1931 in rail transport

Events

January events

* January 11 - The Boston and Maine Railroad runs its first “Snow Train” for skiers and other winter vacationers.

May events

* May 24 - The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad inaugurates the first air conditioned passenger train, the "Columbian", between Jersey City, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.

June events

* June - The County Donegal Railways Joint Committee in Ireland (3 ft (914 mm) gauge) introduces the first diesel engined railcar to enter regular passenger service in the British Isles. [cite book|author=Patterson, Edward M.|title=The County Donegal Railways|date=1969|publisher=David & Charles|location=Newton Abbot|isbn=0-7153-4376-9]
* June 10 - The German rail zeppelin (Schienenzeppelin), an experimental propeller driven railcar, sets up a new world railway speed record of 230 km/h on its way from Hamburg to Berlin which was not surpassed by any other train for 24 years.
* June 13 - Switzerland's Brienz Rothorn Bahn mountain railway reopens after a 17-year stoppage due to World War I.

eptember events

* September 12 - Just outside Bucharest, a bomb planted by a Hungarian Fascist destroys a section of the Biotobargy Viaduct, plunging the Orient Express into the ravine below. Twenty people are killed. Entertainer Josephine Baker, one of the surviving passengers, gives an impromptu concert to calm other survivors.

November events

* November 12 - The Smithsonian Institution commemorates the 100th birthday of the "John Bull" by operating its mechanism with compressed air.

Unknown date events

* Ernest Lemon succeeds Sir Henry Fowler as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.

Births

Unknown date births

* Nelson W. Bowers, president of the National Railway Historical Society (1983-1987) (d. 2004).

Deaths

January deaths

* January 13 - Kálmán Kandó, Hungarian engineer who designed the world's first AC traction electric railway in Italy in 1902, dies (b. 1869).

References