July 31 –
Boston and Maine Railroad, 2 men struck on track 16 inbound to Wakefield. Conductor Damian Soto is suspended 30 days without pay and forced to retake his conductor license.
August 11 – In
England, the
Tyne and Wear Metro opens for full public service with the first section from Haymarket to Tynemouth via South Gosforth and Four Lane Ends, the first
British conversion from heavy to
light rail.[7]
December – Promulgation of the
JNR reconstruction act in a bid for the company to straighten out insolvency. As a result,
83 rural lines running in deficit were assigned to three phases of either a transfer to third-sector ownership or outright closure and replacement by bus services.[11]
The last train, controlled by
Conrail, operates on
New York City's former New York Central "High Line" on the West Side. It is reported to have hauled three boxcars of frozen poultry.
^Feather River Rail Society/Western Pacific Railroad Historical Society (2002).
"Western Pacific History". Archived from
the original on 23 July 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2006.
^Perles, Anthony (1981). The People's Railway: The History of the Municipal Railway of San Francisco. Glendale, CA (US):
Interurban Press. p. 250.
ISBN0-916374-42-4.
^Gillham, J. C. (1988). The Age of the Electric Train: Electric Trains in Britain since 1883. London: Ian Allan.
ISBN0-7110-1392-6.
^
abcBalkwill, Richard;
Marshall, John (1993). The Guinness Book of Railway Facts and Feats (6th ed.). Enfield: Guinness Publishing.
ISBN0-85112-707-X.
^Werner, George C.
"Burlington System". The Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved June 6, 2010.
^Imashiro, Mitsuhide; Ishikawa, Tetsujiro (2012). The Privatisation of Japanese National Railways : Railway Management, Market and Policy. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 68, 88–90.
ISBN9781780939278.
^L. Stanley Crane (born in
Cincinnati, 1915) raised in Washington, lived in
McLean before moving to
Philadelphia in 1981. He began his career with
Southern Railway after graduating from
The George Washington University with a
chemical engineering degree in 1938. He worked for the railroad, except for a stint from 1959 to 1961 with the
Pennsylvania Railroad, until reaching the company's mandatory retirement age in 1980. Crane went to
Conrail in 1981 after a distinguished career that had seen him rise to the position of CEO at the Southern Railway. He died of pneumonia on July 15, 2003 at a hospice in
Boynton Beach,
Fla.