The First Quarter-Century of Steam Locomotives in North America / Remaining Relics and Operable Replicas with a Catalog of Locomotive Models in the U. S. National Museum. United States National Museum Bulletin 210

by Smith Hempstone Oliver

A Canadian Relic

Figure 53.—Photo of Samson, built in England in 1838 by Hackworth, taken in Nova Scotia by a New Glasgow photographer some time before 1890. Observe chairs provided for engineer.

The third and last of the three complete British locomotives of the 1825-1849 period remaining in North America is also the only extant locomotive of the period on this continent located outside the United States.[5]

The Samson ([figure 53]) was built by Timothy Hackworth at New Shildon, Durham, England, in the summer of 1838, at a cost of about $10,000, for the General Mining Association of Nova Scotia. (Despite statements that the Albion, also preserved in Nova Scotia, was built by Hackworth before 1840, it was actually built by Rayne and Burn in Newcastle in 1854.)

The Samson was not, as has so often been claimed, the first locomotive in Canada. It had been preceded in 1836 by the Stephenson-built Dorchester employed on the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, running between St. Johns and Laprairie, south of Montreal. The Dorchester exploded and was demolished near Joliette in 1864. Also antedating the Samson was the Jason C. Pierce, built in 1837 by William Norris for the same railroad, and destroyed in a fire in about 1890.

The Samson was one of three identical Hackworth locomotives built for the General Mining Association, whose railroad was known unofficially as the Albion Mines Railway, and the South Pictou Railroad. Each had an 0-6-0 wheel arrangement, 56½-inch gauge, 48-inch cast iron plate wheels, and vertical cylinders with a bore and stroke of 15¼ and 18 inches. Each weighed 17 tons. The other two, the John Buddle and the Hercules, were scrapped in 1885 and 1892, respectively.

Figure 54.—Samson at Chicago in 1883, during Exposition of Railway Appliances. George Davidson, long its engineer, stands at controls on right.

The Samson made a trial run in December 1838, and was put into regular service on September 19, 1839, hauling cars of coal from the Albion mines at Stellarton to the harbor at Pictou, a distance of about 6 miles. According to one early report, a train of 30 coal cars, weighing 3 tons each, was the usual load pulled to the harbor. The Samson made about 3 round trips a day at a speed of a little less than 10 miles an hour. This same report states that up to 1856 the locomotive operated on a steam pressure of 70 pounds per square inch, and thereafter, until it was taken out of service in the early 1880’s, on 45 pounds.

The locomotive was operated in an unusual manner. The engineer was stationed at one end, adjacent to the cylinders and driving gear, while the fireman was located at the other end, from which the boiler was fired.

The boiler is about 13 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, and has a large U-shaped return flue. The cylinders are mounted vertically at the rear, and the piston rods are guided by Watt’s parallel motion instead of the usual cross heads and slide bars. The engine has no frame, the axle bearings being bolted to brackets riveted to the under side of the boiler. Only the front and middle axle bearings are fitted with springs.

In the course of its working career, the Samson traveled considerably. In addition to having been brought across the Atlantic, the old locomotive was brought to Chicago in 1883 for display at the Exposition of Railway Appliances ([figure 54]). There it was accompanied by George Davidson, long its engineer and said to have come with it to Nova Scotia from England.

Figure 55.—Samson, with an original passenger car of 1840, at the Fair of the Iron Horse, September 30, 1927.

Ten years later, in 1893, it was again brought to Chicago, this time to be exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition. At the conclusion of the exposition the Samson, and the Albion that had accompanied it, were taken by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. to Baltimore for preservation there. The B & O later included the Samson (and also the Albion) in the exhibition of historic locomotives at the Fair of the Iron Horse in 1927 ([figure 55]).

In June 1928, when the two old locomotives were given by the B & O to the Province of Nova Scotia, the Samson returned to the land of its youth, only to be placed in storage in Halifax. Later, however, it was given to the town of New Glasgow, through which it had run almost daily in its early days, and it is now housed in a small building especially constructed for it at the town’s railroad station.