March 27, 1835 A rotary steam locomotive built by Willam Avery of Syracuse NY is tested on the New Jersey Railroad & Transportation Company between Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. It is not powerful enough. ?Mr. Avery proposes to build a larger version, but nothing further is heard from him.
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March 27, 1855 Secretary of War Jefferson Davis presents the report on surveys for the Pacific railroad to Congress. The surveys suggest five separate routes between the 32nd and 49th parallels.
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March 27, 1874 Kalamazoo MI's first Grand Rapids & Indiana depot burns to the ground. A new one will be built on the same location.
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March 27, 1879 The Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive "Modoc" pulls 138 loaded cars between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.
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March 27, 1902 A new Union Station for Washington DC is proposed. The proposal would remove the existing railroad stations from the National Mall.
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March 27, 1918 The Pennsylvania Railroad grants a license to the Position-Light Signal Company to build and install position-light signals on the PRR. In return, the railroad will collect a $1 per light unit royalty (2025: $22.79).
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March 27, 1935 General Motors' Electro-Motive Division breaks ground in McCook IL for their new locomotive factory.
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March 27, 1953 For the second time in U.S. history, four trains are involved in a single wreck. Near Conneaut OH on the New York Central, an improperly secured 18-inch pipe slips off a gondola, damaging an adjacent track. The track damage and improper flagging will cause another freight train and 2 passenger trains to derail and collide. Twenty-one people are killed and forty-nine injured. The first 4-train wreck occurred in Connecticut in December, 1891.
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March 27, 1954 The Sylvania Central (GA) quits.
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March 27, 1960 The last regularly scheduled steam-powered passenger train on a major U.S. railroad runs from Durand to Detroit on the Grand Trunk Western.
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March 27, 1960 Missouri Pacific's last day of passenger service on its Kansas City-Ft. Smith-Little Rock line.
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March 27, 1961 Black demonstrators stage a "ride-in" on Charleston SC streetcars.
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March 27, 1963 In a report that will come to be known as the “Beeching Axe”, Dr. Richard Beeching recommends huge cuts to the United Kingdom’s rail network.
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March 27, 1964 Great Britain's "Great Train Robbers" are sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars.
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March 27, 1967 The Great Northern runs its first taconite unit train from Nashwauk MN to Allouez WI.
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March 27, 1976 Washington D.C.'s "Metro" opens its first 4.6 miles.
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March 27, 1976 Penn Central runs its last Grand Rapids – Cadillac (MI) train. Michigan Northern will take over operations on April 1.
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March 27, 1995 After a two-week strike by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, affecting Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and VIA Rail, the Canadian Parliament creates arbitration panels to resolve the dispute.
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Mark Tomlonson
