American Railroad Pioneers

As early as 1764 there was a cable-operated tramway of grooved logs in operation in the United States at Lewiston, New York, where it hauled supplies for a military camp. Other similar tramways followed, including, in 1826, the horse-hauled Granite Railway in Quincey, Massachusetts. The wooden track of this railroad was iron faced. Some people claim that this should be considered the 'first railroad in the United States'.

While Richard Trevithick was demonstrating his first locomotive in Europe, inventors were also hard at work in America. Oliver Evans, a Philadelphia blacksmith, was commissioned to build a dredge, but it ended up as a steam-operated dredge plus wheels and a propeller— the first steam-powered amphibious craft— which he called his Orukter Amphibolos. Unfortunately, when it set out on the cobbled streets of Philadelphia the axles and the wheels collapsed.

The first steam locomotive to run on tracks in the United States was built by Colonel John Stevens, a farsighted advocate of railroads who, in 1812, published a paper entitled Documents Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of Rail-Ways and Steam Carriages Over Canal Navigation. In 1825 he built a circular track with a racked rail on his estate at Hoboken, New Jersey. On this track his locomotive reached a speed of twelve miles per hour carrying six passengers.

Although Stevens, by this time seventy-six, made no further active contribution to American railroad history, his demonstrations stimulated the interest of others. Among them was John Jervis, chief engineer of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. In 1828 his company built a nine-mile stretch of horse-operated track between their mines and the end of their canal at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The same year Jervis sent his assistant, Horatio B. Allen, to England, where he was a witness of the Rainhill Trials. Allen was commissioned to purchase locomotives for the company.

One of them, the Stourbridge Lion, arrived in New York in May 1829 and was tried out at Honesdale on 8th August 1829 with Allen at the controls. A festive crowd turned up for the occasion and a cannon was fired for the official start (overcharged, it tore the arm off the man who discharged it). The locomotive, with a red and gold lion's head on the front of the boiler, weighed nearly eight tons—five tons more than had been thought at the time of its purchase.

Three hundred yards from the start the track crossed a rickety trestle bridge thirty feet above Lackawaxen Creek. Allen took it at full speed, twenty miles an hour, and reached the other side. Three miles farther on he reversed and came back to the start. The Lion had proved itself, but it was immediately decided that it was too heavy for the track and its active life was brought to a rapid close.

The following year a one-horse-power engine, called Tom Thumb, was tried out on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and hauled a car-load of thirty-six people at a maximum speed of eighteen miles per hour.

British engineers had advised that the curves of the Baltimore and Ohio's track, which included one on a 150-foot radius, made it impossible to use steam power on the railroad. Shareholders began to withdraw. Peter Cooper, a man who had bought land along the track, was worried about his own investment. As he told it later in the Boston Herald, the directors of the railroad 'had a fit of the blues. I had naturally a knack of contriving, and I told the directors I believed I could knock together a locomotive that would get around that curve...
'So I came to New York and got a bit of an engine, about one horse-power (three and one-half cylinder and fourteen-inch stroke), and carried it back to Baltimore.'

Cooper added a boiler and set his engine up on wheels—and it worked. The trial on 28th August 1830 attracted little attention in the press, but it perturbed the local stagecoach operators. The largest firm challenged Cooper to a race.

On a double track their finest grey was set against the Tom Thumb. The horse soon had the lead, but the locomotive built up power and speed and overtook the horse. It was well ahead when the belt
which operated the fan for the fire slipped from its pulley. As the steam pressure fell the speed of the locomotive dropped, and the horse came galloping past to win, to the delight of the supporters of the horse-drawn train. But their jubilation did not prevent the Baltimore and Ohio directors from deciding to adopt steam power. As far as they were concerned the little Tom Thumb had amply proved itself.
Like the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Britain the company announced a competition for a steam engine, which was won in 1831 by the Atlantic, the first 'grasshopper'-type locomotive, built at York, Pennsylvania, by Phineas Davis.

Late in 1829, Horatio Allen, driver of the Lion, took charge of the building of a railroad for the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company. The seaport of Charleston saw how the Baltimore and Ohio line would increase Baltimore's trade at their expense, and so planned a railway of its own.

Allen ordered two locomotives to be built by the West Point Foundry in New York City, and this railroad can claim to be the first in the United States built expressly for steam locomotion. The first locomotive, named The Best Friend of Charleston, arrived by sea in October and, after undergoing trials, drew the first train out of Charleston on Christmas Day 1830. Behind the locomotive was a flat wagon with a detachment of artillerymen and the cannon used to signal the opening, then came two covered coaches full of celebrities and dignitaries. Great crowds came to watch, and there were bands and fireworks.

The locomotive gave excellent service for six months, then one day her fireman shut off the safety valve and the boiler exploded, making an end of him and of his Best Friend.

To dispel the fears this incident put in passengers' heads the line thereafter placed a flat car piled with bales of cotton immediately behind the locomotive. The cotton was to shield the passengers should a similar accident occur.

The makers of The Best Friend supplied the first locomotive, the De Witt Clinton, for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad. A charter for the railroad had been given in 1826, but various delays prevented the completion of the seventeen-mile track until 1831.

On the inauguratory trip the passengers came under a rain of smoke, sparks and cinders from the chimney stack. Those in the open carriages protected themselves with their umbrellas — only to find that the umbrella covers disappeared in flames. Soon the passengers found their clothes were on fire and most of them spent the journey trying to put each other out! However, not one person who set out failed to complete both the outward and the return journeys.

Within ten years of the opening of these first American railroads there were nearly three thousand miles of track in operation in the United States, and by the outbreak of the Civil War the total had increased tenfold. Unfortunately, these lines were not to a standard gauge, which made through traffic impossible.