Railroad Trivia
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108 free Railroad trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
58 free Railroad trivia questions with answers. Railroads shrank the world, invented time zones and gave us everything from the sleeping car to the cowcatcher. This railroad trivia quiz covers all of it: Trevithick's 1804 locomotive and Stephenson's Rocket, the Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool and Manchester lines, the American transcontinental railroad and its golden spike, the Trans-Siberian, the Orient Express, and the modern speed kings, from the Shinkansen and TGV to Japan's 603 km/h maglev. There are questions on record-breaking locomotives like Mallard, Flying Scotsman and Big Boy, on tunnels and mountain lines from the Gotthard to Tibet, on London's Underground and New York's Grand Central, and on the stories that made trains famous: Casey Jones, the Great Train Robbery, Murder on the Orient Express, Thomas the Tank Engine and the Chattanooga Choo Choo. It starts easy and works up to questions that will stretch serious railfans. Every answer has been checked against railway histories and official records and carries a linked source, so it holds up for a pub quiz, a classroom or a long ride with the window seat.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which engineer built the locomotive for the world's first railway train, at Penydarren in 1804?
Richard Trevithick
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.
Q 02Which 1825 English railway was the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives?
Stockton and Darlington
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.
Q 03Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?
The Rainhill Trials
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.
Q 04The Liverpool and Manchester, the world's first inter-city railway, opened in which year?
1830
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.
Q 05What is the width of standard-gauge track, used by about 60 percent of the world's railways?
1,435 mm
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.
Q 06Where was the ceremonial last spike of America's first transcontinental railroad driven on May 10, 1869?
Promontory Summit, Utah
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.
Q 07Which US president signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 that authorised the transcontinental line?
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Q 08Which immigrant workforce did the Central Pacific favour for the brutal Sierra Nevada work?
Chinese labourers
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.
Q 09Which museum holds the original golden spike of 1869?
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford
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.
Q 10Which 9,289 km line from Moscow to Vladivostok is the longest in the world?
The Trans-Siberian
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.
Q 11The Orient Express began service in 1883 between Paris and, eventually, which eastern terminus?
Istanbul
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.
Q 12Under what title was Agatha Christie's 1934 Orient Express mystery first published in the United States?
Murder in the Calais Coach
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.
Q 13What did George Pullman invent after a miserable night trying to sleep in a train seat?
Q 21Which famous locomotive became the first officially authenticated to reach 100 mph, in 1934?
Flying Scotsman
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.
Q 22Union Pacific's Big Boy locomotives were designed to haul freight over which mountains?
The Wasatch Range
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.
Q 23Amtrak began operating most US intercity passenger trains in which year?
1971
The sleeping car
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.
Q 14The Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential in US labour history, took place in which year?
1894
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.
Q 15Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 just before which event?
The Tokyo Summer Olympics
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.
Q 16What speed did Japan's experimental L0 Series maglev reach on its 2015 record run?
603 km/h
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.
Q 17The 574.8 km/h wheeled-train world record was set in 2007 by a modified version of which train?
France's TGV
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.
Q 18The world's first commercial maglev opened in 1984 as a short airport shuttle in which city?
Birmingham
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.
Q 19The Shanghai maglev, once the fastest passenger service at 431 km/h, uses technology from which country?
Germany
It runs from Pudong airport to the outskirts of central Pudong on German Transrapid technology.
Q 20Which steam locomotive set the world steam speed record of 126 mph in 1938?
Mallard
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.
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'.
Q 24Amtrak's Acela, the fastest train in the Americas, reaches 160 mph on which route?
The Northeast Corridor
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.
Q 25Which line opened in London on 10 January 1863 as the world's first underground passenger line?
The Metropolitan Railway
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.
Q 26Who designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931, later voted a national design icon?
Harry Beck
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.
Q 27Which British rail company first standardised its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in 1840?
Great Western Railway
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.
Q 28North American railroads introduced standard time zones on 18 November 1883, a date nicknamed what?
The Day of Two Noons
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.
Q 29The Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994, links Folkestone in England with which French town?
Coquelles
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.
Q 30Which 57 km Swiss tunnel became the world's longest rail tunnel on opening in 2016?
The Gotthard Base
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.