1877 in rail transport

This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 1877.

Events

May events

• May 1 – Opening of first railway in Burma (Myanmar), from Rangoon (Yangon) to Prome (Pyay) (257 km (160 mi) of metre gauge).^[1]

Burning of Union Depot, Pittsburgh, July 21–22 during Great Railroad Strike

July events

• July 14 – Workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad walk off their jobs in an act that is seen as the start of the great railroad strike of 1877.^[2]
• July 16 – Railroad workers on strike in Martinsburg, West Virginia, derail and loot a train; United States President Rutherford B. Hayes calls in Federal troops to break the strike.^[3]
• July 19 – The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway (later absorbed by the Long Island Rail Road) opens.^[4]
• July 20 – Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers riot in Baltimore, Maryland. Nine railroad employees are killed as the Maryland militia attempts to quell the riot.
• July 21 – Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, stage a sympathy strike for the workers killed in Baltimore, Maryland the day before. Rioting erupts throughout Pittsburgh as a result.
• July 24 – Joel Tiffany is awarded U.S. Patent 193,357 for his design of the first successful refrigerator car.

August events

• August 31 – The first 2 ft (610 mm) gauge narrow gauge railroad in America, the Billerica and Bedford Railroad, begins operations.^[5]

November events

• November 4 – Opening of Gustave Eiffel's Maria Pia Bridge carrying the railway across the Douro into Porto, Portugal.

December events

• December 27 – The Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway opens, traversing a route from Montreal through Lachute to Hull.^[6]

Unknown date events

• Tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad from Los Angeles, cross the Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona.
• William Henry Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, is promoted to President of the New York Central system.
• Second railway in Estonia connecting Tapa (on the Tallinn–Saint Petersburg line) with Tartu, the biggest city in Southern Estonia (at this time in the Governorate of Livonia) is opened.^[7]
• Approximate date – Ephraim Shay develops the first Shay locomotive.

Births

March births

• March 7 – Walter Kidde, president of New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway 1937–1943 (d. 1943).^[8]

Unknown date births

• Edgar Alcock, general manager and chairman of Hunslet Engine Company of Leeds, England (d. 1951).

Deaths

January deaths

• January 4 – Cornelius Vanderbilt, American financier who created the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad from the merger of several smaller New York railroads (b. 1794).

April deaths

• April 22 – James P. Kirkwood, designer of Starrucca Viaduct (b. 1807).

August deaths

• August 3 – William Butler Ogden, president of the Chicago and North Western Railway (b. 1805).

September deaths

• September 2 – Alvin Adams, founder of Adams Express, one of the first LCL freight companies in the United States, dies (b. 1804).

Unknown date deaths

• Oliver Ames, Jr., president of Union Pacific Railroad 1866–1871, brother of Oakes Ames (b. 1807).^[9][10]
• Matthew Baird, second owner of Baldwin Locomotive Works (b. 1817).
• Jean-Jacques Meyer, French-born steam locomotive designer (b. 1804)

References

• Brief biographies of major mechanical engineers. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
• Rivanna Chapter, National Railway Historical Society (2005), This Month in Railroad History: July. Retrieved July 12 and July 22, 2005.
• White, John H. Jr. (Spring 1986). "America's most noteworthy railroaders". Railroad History. 154: 9–15. ISSN 0090-7847. OCLC 1785797. 
• White, John H. Jr. (1968). A history of the American locomotive; its development: 1830-1880. New York, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-23818-0. 

1. ↑ Marshall, John (1989). The Guinness Railway Book. Enfield: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-8511-2359-7. OCLC 24175552. 
2. ↑ Rivanna Chapter, National Railway Historical Society (2005). "This Month in Railroad History – July". Archived from the original on June 14, 2006. Retrieved July 14, 2006. 
3. ↑ Foner, Philip S. (1977). The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. ISBN 0-87348-828-8. 
4. ↑ "The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway". Archived from the original on July 17, 2005. Retrieved July 18, 2005. 
5. ↑ "A Chronology of Bedford's Railroad History". March 18, 2000. Retrieved August 31, 2005. 
6. ↑ Colin Churcher's Railway Pages (December 12, 2005), Significant dates in Ottawa railway history Archived April 27, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.. Retrieved December 27, 2005.
7. ↑ "Ajalugu" (in Estonian). Eesti Raudtee. Retrieved 2012-04-23. 
8. ↑ Robert E. Mohowski (2003). The New York Susuquehanna & Western Railroad. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7222-7. OCLC 50731001. 
9. ↑ Spencer Marks (2005), The Ames Family of North Easton, MA. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
10. ↑ Union Pacific Railroad, Union Pacific: Significant Individuals. Retrieved December 29, 2005.