1931 in rail transport

This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 1931.

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 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 reopens after a 17-year stoppage due to World War I.

September events

• September 12 - Just outside of 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 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).

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