - The Great Northern Railway electrifies the 2.5-mile (4.0 km) original Cascade Tunnel, near the summit of Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains. This first system and General Electric-built boxcabs are the only three-phase AC railway electrification implementation ever to be used in North America.^[5]
July 25 - Opening of Tauern Railway Line in Austria.^[6]

August events

August 30 - Great Western Railway begins using its Fishguard terminus in Wales for boat trains in connection with the Cunard steamships on Atlantic routes as a first port of call.
August - Canadian Pacific opens the Spiral Tunnels to traffic on the line through Kicking Horse Pass.

September events

September - Robert S. Lovett succeeds E. H. Harriman as president of the Southern Pacific Company, parent company of the Southern Pacific. Lovett also assumes the position of Chairman of the Executive Committee for the railroad.
September 17 - Beyer, Peacock & Company of Manchester, England, steam the first Garratt locomotive built to the design of Herbert William Garratt, K1 for the North East Dundas Tramway.^[7]

October events

October 9 - The Alaska Northern Railroad Company (a predecessor of the Alaska Railroad) purchases the assets of the bankrupt Alaska Central Railway and subsequently extends the line northward another 34 km (21 mi).
October - Blue Nile Road & Railway Bridge completed at Khartoum in Sudan, the longest bridge in tropical Africa at this date.

November events

November 1 - A Golden Spike ceremony is held on the Western Pacific Railroad. As no company officials are present, the local track foreman drives the last spike, the track crew shout “Hooray!” and two women walking by with their children kiss each other.
November 3 - The Lethbridge Viaduct, one of the largest railway structures in Canada on the Canadian Pacific near Lethbridge, Alberta, opens.
November 10 - Louis Brennan successfully demonstrates his gyroscopically-balanced monorail system, which he designed for military use and patented in 1903, at Gillingham, England.^[8]
November 21 - Kagoshima Line, Mojiko (Kitakyushu), via Hakata (Fukuoka), Kumamoto, Hitoyoshi to Kagoshima route officially completed in Kyushu Island, Japan.^{[ citation needed ]}

December events

December 1 - The London, Brighton & South Coast Railway publicly inaugurates London's first suburban surface railway electrification on its South London line, known as the "Elevated Electric" (overhead wire 6.7 kV a.c. at 25 Hz).^[9]
December 20 - Henry Fowler is appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Midland Railway of England, succeeding Richard Deeley.

Unknown date events

The Nickel Plate Road begins a massive grade separation project in Cleveland, Ohio, to eliminate street grade crossings on the railroad's mainline in the city.
Albert Hunt invents the wigwag grade crossing protection signal for the Pacific Electric in Los Angeles, California.
Opening of the Jingzhang railway connecting Beijing with Zhangjiakou, first section of the Jingbao railway in northwestern China and the first railway designed and built by Chinese.
Reconstruction of Flinders Street railway station in Melbourne, Australia, is completed.

Births

August births

August 4 – Isabel Benham, American railroad financial expert, is born (d. 2013).

Deaths

February deaths

February 4 – Thomas Lowry, president of Minneapolis Street Railway 1877-1892, president of Twin City Rapid Transit, president of Soo Line Railroad 1889-1890 and 1892-1909, dies (b. 1843).

March deaths

March 13 - William Jackson Palmer, builder of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (born 1836).

May deaths

May 19 - Henry H. Rogers, American financier who helped finance and build the Virginian Railway (born 1840).

July deaths

July 23 - Ernest F. Cambier, Belgian colonial pioneer who established the first Congo railway (born 1844).^[10]

September deaths

September 9 - E. H. Harriman, executive in charge of both the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific (born 1848).

October deaths

March 24 - Edward Entwistle, first driver of the Rocket locomotive (born 1815).^[11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacific Electric</span> Southern California transit company

The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interurban</span> Type of electric railway which runs within and between cities or towns

The Interurban is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution. Most roads between towns and many town streets were unpaved. Transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between the town and countryside. In 1915, 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interurban railways were operating in the United States and, for a few years, interurban railways, including the numerous manufacturers of cars and equipment, were the fifth-largest industry in the country. By 1930, most interurbans in North America were gone with a few surviving into the 1950s.

The South Shore Line is an electrically powered interurban commuter rail line operated by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) between Millennium Station in downtown Chicago and the South Bend International Airport in South Bend, Indiana, United States. The name refers to both the physical line and the service operated over that route. The line was built in 1901–1908 by predecessors of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, which continues to operate freight service. Passenger operation was assumed by the NICTD in 1989. The South Shore Line is one of the last surviving interurban trains in the United States. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 1,406,400, or about 4,600 per weekday as of the first quarter of 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad</span> American Class III freight railroad

The Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, also known as the South Shore Line, is a Class III freight railroad operating between Chicago, Illinois, and South Bend, Indiana. The railroad serves as a link between Class I railroads and local industries in northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana. It built the South Shore Line electric interurban and operated it until 1990, when it transferred to the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District. The railroad is owned by the Anacostia Rail Holdings Company.

Central Station was an intercity passenger terminal in downtown Chicago, Illinois, at the southern end of Grant Park near Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue. Owned by the Illinois Central Railroad, it also served other companies via trackage rights. It opened in 1893, replacing Great Central Station, and closed in 1972 when Amtrak rerouted services to Union Station. The station building was demolished in 1974. It is now the site of a redevelopment called Central Station, Chicago.

The East Bay Electric Lines were a unit of the Southern Pacific Railroad that operated electric interurban-type trains in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning in 1862, the SP and its predecessors operated local steam-drawn ferry-train passenger service in the East Bay on an expanding system of lines, but in 1902 the Key System started a competing system of electric lines and ferries. The SP then drew up plans to expand and electrify its system of lines and this new service began in 1911. The trains served the cities of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro transporting commuters to and from the large Oakland Pier and SP Alameda Pier. A fleet of ferry boats ran between these piers and the docks of the Ferry Building on the San Francisco Embarcadero.

The Sacramento Northern Railway was a 183-mile (295 km) electric interurban railway that connected Chico in northern California with Oakland via the California capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland and ran interurban passenger service until 1941 and freight service into the 1960s.

The Indiana Railroad (IR) was the last of the typical Midwestern United States interurban lines. It was formed in 1930–31 by combining the operations of the five major interurban systems in central Indiana into one entity. The predecessor companies came under the control of Midland Utilities, owned by Samuel Insull. His plan was to modernize the profitable routes and abandon the unprofitable ones. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Insull empire collapsed and the Indiana Railroad was left with a decaying infrastructure and little hope of overcoming the growing competition of the automobile for passenger business and the truck for freight business. The IR faced bankruptcy in 1933, and Bowman Elder was designated as the receiver to run the company. Payments on bonded debt were suspended. Elder was able to keep the system virtually intact for four years, and IR operated about 600 miles (970 km) of interurban lines throughout Indiana during this period. During the late 1930s, the routes were abandoned one by one until a 1941 wreck with fatalities south of Indianapolis put an abrupt end to the Indiana Railroad's last passenger operations.

The Chicago Lake Shore and South Bend Railway formed in 1901, is the earliest predecessor of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad.

The Northwestern Pacific Railroad operated a network of electric interurban lines in Marin County, California from 1903 to 1941. The lines ran to Sausalito at the southern tip of the county, where connecting ferries ran to San Francisco. Trains consisted of electric multiple units powered by third rail electrification. The lines were the first third-rail electrification in California, and the first major railroad to use alternating current signals.

References

↑ New York Central Railroad (1913), New York Central Railroad System: Annual Report 1913 - History of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Archived August 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved January 25, 2006.
↑ Hilton, G. W.; Due, J. F. (1960). The Electric Interurban Railways in America . Stanford University Press.
1 2 "South Shore Railroad history". Chicago Tribune . 2008-06-29. Retrieved 15 July 2011.^{[ dead link ]}
↑ Sherman, R.P. (25 May 1909). "Air Line Flyer Service Put On To Santa Monica". Los Angeles Herald. p. 5. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
↑ Hidy, Ralph Willard; Hidy, Muriel E.; Scott, Roy V. (2004). The Great Northern Railway: A History. University of Minnesota Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8166-4429-2.
↑ Balkwill, Richard; Marshall, John (1993). The Guinness Book of Railway Facts and Feats (6th ed.). Enfield: Guinness Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85112-707-1.
↑ "K1: the world's first Garratt". Archived from the original on 2007-08-06. Retrieved 2007-07-15.
↑ The Monorail Society. "Monorails in History". Archived from the original on 9 November 2005. Retrieved 2005-11-08.
↑ Turner, John Howard (1979). The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, III: Completion and Maturity. London: Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-1389-2.
↑ "July 23 Deaths in History". Brainymedia.com. 2005. Retrieved 2005-07-19.
↑ Entwistle, Richard (2011-03-30). "Edward Entwistle of Rocket Fame". Entwistle Family History Association Forum. Archived from the original on 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2013-10-11.

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[1] New York Central Railroad (1913), New York Central Railroad System: Annual Report 1913 - History of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Archived August 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved January 25, 2006.

[2] Hilton, G. W.; Due, J. F. (1960). The Electric Interurban Railways in America . Stanford University Press.

[South_Shore_timeline-3] 1 2 "South Shore Railroad history". Chicago Tribune . 2008-06-29. Retrieved 15 July 2011.^{[ dead link ]}

[RPSherman-4] Sherman, R.P. (25 May 1909). "Air Line Flyer Service Put On To Santa Monica". Los Angeles Herald. p. 5. Retrieved 8 September 2020.

[5] Hidy, Ralph Willard; Hidy, Muriel E.; Scott, Roy V. (2004). The Great Northern Railway: A History. University of Minnesota Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8166-4429-2.

[6] Balkwill, Richard; Marshall, John (1993). The Guinness Book of Railway Facts and Feats (6th ed.). Enfield: Guinness Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85112-707-1.

[7] "K1: the world's first Garratt". Archived from the original on 2007-08-06. Retrieved 2007-07-15.

[8] The Monorail Society. "Monorails in History". Archived from the original on 9 November 2005. Retrieved 2005-11-08.

[9] Turner, John Howard (1979). The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, III: Completion and Maturity. London: Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-1389-2.

[10] "July 23 Deaths in History". Brainymedia.com. 2005. Retrieved 2005-07-19.

[11] Entwistle, Richard (2011-03-30). "Edward Entwistle of Rocket Fame". Entwistle Family History Association Forum. Archived from the original on 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2013-10-11.

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