Timeline of Railway History - 20th Century

20th Century

• 1913 - First diesel powered railcar enters service in Sweden.
• 1915 - First major stretch of electrified railway in Sweden; Kiruna-Riksgränsen (Malmbanan).
• 1917 - GE produced an experimental Diesel-electric locomotive using Lemp's control design—the first in the United States.
• 1924 - First diesel-electric locomotive built in Soviet Union (USSR).
• 1925 - Ingersoll-Rand with traction motors supplied by GE built a prototype Diesel switching locomotive (shunter), the AGEIR boxcabs.
• 1926 - First diesel locomotive service introduced in Canada.
• 1930 - GE begins producing diesel-electric switching engines.
• 1934 - First diesel-powered streamlined passenger train in America (the Burlington Zephyr) introduced at the Chicago World's Fair.
• 1935 - First children's railway is opened in Tbilisi, USSR.
• 1937-41 - Magnetic levitation (maglev) train patents awarded in Germany to Hermann Kemper, with design propelled by linear motors.
• 1938 - In England, the world speed record for steam traction is set by the Mallard which reaches a speed of 203 km/h (126 mph).
• 1939 - In Persia the Trans-Iranian Railway was opened, built entirely by local capital.
• 1939 - Diesel-electric railroad locomotion entered the mainstream in the U.S. when the Burlington Railroad and Union Pacific start using diesel-electric "streamliners" to haul passengers.
• 1942-45 - Over 1,200 steam locomotives worth over $100,000,000 (1945$) given to the Soviet Union under U.S. Lend Lease.
• 1946 - U.S. railroads begin rapidly replacing their rolling stock with diesel-electric units. Process not completed until mid 1960s.
• 1948, January 1 - British Railways formed by nationalising the assets of the 'Big Four' railway companies (GWR, LMS, LNER and SR).
• 1948, March 1 - Foreign-owned railway companies nationalised in Argentina during the first term of office of President Peron.
• 1953 - Japan sets narrow gauge world speed record of 145 km/h (90 mph) with Odakyū 3000 series SE Romancecar.
• 1959, April - Construction of the first segment of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka commenced.
• 1960s-2000s (decade) - Many countries adopt high-speed rail in an attempt to make rail transport competitive with both road transport and air transport.
• 1963, March 27 - Publication of The Reshaping of Britain's Railways (the Beeching Report). Generally known as the "Beeching axe", it led to the mass closure of 25% of route miles and 50% of stations during the decade following.
• 1964 - Bullet Train service introduced in Japan, between Tokyo and Osaka. Trains average speeds of 160 km/h (100 mph) due to congested shared urban tracks, with top speeds of 210 km/h.
• 1968, August 11 - British Rail ran its last final steam-driven mainline train, named the Fifteen Guinea Special, after of a programmed withdrawal of steam during 1962-68. It marked the end of 143 years of its public railway use.
• 1970, June 21 - Penn Central, the dominant railroad in the northeastern United States, became bankrupt (the largest US corporate bankruptcy up to that time). Created only two years earlier in 1968 from a merger of several other railroads, it marked the end of long-haul private-sector US passenger train services, and forced the creation of the government-owned Amtrak on May 1, 1971.
• 1975, August 10 - British Rail's experimental tilting train, the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) achieved a new British speed record, the APT-E reaching 245 km/h (152.3 mph). The prototype APT-P pushed the speed record further to 261 km/h (162.2 mph) in December 1979, but when put into service on 7 December 1981, it failed and was withdrawn days later, resuming only from 1980 to 1986 on the West Coast Main Line.
• 1979 - High speed TGV trains introduced in France, TGV trains travelling at an average speed of 213 km/h (132 mph). and with a top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph).
• 1987 - World speed record for a diesel locomotive set by British Rail's High Speed Train (HST), which reached a speed of 238 km/h (148 mph).
• 1990 - World speed record for an electric train is set in France by a TGV, reaching a speed of 515 km/h (320 mph).
• 1994-1997 - Privatisation of British Rail. Ownership of track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack on 1 April 1994 (replaced by Network Rail in 2002), with passenger operations franchised afterwards to 25 individual private-sector operators and freight services sold outright.