February 2018

• ...that Illinois Railway Museum has the most extensive physical plant of any rail museum in North America?

• ...that in 1850 U.S. President Millard Fillmore signed a land grant for the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad, making it the first land-grant railroad in the United States?

• ...that when the Illinois Central Missouri River Bridge was rebuilt in 1908, there was discussion as to whether the bridge, which connected Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, should be open to pedestrian and street traffic as well as rail traffic?

• ...that the £410,000 price at which British Rail valued the Ilfracombe branch line in 1974 in an attempt to recoup funds to offset the deficit that the line produced while in service was a major factor in preventing the line's preservation?

• ...that since Île-de-France tramway Line 4 is the result of the transformation and installation of a double-track on the Bondy to Aulnay-sous-Bois line that opened in 1875, it is the first French tram-train line?

• ...that after Shinjuku Station, Ikebukuro Station is the second-busiest railway station in the world seeing more than 2 million passengers on average daily?

• ...that plans announced in 2015 to convert the at-grade Igualada station in Catalonia, Spain, to an underground station will remove the last level crossing in the city?

• ...that until 2013 Ireland was the only European Union state that had not implemented open access by private companies to the country's rail network thus far operated by Iarnród Éireann?

• ...that in the late 1840s, "Kenny's Bridge" (at today's River Street) in Boston, Massachusetts, was an unofficial Boston and Providence Railroad station stop that eventually grew to become Hyde Park station?

• ...that the Huntsville Hospital Tram System was the second hospital people mover system opened in the United States and as of 2010 is the only automated people mover system completed in Alabama?

• ...that when it opened in 1874, Hunts Cross railway station was the only four-platform station on the line running between Liverpool Central and Manchester Central stations?

• ...that the combined 22,996-foot long (7,009 m) Huey P. Long Bridge and connected rail viaduct has been inaccurately described as the longest rail bridge in the U.S.?

• ...that by 1914, passenger volume at the Hudson Terminal, which opened in 1909, had reached 30,535,500 annually, then nearly doubled by 1922, with 59,221,354 passengers that year?

• ...that by February 2008, South Korea's experimental HSR-350x train had traveled 207,000 km (129,000 mi), but only in test runs?

• ...that during the Open Golf Championship tournaments in 2006, 2012 and 2014, passenger services terminated at Hoylake railway station to allow competitors to safely cross the tracks from the practice course on one side to the championship course on the other?

• ...that due to his involvement as vice president of the American Railway Union during the Pullman Strike of 1894, George W. Howard became the first U.S. prisoner to be confined at Joliet?

• ...that since its reopening in 1981, passenger traffic at Honeybourne railway station has steadily increased, with an estimated total for 2014–15 at more than 56,000?

• ...that Homai railway station on Auckland's Southern Line was named using the Māori word for 'gift', homai, because several local landowners donated parcels of land and money for the station's construction?

• ...that passenger ships berthed in the inner harbour next to Platform 1 of Holyhead railway station until the port was re-developed?

• ...that construction of the Common Tunnel by Holmenkolbanen in Oslo had to stop in October 1914 after about thirty properties had received massive damage from the construction, the disputes from which were not fully settled until 1925?

• ...that the last train to depart Holborn Viaduct railway station in 1990 visited several London terminals used at that time by Network SouthEast, terminating at Charing Cross?