This article lists anniversary events related to rail transport that occurred on January 3.

• 1868 – The Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids Railroad is incorporated in Michigan.^[1]

• 1901 – The St. Louis Southwestern Railway purchases the Stuttgart and Arkansas River Railroad in Arkansas.^[2]
• 1906 – At the annual stockholder's meeting, the charter for the Cleveland Short Line Railway is amended to specify Collinwood, Ohio and Rockport, Ohio as the terminals of the railroad.^[1]
• 1912 – Canadian Pacific Railway leases the Dominion Atlantic Railway in Nova Scotia.^[3]
• 1986 – The Vancouver SkyTrain begins operations between Vancouver's waterfront and New Westminster.^[3]

• 2003 – A passenger train travelling from Secunderabad to Manmad, crashes into the rear end of a heavy goods train near Ghatnandur in Maharashtra, India, killing 18 people. See: Ghatnandur train crash.
• 2005 – Kansas City Southern names Arthur Shoener, formerly a vice president at Union Pacific Railroad, as the new CEO of the holding company's Kansas City Southern Railway and Texas Mexican Railway divisions.

• 1810 – Henry Keyes, president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway 1869–1870 (died 1870).
• 1816 – Samuel C. Pomeroy, president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway 1863-1868 (died 1891).
• 1860 – Henry Clay Hall, commissioner for Interstate Commerce Commission beginning in 1914, chairman of same 1917-1928 (died 1936).
• 1900 – C.L. Dellums, cofounder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (died 1989)