2000 in rail transport

This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 2000.

[edit] Events

[edit] January events

• January 4 - The Åsta accident, a northbound BM92 multiple unit and a southbound passenger train headed by a Di 3 locomotive collided on Norway's Rørosbanen line near Åsta station, killing 19 people.
• January 28 - Amtrak begins to operate an electric service throughout between New York and Boston.^[1]
• January 29 - The Termini Station, in Rome, opens.

[edit] February events

• February 4 - German railway saboteur Klaus-Peter Sabotta is sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted murder and extortion.

[edit] May events

• May 23 - General Motors Electro-Motive Division delivers to the Union Pacific Railroad the first five EMD SD70M diesel locomotives in the largest single order (1,000 locomotives) for diesel locomotives ever by a single railroad.^[2]

[edit] June events

• June 7 - The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, originally built for rail traffic in 1943, opens for combined rail/highway traffic, making it the longest combined rail/highway tunnel in North America.

[edit] July events

• July 1 – Opening of the Oresund Bridge bridge-tunnel carrying road traffic and the Oresund Railway between Denmark and Sweden.^[3]
• July 4 - Amtrak's new Bakersfield Station opens.
• July 11 - VIA Rail Canada announces that it will use five sleeping cars leased from Amtrak for runs between Winnipeg and Churchill, Manitoba.
• July 14 - The United States Surface Transportation Board's temporary moratorium on railroad mergers is upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; the ruling contributes to the failure of the proposed BNSF/CN merger.
• July 21 - Manchester Metrolink, in Manchester, England, is extended to Eccles.

[edit] October events

• October 2 - VIA Rail operates a funeral train for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau between Ottawa and Montreal; the train's journey, which was frequently slowed through towns for the numerous well-wishers, was documented by a CBC news helicopter.^[4]

• October 17 - The Hatfield rail crash, south of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK, occurs when a train traveling at 115 mph derails due to a rail that breaks under it. 4 people are killed, and there is considerable disruption to the national rail network as the infrastructure is reviewed.^[5]
• October 29 - Amtrak upgrades service on the California Zephyr to daily.

[edit] November events

• November 11 - An faulty heater aboard a funicular train in Kaprun, Austria, starts a fire in the train's brake fluid while the train is in a tunnel; only four of the train's 155 passengers survived the fire in the Kaprun disaster.

[edit] Unknown date events

• Robert Krebs resigns as Chief Executive Officer of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway
• The fourth and final phase of Cairo Metro's Line Two (Yellow) opens.
• Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway and Canadian National Railway file for a merger, but the merger is denied by regulatory agencies.
• The Iwateichinohe Tunnel on the Morioka-Hachinohe section of Japan's Tōhoku Shinkansen is completed; at 25.8 km (16 miles) long, it is the longest land rail tunnel to date.

[edit] Deaths

[edit] Awards

[edit] North America

2000 E. H. Harriman Awards

Awards presented by Railway Age magazine

• 2000 Railroader of the Year: The railroad worker (the award for 2000 was changed to "Railroader of the Century")
• 2000 Regional Railroad of the Year: Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad
• 2000 Short Line Railroad of the Year: Arkansas Midland Railroad

[edit] United Kingdom

Train Operator of the Year

• 2000:

[edit] References

• Some of the events listed here were translated from 2000 dans les chemins de fer, the equivalent French-language Wikipedia article.
• Green, Timothy C. (September 1, 2004), Train Scan August 2000. Retrieved July 7, 2005.