July 13, 1836 U.S. Patent #1 is issued (after 9,957 unnumbered ones) to John Ruggles for improvements to locomotive tires.
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July 13, 1887 The second Tay bridge across the Firth of Tay in Scotland opens.
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July 13, 1906 Pennsylvania Railroad officials inspect a short section of track that has been built with longitudinal steel girders with crosstie rods instead of wooden ties.
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July 13, 1915 Trans-Canada passenger service begins on a collection of lines that will become the Canadian National.
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July 13, 1934 The last funeral train service is operated over the Chicago "L" via the Metropolitan Division's tracks. The train itself is actually a Chicago Aurora & Elgin consist, as the CRT terminated its own funeral train service two years earlier.
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July 13, 1953 Last day of steam operations on the Cotton Belt.
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July 13, 1953 Last day of steam operations on the Lackawanna.
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July 13, 1957 Sim Webb, Casey Jones' fireman on Jones' famous last run, dies of cancer at age 83.
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July 13, 1962 General Electric delivers E44 electric locomotives to the Pennsylvania Railroad. They are equipped with silicon diode rectifiers. They are the first electric locomotives with solid-state electronics.
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July 13, 1964 The ICC announces its approval of the Norfolk & Western - Nickel Plate - Wabash merger. It also invites the Erie Lackawanna, Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine to join the new company.
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July 13, 2005 Three trains collide in Pakistan, killing 127. The crash is blamed on one of the engineers, who ignored a stop signal.
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Mark Tomlonson
