60 free Railroad trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Cornish engineer built the locomotive for the world's first railway train, at Penydarren in 1804?
Richard Trevithick
He was also the pioneer of high-pressure steam; his son said he first made it work in England in 1799.
Q 02Which 1825 English railway was the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives?
Stockton and Darlington
Passengers rode in horse-drawn coaches until steam-hauled carriages arrived in 1833; the bicentenary was celebrated in 2025.
Q 03Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?
The Rainhill Trials
Ten engines were entered, five could compete, and the £500 prize even attracted a horse-powered entry called Cycloped.
Q 04The Liverpool and Manchester, the world's first inter-city railway, opened in which year?
1830
It was also the first to run entirely on steam, the first fully double-tracked, the first timetabled, and the first to carry mail.
Q 05What is the width of standard-gauge track, used by about 60 percent of the world's railways?
1,435 mm
It is also called Stephenson gauge; Russia uses 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
Central Pacific president Leland Stanford tapped it with a silver hammer, and the single word 'done' went out by telegraph.
Q 07Which two companies built the first US transcontinental railroad toward each other?
Central Pacific and Union Pacific
Central Pacific laid 690 miles east from Sacramento; Union Pacific laid 1,085 miles west from Omaha.
Q 08Which US president signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 that authorised the transcontinental line?
Abraham Lincoln
Years earlier, as a lawyer, he had been hired by Union Pacific's Thomas Durant in a case about a Missouri River bridge.
Q 09Which immigrant workforce did the Central Pacific favour for the brutal Sierra Nevada work?
Chinese labourers
Most were paid $31 a month with lodging, and the company even set up recruiting in Canton.
Q 10Where is the original golden spike from 1869 kept today?
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford
It was pulled out immediately after the ceremony so nobody could steal it, and it is 17.6-karat gold weighing about 14 troy ounces.
Q 11Which 9,289 km line from Moscow to Vladivostok is the longest in the world?
The Trans-Siberian
It crosses a record eight time zones and the through journey takes about eight days.
Q 12How many time zones does the Moscow–Vladivostok line cross?
8
Construction was supervised by ministers appointed by Alexander III and Nicholas II between 1891 and 1916.
Q 13The Orient Express began service in 1883 between Paris and, eventually, which eastern terminus?
Istanbul
The Belgian Wagons-Lits company ran it; the timetabled service was cut back over decades and vanished entirely in December 2009.
Q 21The 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 22Which steam locomotive set the still-unbeaten steam speed record of 126 mph in 1938?
Mallard
Nigel Gresley named his streamlined A4 class after birds because he bred them.
Q 23Which famous locomotive became the first officially authenticated to reach 100 mph, in 1934?
Flying Scotsman
It also holds the record for the longest non-stop steam run, 422 miles, set on a tour of Australia in 1989.
Q 14Under what title was Agatha Christie's 1934 Orient Express mystery first published in the United States?
Murder in the Calais Coach
The novel came out in Britain on New Year's Day 1934 with the Belgian detective stuck in a snowdrift.
Q 15What did George Pullman invent after a miserable night trying to sleep in a train seat?
The sleeping car
The first Pullman coach was built in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1859; after his death Abraham Lincoln's son Robert became company president.
Q 16The Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential in US labour history, took place in which year?
1894
Workers lived in the company town of Pullman, Chicago; the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters later became a powerful African-American union.
Q 17Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 just before which event?
The Tokyo Summer Olympics
The Tōkaidō line linked Tokyo and Osaka; the network now runs at up to 320 km/h.
Q 18What speed did Japan's experimental L0 Series maglev reach in 2015, the fastest any train has ever gone?
603 km/h
It ran on the Yamanashi test line; commercial maglev service at 505 km/h is planned for the Chūō Shinkansen to Nagoya.
Q 19The 574.8 km/h wheeled-train world record was set in 2007 by a modified version of which train?
France's TGV
The special trainset, Project V150, weighed only 265 tonnes; the TGV has never had a passenger fatality in normal high-speed service.
Q 20The world's first commercial maglev opened in 1984 as a short airport shuttle in which city?
Birmingham
It ran 600 metres between the airport and the railway station at up to 42 km/h.
Q 24Union Pacific's Big Boy locomotives were designed to haul freight over which mountains?
The Wasatch Range
Big Boy 4014 was restored in 2019 for the transcontinental railroad's 150th anniversary and is the largest operating steam locomotive in the world.
Q 25Amtrak was created in which year to take over most US intercity passenger trains?
1971
Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act over the objections of most of his advisors; many expected it to be a 'last hurrah'.
Q 26Amtrak's Acela, the fastest train in the Americas, reaches 160 mph on which route?
The Northeast Corridor
It only hits that speed on about 40 miles of the 457-mile Washington-to-Boston run.
Q 27Which line opened in London on 10 January 1863 as the world's first underground passenger line?
The Metropolitan Railway
It survives inside the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines; the Tube now has 272 stations.
Q 28Who designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931, later voted a national design icon?
Harry Beck
Edward Johnston had created the Underground's typeface in 1916.
Q 29Which British rail company first standardised its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in 1840?
Great Western Railway
Before 'railway time' every town kept its own local time, which made timetables a nightmare.
Q 30North American railroads introduced standard time zones on 18 November 1883, a date nicknamed what?
The Day of Two Noons
Station clocks were reset as standard noon reached each zone; some junctions had previously kept a clock for every railroad.