After a flurry of things happening at start of the year, 12th January is one of those days in history that has been missed out by significant rail events!  As I write this (in the evening of 11th) I already have 383 entries in my "on this day" database - but it's patchy and there are still days to be resolved.  So from history today, I give you:

From 12th January 2009:

Government answers petition on redoubling the Cotswold line (here)
Single 153 running the St. Ives branch (here)
Daily signalling problems? (here)

From 12th January 2011:

Safety on the stairs in Reading (here)

From 12th January 2014:

Sea Wall damage - in South Wales! (here)

From 12th January 2020:

Another new fare from SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) (here)

The go-to historical event would be a railway accident, but the trouble is finding them. A search through all newspapers and all years for an event that happened on one day of the year is tricky. News is reported after the event, by several days for most newspapers (weeklies), and search engines have yet to reach the level of development needed to support such a search.

While looking, I did find a lot of them - in the 1870s some newspapers had a regular heading for a small down-page item of "serious railway accidents". There were hundreds like this sad little tale from the Bolton Evening News of Friday 14 January 1870:

The inquest took place two days later, as reported in Wigan Observer and District Advertiser on Saturday22 January 1870,

Easy enough to scrape Wikipedia and filter it with a Python (and having had a morning of radio interviews, vet trips, webinars, bill paying and boiler repairs I felt like relaxing with some Python) script.   For today:

January 12, 1899 – United Kingdom – A London and North Western Railway express freight train derailed at Penmaenmawr, Caernarfonshire because the formation was washed away in a storm. Both locomotive crew were killed.

January 12, 1919 – United States – Genesee County, New York. The New York Central Southwestern Limited rammed the back of the Wolverine at South Byron. A Pullman sleeping car was pushed upward and fell on top of another Pullman sleeper, killing 22 people.

January 12, 1939 – British India – At Hazaribagh on the East Indian Railway, saboteurs remove a 36-foot (11 m) length of rail. The locomotive of the Dehra Dun Express from Howrah actually makes it across the gap and regains the rails, but the track is sufficiently damaged that the rest of the train is derailed, with 21 deaths and 71 injuries. A reward offer of 25,000 rupees fails to lead to a prosecution. This is one of 131 sabotage attempts against the railway in a 10-year period.

January 12, 1997 – Italy – A Pendolino train derails due to excessive speed just before Piacenza station, killing 8 people and injuring 29 others.

January 12, 2001 – Republic of the Congo – Nvoungouti: More than 30 people die when two trains collide because of a brake failure at Nvoungouti.