| Years 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 – Baltimore railroad strike of 1877: 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; West Virginia Governor Henry M. Mathews calls on United States President Rutherford B. Hayes for Federal troops to break the strike.[3]
- The Nickey line, connecting Boxmoor to Harpenden, is officially opened.[4]
- July 19 – The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway (later absorbed by the Long Island Rail Road) opens.[5]
- 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.[6]
October events
- October 28 – Replacement Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal, constructed by Eiffel, opened in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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.[7]
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.[8]
- 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).[9]
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).
March deaths
- March 9 – Oliver Ames Jr., president of Union Pacific Railroad 1866–1871, brother of Oakes Ames (b. 1807).[10][11]
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
- 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. JSTOR 43523785. 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.
- ^ Marshall, John (1989). The Guinness Railway Book. Enfield: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-8511-2359-7. OCLC 24175552.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Foner, Philip S. (1977). The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. ISBN 0-87348-828-8.
- ^ Woodward, Sue; Woodward, Geoff (1996). The Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead Railway – The Nickey Line. Oakwood Press. p. 31. ISBN 0-85361-502-0.
- ^ "The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway". Archived from the original on July 17, 2005. Retrieved July 18, 2005.
- ^ "A Chronology of Bedford's Railroad History". March 18, 2000. Retrieved August 31, 2005.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Ajalugu" (in Estonian). Eesti Raudtee. Archived from the original on September 23, 2017. Retrieved April 23, 2012.
- ^ Robert E. Mohowski (2003). The New York Susuquehanna & Western Railroad. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7222-7. OCLC 50731001.
- ^ Spencer Marks (2005), The Ames Family of North Easton, MA Archived September 30, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 29, 2005.
- ^ Union Pacific Railroad, Union Pacific: Significant Individuals Archived September 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 29, 2005.