108 Fun Facts About Railroad

Which engineer built the locomotive for the world's first railway train, at Penydarren in 1804?

Richard Trevithick, born near Camborne in Cornwall, pioneered high-pressure steam; on 21 February 1804 his engine hauled ten tons of iron and about seventy men along the Penydarren tramroad.

Which 1825 English railway was the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives?

Stockton and Darlington: it opened on 27 September 1825 between the Durham coalfield and the River Tees; regular passenger coaches were horse-drawn until 1833.

Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?

The Rainhill Trials, held in October 1829 on a level stretch near Rainhill, Lancashire; ten engines were entered, five competed, and Rocket alone met every condition to take the £500 prize.

The Liverpool and Manchester, the world's first inter-city railway, opened in which year?

1830: the line opened on 15 September 1830 with a procession of trains hauled by Stephenson locomotives, and it was the first railway to rely entirely on steam power.

What is the width of standard-gauge track, used by about 60 percent of the world's railways?

1,435 mm, or 4 ft 8½ in, is the Stephenson gauge inherited from early English colliery lines; Russian railways use 1,520 mm and India's broad gauge is 1,676 mm.

Where was the ceremonial last spike of America's first transcontinental railroad driven on May 10, 1869?

Promontory Summit, Utah, north of the Great Salt Lake, where the two lines met; the ceremonial spike was tapped in with a silver maul and the single word 'done' went out by telegraph.

Which US president signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 that authorised the transcontinental line?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Act on 1 July 1862; it chartered a new company to build west from the Missouri River and granted land and government bonds for every mile of track laid.

Which immigrant workforce did the Central Pacific favour for the brutal Sierra Nevada work?

Chinese labourers, most from Guangdong, made up the bulk of the company's workforce by 1867, some 10,000 to 12,000 men; they were paid less than white workers and bought their own food.

Which museum holds the original golden spike of 1869?

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University holds it; the 17.6-karat spike, weighing about 14 troy ounces, was pulled out right after the ceremony and replaced with an iron one.

Which 9,289 km line from Moscow to Vladivostok is the longest in the world?

The Trans-Siberian, completed in 1916, runs 9,289 km from Moscow's Yaroslavsky station to Vladivostok on the Pacific; the through train takes about six days.

The Orient Express began service in 1883 between Paris and, eventually, which eastern terminus?

Istanbul, then called Constantinople: the 1883 service reached it only by ferry and steamer from the Danube, with through trains running from 1889; the last timetabled Orient Express ran in December 2009.

Under what title was Agatha Christie's 1934 Orient Express mystery first published in the United States?

Murder in the Calais Coach was the Dodd, Mead title in the United States, chosen to avoid confusion with Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, published in America as Orient Express.

What did George Pullman invent after a miserable night trying to sleep in a train seat?

The sleeping car: Pullman converted two day coaches into sleepers at Bloomington in 1859, and his luxurious Pioneer car of 1865 set the pattern for the Pullman Company's fleet.

The Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential in US labour history, took place in which year?

1894: the strike began in May after wage cuts without rent cuts in the company town, spread through Eugene Debs's American Railway Union and was broken by federal troops in July.

Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 just before which event?

The Tokyo Summer Olympics: the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka opened on 1 October 1964, nine days before the Games began on 10 October.

What speed did Japan's experimental L0 Series maglev reach on its 2015 record run?

603 km/h was recorded on 21 April 2015 on the Yamanashi test line, beating the 590 km/h set a week earlier; the Chūō Shinkansen was designed for 505 km/h service.

The 574.8 km/h wheeled-train world record was set in 2007 by a modified version of which train?

France's TGV: the V150 test train, two power cars and three trailers with larger wheels and 25 kV boosted to 31 kV, hit 574.8 km/h on the new LGV Est on 3 April 2007.

The world's first commercial maglev opened in 1984 as a short airport shuttle in which city?

Birmingham: the low-speed maglev shuttle ran 600 metres between Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International station from 1984 to 1995, at up to 42 km/h.

The Shanghai maglev, once the fastest passenger service at 431 km/h, uses technology from which country?

It runs from Pudong airport to the outskirts of central Pudong on German Transrapid technology.

Which steam locomotive set the world steam speed record of 126 mph in 1938?

Mallard, an LNER A4 Pacific designed by Nigel Gresley, reached 126 mph on Stoke Bank south of Grantham on 3 July 1938; Gresley named his A4s after birds because he bred waterfowl.

Which famous locomotive became the first officially authenticated to reach 100 mph, in 1934?

Flying Scotsman, LNER A3 No. 4472, was timed at 100 mph on a test run near Little Bytham on 30 November 1934; its 1989 tour set a 422-mile non-stop steam record.

Union Pacific's Big Boy locomotives were designed to haul freight over which mountains?

The Wasatch Range: the 4-8-8-4s were built from 1941 to lift freight unassisted up the Wasatch grade between Ogden and Evanston, Wyoming; No. 4014 returned to steam in 2019.

Amtrak began operating most US intercity passenger trains in which year?

1971: Amtrak took over the routes on 1 May 1971, after Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act in October 1970; many in Washington expected it to be a short-lived 'last hurrah'.

Amtrak's Acela, the fastest train in the Americas, reaches 160 mph on which route?

The Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's electrified Washington-New York-Boston main line; Acela reaches its top speed only on short stretches, mainly in New Jersey and southern New England, while most of the 457-mile route is slower.

Which line opened in London on 10 January 1863 as the world's first underground passenger line?

The Metropolitan Railway ran from Paddington to Farringdon Street with steam trains in gas-lit cut-and-cover tunnels; its route survives within the Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines.

Who designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931, later voted a national design icon?

Harry Beck, an Underground draughtsman, drew the diagram in his spare time in 1931, treating the lines like an electrical circuit; it was first issued as a pocket map in January 1933.

Which British rail company first standardised its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in 1840?

The Great Western Railway adopted London time across its system in November 1840; before 'railway time' every town kept its own local sun time, several minutes apart between London and Bristol.

North American railroads introduced standard time zones on 18 November 1883, a date nicknamed what?

The Day of Two Noons: on 18 November 1883 clocks were reset as standard noon reached each zone, and in the eastern parts of each zone local noon had already passed, so noon struck twice.

The Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994, links Folkestone in England with which French town?

Coquelles, just west of Calais, holds the French terminal where shuttle trains load cars and lorries; the tunnel's 37.9 km undersea section is the longest of any tunnel's.

Which 57 km Swiss tunnel became the world's longest rail tunnel on opening in 2016?

The Gotthard Base Tunnel, 57 km between Erstfeld and Bodio, opened on 1 June 2016 after 17 years of construction, giving a flat route under the Alps with more than 2,000 m of rock above.

Which line holds the record for the highest point on any railroad, the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m?

The Qinghai–Tibet railway, opened to Lhasa in 2006, crosses the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m; more than 960 km of the line lies above 4,000 m and carriages are supplied with oxygen.

India's first passenger train ran in 1853 between Bombay and which town?

Thane: on 16 April 1853 the train left Bori Bunder for Thane, 34 km away, hauled by the locomotives Sahib, Sindh and Sultan with 14 carriages and about 400 passengers.

The world's longest straight stretch of railway, across the Nullarbor Plain, is in which country?

Australia: the 478 km dead-straight section of the Trans-Australian Railway lies on the Nullarbor Plain, and the Indian Pacific crosses it on its run between Sydney and Perth.

The Adelaide-to-Darwin passenger train takes its name from which group?

Afghan camel drivers: the cameleers who carried supplies through the outback from the 1860s were collectively called 'Afghans', and the train was nicknamed the Afghan Express, shortened to The Ghan.

Which Swiss train between Zermatt and St. Moritz is nicknamed 'the slowest fast train in the world'?

The Glacier Express, run by the Rhaetian Railway and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn, crosses 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and the 2,033 m Oberalp Pass on its roughly 291 km, all-day run.

Which New York station has 44 platforms, more than any other railway station in the world?

Grand Central Terminal, opened in 1913 on 42nd Street, has 44 platforms and 67 tracks on two levels; its four-faced opal concourse clock and painted zodiac ceiling are New York icons.

The cowcatcher on American locomotives is credited to which computing pioneer?

Charles Babbage, designer of the Difference Engine, is credited with proposing the wedge-shaped 'pilot' in the 1830s while studying railway safety; he also built a dynamometer car to record a train's performance.

Railroad engineer Casey Jones died in 1900 at Vaughan, Mississippi, driving for which railroad?

Illinois Central: Jones was driving its New Orleans Special, train No. 1, when it ran into a stalled freight at Vaughan on 30 April 1900; he was the only person killed.

The Great Train Robbery of 1963 stopped a Royal Mail train travelling from which city to London?

Glasgow: the overnight travelling post office from Glasgow Central to Euston was stopped at a rigged signal near Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, on 8 August 1963, and the gang took about £2.6 million.

The first peacetime train robbery in the United States took place in 1866 in which state?

Indiana: on 6 October 1866 the Reno Gang boarded an Ohio & Mississippi train as it left Seymour and threw a safe from the express car, taking more than $10,000.

The Great Locomotive Chase of 1862 saw Union raiders steal a Confederate train named what?

The General, a Western & Atlantic locomotive, was seized at Big Shanty, Georgia, on 12 April 1862 by James Andrews's raiders and chased down by crews aboard the Texas; Keaton's 1926 comedy took its name.

Glenn Miller's 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' from 1941 was the first recording to receive what?

A gold record: RCA Victor sprayed a master disc gold and presented it to Miller on 10 February 1942 after the song, from the film Sun Valley Serenade, passed 1.2 million sales.

Thomas the Tank Engine works on the North Western Railway on which fictional island?

Sodor, an imaginary island between Barrow-in-Furness and the Isle of Man; Awdry invented it after noting that the Anglican diocese of 'Sodor and Man' had no actual Sodor.

Which actor played multiple roles in Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture film The Polar Express (2004)?

Tom Hanks played six parts, including the conductor, the boy's father, Santa Claus and the hobo; the film adapted Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 picture book.

The 'toy train' Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in India runs on track of what gauge?

UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1999; Ghum, at 2,260 m, is India's highest station.

The Semmering line in Austria, completed in 1854, is generally called the world's first true what?

Mountain railway: the Semmering, built 1848-54 under Carl von Ghega with some 20,000 workers, climbs to 898 m over 41 km with 16 viaducts and 14 tunnels; UNESCO listed it in 1998.

Which country has the world's longest high-speed rail network, at more than 50,000 km?

China: its dedicated high-speed network grew from the 2008 Beijing-Tianjin line to more than 45,000 km by 2024, more than the rest of the world combined.

In which year did Japan's first railway open, between Shimbashi and Yokohama?

1872: the 29 km line from Shimbashi to Yokohama opened on 14 October 1872 with British-built locomotives and British engineers, and 14 October is marked as Japan's Railway Day.

Which privately owned intercity passenger railroad began service in Florida in 2018?

Brightline opened between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018 and reached Orlando airport in 2023, running mostly on Florida East Coast Railway tracks it shares with freight.

A caboose was traditionally coupled where on a North American freight train?

At the end: the caboose brought up the rear so the conductor and flagman could watch the train ahead for shifting loads and hot axle boxes and protect it from behind.

What was Locomotion No. 1, built by the Stephensons in 1825, the first steam locomotive to do?

Haul passengers on a public railway: on 27 September 1825 it pulled the opening train, with an experimental passenger coach and wagons of coal and flour, at up to about 15 mph; it was first named Active.

Who was killed at the 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first widely reported rail fatality?

William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool, had climbed down to greet the Duke of Wellington at Parkside when Rocket came along the other line and crushed his leg; he died that evening at Eccles.

Eurostar began running from London to Paris and Brussels in November 1994 from which London station?

Waterloo: Eurostar ran from the Waterloo International terminal from 14 November 1994 until the move to St Pancras in November 2007, when the completed high-speed line cut London-Paris to about 2 hours 15 minutes.

Rudolf Diesel was granted his US patent for the compression-ignition engine in which year?

1898: Diesel's US patent 608,845 was granted on 9 August 1898, six years after his original German application; the first successful diesel-electric locomotive in America, Central Railroad of New Jersey No. 1000, entered service in 1925.

The Panama line, the first rails to link the Atlantic and Pacific, opened in which year?

Its first full-length revenue train ran on 28 January 1855, well before the canal.

Which Canadian railway's last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, in 1885?

Canadian Pacific: Donald Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie on 7 November 1885, completing the transcontinental line promised to British Columbia when it joined Confederation in 1871.

The Diolkos, a grooved stone trackway from around 600 BC, carried boats across which isthmus?

Corinth: the Diolkos let ships or their cargoes be dragged on wheeled cradles across the Isthmus of Corinth, saving the voyage round the Peloponnese; grooves cut into the limestone guided the wheels.

Matthew Murray's Salamanca of 1812, the first commercially successful steam locomotive, solved adhesion how?

With a cog-wheel on a toothed rail: Blenkinsop's patent rack, cast along one rail of the Middleton Railway in Leeds, let an engine light enough to spare the brittle cast-iron track pull heavy coal trains.

Which fish-catching bird's beak was the model for the long nose of Japan's 500 Series bullet train?

Kingfisher beaks gave engineers the streamlined shape for the train's front. It is one of the best-known cases of biomimicry, where designers copy nature to solve a problem.

Tama, appointed stationmaster of Japan's Kishi Station in 2007 and fitted with a custom hat, was what animal?

A cat called Tama greeted passengers at the rural stop, and the publicity lifted ridership by 17 percent in her first month. A study credited her with adding 1.1 billion yen to the local economy.

Which Beatle narrated the first two series of the children's television show Thomas & Friends?

Ringo Starr got the job because producer Britt Allcroft found his voice perfect for the stories. His years of pop fame played no part in her choice.

Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb, an early American steam locomotive, famously lost a race against what?

A horse pulling a rail car won only because a belt slipped off the engine's blower and the boiler lost power. Until then the little locomotive had been pulling easily ahead.

Building of a Uganda Railway bridge over the Tsavo River was halted by attacks from a pair of what?

Lions without manes dragged workers from their tents at night for nine months until both were shot. Their skins spent 25 years as floor rugs before a museum bought and mounted them.

Which future independence leader was thrown out of a first-class train carriage at Pietermaritzburg?

Mahatma Gandhi, then a young lawyer, spent the night shivering in the station, weighing whether to sail home or stay and protest for his rights. He stayed in South Africa for 21 years.

From which London terminus does the Hogwarts Express depart in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books?

King's Cross is where the stories hide Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The films shot the exterior at St Pancras next door, because temporary buildings covered the real facade until 2012.

Which board game lets players buy four railroads, including the Reading and the Short Line?

Monopoly's Short Line was never a railroad at all. The name is a trimmed version of the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar route that served Atlantic City.

Who escaped slavery in Maryland and became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad?

Harriet Tubman made some 13 return missions and led about 70 people to freedom. The network she used had no tracks or trains, only safe houses and antislavery activists.

Which breed was Hachikō, the dog who waited at a Japanese station for years after his owner died?

Akita dogs reached America because of him. After Hachikō's story spread around the world, Helen Keller brought the first one home.

Which marmalade-loving children's book character is found by the Brown family at a London railway station?

Paddington Bear owes his luggage label to wartime memories. Author Michael Bond recalled evacuee children leaving London with a name tag round the neck and one small case each.

Which hero of American legend out-hammered a steam-powered rock drill, then died from the effort?

John Henry was a steel driver, hammering drills into rock to make holes for the explosives that blasted out railroad tunnels. A plaque in Talcott, West Virginia, celebrates the legend.

Who directed Strangers on a Train, the 1951 thriller about two passengers who discuss swapping murders?

Alfred Hitchcock took the story from a Patricia Highsmith novel published only a year earlier. Crime writer Raymond Chandler was among those who worked on the script.

Which detective solves a killing on a snowbound train in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express?

Hercule Poirot's stalled train had a real model. In February 1929 a blizzard in Turkey held up the actual service for six days, only months after Christie first rode it.

Which heroine of a classic Russian novel ends her life by throwing herself under a freight train?

Anna Karenina's death mirrors her first meeting with Vronsky, when a railway worker is killed by a moving carriage. Tolstoy runs stations and journeys through the whole book as a motif.

Which US city's rapid transit system is nicknamed the L because most of it runs on elevated track?

Chicago opened the oldest sections in 1892, making the L the second-oldest rapid transit system in the Americas. Parts of it now run in subway tunnels and open cuts.

Which US city runs the world's last manually operated cable car system, a National Historic Landmark?

San Francisco's cars carry no motor: each grips a cable running below the street through a slit between the rails. Only three of the 23 lines built by 1890 survive.

Which country has a railway station whose full 58-character name begins Llanfairpwllgwyngyll?

Wales owes the giant name to a stunt. It is said to have been contrived in 1869 to give the village the longest station name in Britain and win some publicity.

Which material do locomotives drop on the rails in front of their driving wheels to improve grip?

Sand has to be bone dry to run freely down the pipes. British engine sheds kept special drying stoves so that every sandbox could be refilled each morning.

Which member of a steam locomotive's crew shovelled the coal that kept the boiler making steam?

The fireman kept that title on the railways, while the same job at sea was usually called stoker. On big engines the fire was often lit hours earlier by separate fire lighters.

Which rail vehicle, coupled behind a steam locomotive, carries its supply of fuel and water?

Tender tanks on some main lines were refilled without stopping. A scoop was lowered into a trough between the rails, and the engine's own speed forced the water up.

Which type of railway hauls two counterbalanced cars up and down a steep slope on one cable?

Funicular cars are fixed to opposite ends of the same cable, which loops over a pulley at the top. The weight of the one going down helps to lift the one coming up.

What name is given to the bed of crushed stone that holds railway track in place and drains water?

Ballast shares its name with the heavy stones once loaded into ships to keep them stable. Packed around the track, it spreads the load of passing trains and keeps down weeds.

Small gaps are deliberately left between the ends of jointed rails to allow for what?

Heat expansion makes steel rails grow in hot weather, and the gaps give them room. The same joints make the clickety-clack sound as wheels pass over them.

Train wheels have a slightly cone-shaped running surface mainly so that each pair on an axle can do what?

A coned pair of wheels can steer itself. On a bend the outer wheel rides on a wider part of its cone and covers more ground per turn, so the pair follows the track.

In a diesel-electric locomotive, the engine turns no wheels directly and instead drives what?

A generator turns the engine's power into electricity for the traction motors that actually move the locomotive. Larger modern units use an alternator and rectifier in its place.

Which roof-mounted apparatus lets an electric train collect power through contact with an overhead line?

Pantograph is a borrowed name: some designs resemble the jointed copying instrument once used to trace handwriting and drawings. It was developed to keep contact with the wire at much higher speeds.

Dry goods clerk Eli Janney whittled from wood the first model of which railroad device?

The knuckle coupler was patented in 1873 as an alternative to the link and pin. Twenty years later Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act, which required automatic couplers.

Which inventor patented the railway air brake before battling Thomas Edison over electric power?

George Westinghouse got the idea after seeing a wreck in which two crews saw each other coming but could not stop. Until then brakemen ran along the car roofs setting each brake by hand.

Which Victorian engineer of record-breaking steamships laid his main railway line to a 7-foot broad gauge?

Isambard Brunel believed the wide track would run better at high speed, and his trains were for a time the fastest in the world. Its mismatch with other lines became a lasting problem.

Which American dynasty was founded by the Commodore, who sold his ships in 1864 to focus on railroads?

The Vanderbilts' founder, Cornelius, got his nickname in jest from rival boat captains struck by his energy. He went on to build one of the largest fortunes in American history.

Which railroad, founded by merchants in 1827, became America's first steam-operated common carrier?

Baltimore and Ohio was both the name and the plan: tracks from a busy Atlantic port west to a suitable point on a great inland river. Two states chartered the company in the same year.

Which outlaw's gang turned to train robbery in 1873 by derailing a Rock Island Line train near Adair, Iowa?

Jesse James rode with the Younger brothers, and the gang got away with about $3,000 from the wrecked train. Until then the outlaws had been known for holding up banks.

Which revolutionary left Zurich in 1917 on a so-called sealed train to return to Russia from exile?

Vladimir Lenin's train was never truly sealed. That was an agreed cover story, and the passengers even got off to spend a night in Frankfurt on the way.

The railway carriage used to sign the 1918 armistice that ended World War I stood in which French forest?

Compiègne saw the scene replayed in reverse in 1940. Hitler had the same carriage taken from its museum and set on the exact spot so that France would sign its own armistice inside it.

Which 1896 Supreme Court case began when a man deliberately sat in a whites-only train car in New Orleans?

Plessy v. Ferguson was an arranged test case. A citizens' committee recruited Homer Plessy to break Louisiana's Separate Car Act, and the train was stopped as planned so he could be removed.

Which labour leader unionised the Pullman porters in 1925 and later headed the 1963 March on Washington?

A. Philip Randolph signed up more than half the porters within a year, and the company answered with firings and violence. His union was the first successful one led by African Americans.

Which travel pioneer started out in 1841 with a rail excursion for temperance campaigners from Leicester?

Thomas Cook took several hundred temperance supporters by special train to a meeting in Loughborough. The idea had struck him on a 15-mile walk: the new railways could serve the cause of sobriety.

Which physicist's effect did Buys Ballot test in 1845 with musicians playing aboard a moving Dutch train?

The Doppler effect had been proposed only three years earlier, in a treatise on the coloured light of double stars. The players held one calibrated note on the line between Utrecht and Amsterdam.

The Empire Builder passenger train is named for the nickname of which Great Northern Railway tycoon?

James J. Hill pushed his line to the West Coast without public money, and it was one of the few transcontinental railroads that never went bankrupt. The train took his name in 1929.

Which board game by Alan R. Moon has players collect coloured cards to claim rail routes between cities?

Ticket to Ride is the world's highest-selling train game. The first edition came out in 2004 and won that year's Spiel des Jahres, the coveted Game of the Year award.

Which Scottish railway crossing, opened in 1890, gave Britain a phrase for a job that never ends?

The Forth Bridge saying rests on a mistaken belief that repainting began again the moment it was finished. A coating applied between 2001 and 2011 was designed to last 25 years.

Which bandleader's orchestra adopted Take the 'A' Train, written by Billy Strayhorn, as its signature tune?

Duke Ellington had sent Strayhorn directions to his house by subway, and their opening words became the title. His son recalled finding a discarded draft of the tune in a trash can.

Which composer wrote Starlight Express, the 1984 musical whose cast play racing trains on roller skates?

Andrew Lloyd Webber first chased the idea in 1974, when he asked the author of the Thomas the Tank Engine books about an animated series. The skates were the designer's suggestion.

Which South Korean director made Snowpiercer, set aboard a train endlessly circling a frozen Earth?

Bong Joon-ho made his English-language debut with the story, shooting in a Prague studio on carriage sets mounted on gimbals to copy a train's motion.

Which Hollywood studio boss let house guests ride and drive the miniature steam railroad in his back yard?

Walt Disney's back-yard line led to something much bigger. It inspired him to put railroad attractions into his plans for Disneyland.

Frecciarossa, a name meaning red arrow, is the premier high-speed train of which country?

Italy adopted the name in 2008 for a service previously called Eurostar Italia. Slower sister brands took silver and white arrows: Frecciargento and Frecciabianca.

Japan's Seikan Tunnel carries trains beneath the Tsugaru Strait from Honshu to which other island?

Hokkaido's train ferries sailed until the tunnel opened in 1988. A 1954 typhoon sank several of them in the strait, killing more than 1,400 people, and pushed the railway to speed up its tunnel study.

Which poet wrote the rhyming verse commentary for Night Mail, the 1936 documentary about a postal train?

W. H. Auden was earning £3 a week at the GPO film department, less than he had made as a schoolteacher. The score came from a 22-year-old Benjamin Britten.

Which painter's Rain, Steam and Speed shows a train rushing across a Thames bridge in a summer rainstorm?

J. M. W. Turner tucked a hare into the bottom right corner, running along the track. He was among the few painters of his day to treat industrial progress as a worthy subject.