2000 in rail transport

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

Events

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.

February events

• February 4 – German railway saboteur Klaus-Peter Sabotta is sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted murder and extortion.
• February 6 – The Brühl train disaster; in Brühl, Germany killed 9 when a train negotiated a low speed turnout at three times the correct speed and derailed, on the West Rhine Railway.

March events

• March 8 – Tokyo train disaster: a sideswipe collision of two Tokyo Metro trains kills 5 people near Naka-Meguro Station.

April events

• April – In Ireland, the DART system is finally extended southwards from Bray to Greystones.
• April 20–28 – Former NSWGR's 38 class locomotives 3801 and 3830 head to Melbourne, Victoria called the Millennium Aurora by the NSW Rail Transport Museum during the Easter Long Weekend. This would be the last time that NSW steam will ever visit Victoria.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

December events

• December 2 – The Sarai Banjara rail disaster in the Punjab, India killed 46 and injured at least 150 when a freight train derailed into the path of a passenger train.
• December 30 – The Rizal Day bombings occurred around Metro Manila in the Philippines leaving 22 dead.

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 (16.0 mi) long, it is the longest land rail tunnel to date.
• In Ireland, the Dublin Area Rapid Transit system is extended northwards from Howth Junction to Malahide.

Accidents

v t e Railway accidents in 2000 (2000) Location and date Åsta, Norway (4 January) • Brühl, Germany (6 February) • Naka-Meguro, Japan (8 March) • Hatfield, England (17 October) • Kaprun, Austria (11 November) • Sarai Banjara, India (2 December) • Manila, Philippines (30 December) 1999 2001

Deaths

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Awards

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

United Kingdom

Train Operator of the Year

• 2000:

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.