1917 in rail transport

This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 1917.

Events

January events

• January 3 - Ratho rail crash in Scotland: North British Railway H class locomotive 874 Dunedin, in charge of an Edinburgh to Glasgow express train, collides with a light engine at Queensferry Junction near Ratho Station, leaving 12 people dead and 46 seriously injured; the cause is found to be inadequate signalling procedures.^[1]

February events

• February 27 - The Milwaukee Road completes the electrification of its 440 miles (710 km) line from Harlowton, Montana, to Avery, Idaho.

March events

• March 9 - Official opening of the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City.
• March 12 - The Pere Marquette Railroad is reincorporated as the Pere Marquette Railway.
• March 19 - The United States Supreme Court upholds the eight-hour workday for railroads.

April events

• April 3–16 (NS) - Vladimir Lenin journeys from Switzerland across Germany by so-called "sealed train", eventually arriving to a tumultuous reception at Finland Station in Petrograd to play a leading role in the Russian Revolution.^[2]
• April 21 - Colorado Midland declares bankruptcy for the second and final time.

May events

• May 9 - Completion of the 784 km-long railway line linking the port of Djibouti in French Somaliland to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

July events

• July 31
  • The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway opens the Sciotoville Bridge across the Ohio River in the United States to rail traffic. It has a continuous truss across two 775-foot (236 m) spans, the world's longest until 1945.^[3]
  • Simbei Kunisawa succeeds Yujiro Nakamura as president of South Manchuria Railway.

September

• September 24 - The Bere Ferrers rail accident in England kills 10 New Zealand soldiers.

October events

• October – First North British Railway C Class steam locomotives are allocated from Scotland for loan to the British Royal Engineers' Railway Operating Division on the Western Front (World War I).
• October 22 – Opening of Trans-Australian Railway, 1051.7 miles (1692.6 km) of standard gauge between Port Augusta in South Australia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (heads of steel meet on 17 October).^[4][5][6] In crossing of the Nullarbor Plain the line runs for 309 miles (497 km) without a curve, the world’s longest railway straight.
• October 23 - The Canadian Railway War Board (predecessor of the Railway Association of Canada) meets for the first time at Windsor Station, Montreal.^[7][8]

November events

• November 1 – Takatoku station, now known as Shin-Takatoku Station on Tobu Railway's Kinugawa Line in Nikkō, Tochigi, Japan, is opened.^[9]

December events

• December 3 - The longest cantilever bridge in the world, Canadian National's Quebec Bridge across the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City, opens for rail traffic^[10] after nearly 20 years of planning and construction including two partial collapses.
• December 12 - Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne derailment, on the Culoz–Modane railway in the French Alps, a grossly overloaded troop train jumps the tracks near the entrance of the station at Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, after running away down a steep gradient from the entrance to the Fréjus Rail Tunnel due to inadequate brake power. At least 543 are killed, hundreds more are injured by the official count; the actual count is assumed to be considerably higher. Until 1981 this was the worst train wreck in history.^[11]
• December 26 - United States President Woodrow Wilson uses the Federal Possession and Control Act to nationalize American railroads under the United States Railroad Administration during World War I.
• December 28 - The United States Railroad Administration officially takes control of American railroads.

Unknown date events

• The Tanana Valley Railroad in Fairbanks, Alaska (a predecessor of the Alaska Railroad) enters receivership.
• The Arcade and Attica Railroad is incorporated.
• Estación Constitución in Buenos Aires, Argentina, opens.
• The Hershey Electric Railway in Cuba opens.
• Russia's Railway Worker Day national holiday, established in 1886, is abolished under Bolshevik rule.^[12]

Births

Unknown date births

• John Shedd Reed, president of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway 1967-1986 (died 2008).

Deaths

October deaths

• October 2 - William Sykes, English railway signalling engineer (born 1840).^[13]

References