...that when news reached the New York Stock Exchange that the American bank Jay Cooke & Company, the exclusive bond agent and primary source of funding for Northern Pacific Railway, had suspended operations after overextending itself in railroad securities, equities plummeted, causing a chain reaction of bank runs and failures known as the Panic of 1873?
...that the Congo-Ocean Railway was constructed using forced labour by the French colonial administration, and it has been estimated that 17,000 of the construction workers, who were mainly recruited from what is now southern Chad and the Central African Republic, died during the construction of the railway?
...that the design of the SA3 coupler, an automatic railway coupling used mainly in Russia and other States from the former Soviet Union, has formed the basis for the new European Automatic Center Coupler (C-AK)?
...that at the time it was acquired by General Steel Castings Corp (later known as General Steel Industries) in 1929, the Commonwealth Steel Company was a critical supplier to railroad companies and it was said that virtually all of the locomotives and passenger cars made in the United States were made using products produced at the Commonwealth plant?
...that the Kuhn slide is part of a modified Walschaerts valve gear that requires less space and runs equally smoothly when the locomotive is moving in either direction, and as such was preferred on tank locomotives which, for operational reasons, often had to run backwards for long periods?
...that Battersea Park railway station in London, England, remained into the current decade effectively unmodernised since its construction in the Victorian era, with platform access only via steep wooden staircases that were unusable by infirm or physically disabled travellers, and Platform 1 constructed entirely of wood?
...that passenger ticket fares on China Railways trains are based on a series of calculations that include the distance traveled, the type of accommodations requested, travel insurance and a premium to cover the cost of the ticketing system itself?
...that construction of the Stillwater–Westport Line was one of the longest-running projects in New Zealand's history, with its first section opened in 1889 but the full line not completed until 1942?
...that the Finnish locomotive builder Tampella grew from humble origins beginning in 1861 in the manufacture of gravecrosses and linen?
...that the opening of Line 4 on China's Shanghai Metro was delayed by almost a year after part of the tunnel that was under construction near the Huangpu River collapsed, causing a six-storey building to collapse?
...that with a total production of 111, the Great Southern and Western Railway101 class was by far the most numerous class of locomotive (diesel or steam) ever to run in Ireland, and that while the oldest in the class dated back to 1866, nearly half were still in traffic when the Córas Iompair Éireann completed dieselisation at the end of 1962?
...that a personal pet project of Adolf Hitler during the Third Reich of Germany was the proposed Breitspurbahn (broad-gauge railway) on which double-story coaches would run on 3-metre (9.8 ft) gauge track between major cities of Grossdeutschland, Hitler's proposed unified German-speaking state?