– The first underground line of the New York City Subway opens, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company between City Hall and 145th Street at Broadway. The car fleet available includes the first production all-steel passenger cars in the world from an order of 300 placed with American Car and Foundry. It is fed from the IRT Powerhouse. December events December 1 – Mount Washington Transit Tunnel opens for use by Pittsburgh Railways. December 31 – Rail line from Kerma to Wadi Halfa in Sudan officially abandoned. Unknown date events The Tidewater Railway is chartered in Virginia. American Locomotive Company purchases the Locomotive and Machine Company of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which soon becomes Montreal Locomotive Works. First Mallet locomotive built in the United States, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Class O 0-6-6-0 helper #2400, by Alco. The Federal government of the United States purchases the Panama Railway from the French canal company Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique. Lucius E. Johnson succeeds Frederick J. Kimball as president of the Norfolk and Western Railroad. American Car and Foundry acquires Southern Car and Foundry of Memphis, Tennessee. The Seebach-Wettingen Railway in Switzerland becomes the first to put into service a locomotive operating on high voltage alternating current single-phase electric power, at 15,000 V, 15 Hz. 2 ft (600 mm) gauge Hornos Railroad (Ferrocarril de Hornos) begins service for Coahuila's Hacienda de Hornos. Laconia Car Company completes the last passenger car commercially manufactured for Maine narrow gauge railroads. Births July births July 30 – Buck Crump, president of Canadian Pacific Railway Limited 1955–1964 and 1966 (died 1989). Deaths April deaths April 16 – Samuel Smiles, British engineering biographer and railway manager (born 1812). October deaths October 4 – Henry C. Payne, president of Milwaukee and Northern Railroad, The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company and the Milwaukee and Cream City Traction Company, and receiver for Northern Pacific Railway in 1893 (born 1843). November deaths November 7 - R. J. Billinton, Locomotive, Carriage, Wagon and Marine Superintendent of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway 1890-1904, dies (b. 1844). References Colin Churcher's Railway Pages (April 3, 2005), Significant dates in Canadian railway history. Retrieved August 15, 2005.