Time Line - 1853

Last Year | Next Year

• April 5. A collision between MC and LS&MS trains at Grand Crossing, IL kills 21.
• May 29: Kalamazoo's Michigan Central Station is destroyed by fire when two drunks upset a stove in a blind pig two doors away. The fire was beyond the capabilities of the Fire Department to extinguish. An intervening thunderstorm is credited with saving the town.  [MT]

• George B. Russell and other parties secure premises on Gratiot Road in Detroit and manufacture twenty-five cars for the Detroit & Pontiac Railway. This was the first railroad car builder west of Albany, New York. This later becomes the Robinson, Russell & Company, and later the Detroit Car & Manufacturing Company.  [HWC]

• New York Central Railroad is organized in New York.

• The Michigan Southern Railroad moves it's Chicago depot to the new Rock Island Depot on Van Buren between Clark and Sherman.  Both roads share in the operation of the depot.  [AAD]

• The duplex telegraph is invented.  [SAM] 

Time line Key:

• Railroad event in Michigan
• Event relating to mining
• Event related to car ferries
• Event outside of Michigan
• Improvement in Technology
• Railroad built or extended
• Railroad abandoned and/or removed
• Economic panic or depression