The early railroads, as the word implies, were roads made of wooden rails, or railed roads, over which heavy loads were drawn by horses. The very first were private affairs, and not intended for carrying passengers.[1]
[Footnote 1: The first was used in 1807 at Boston to carry earth from a hilltop to a street that was being graded. The second was built near Philadelphia in 1810, and ran from a stone quarry to a dock. It was in use twenty-eight years. The third was built in 1826, and extended from the granite quarries at Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset River, a distance of three miles. The fourth was from the coal mines of Mauchchunk, Pa., to the Lehigh River, nine miles. The fifth was constructed in 1828 by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to carry coal from the mines to the canal.]
%318. Public Railroads.%—In 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation to the West, that railroads of great length and for public use were undertaken. In that year the people of Massachusetts were so excited over the opening of the Erie Canal that the legislature appointed a commission and an engineer to select a line for a railroad to join Boston and Albany.
At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of locomotive railroading in our country began.
%319. The Portage Railroad.%—As yet the locomotive was a rude machine. It could not go faster than fifteen miles an hour, nor climb a steep hill. Where such an obstacle was met with, either the road went around it, or the locomotive was taken off and the cars were let down or pulled up the hill on an inclined plane by means of a rope and stationary engine.[1] When Pennsylvania began her railroad over the Alleghany Mountains, therefore, she used the inclined-plane system on a great scale, so that in its time the Portage Railroad, as it was called, was the most remarkable piece of railroading in the world.
[Footnote 1: Such an inclined plane existed at Albany, where passengers were pulled up to the top of the hill. Another was at Belmont on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, and another on the Paterson and Hudson road near Paterson.]
The Pennsylvania line to the West consisted of a horse railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna River; of a canal out the Juniata valley to Hollidaysburg on the eastern slope of the Alleghany Mountains, where the Portage Railroad began, and the cars were raised to the summit of the mountains by a series of inclined planes and levels, and then by the same means let down the western slope to Johnstown; and then of another canal from Johnstown to Pittsburg.
[Illustration: Inclined plane at Belmont in 1835]
As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and canal, just as it built turnpikes. No cars, no motive power of any sort, except at the inclined planes, were to be supplied. Anybody could use it who paid two cents a mile for each passenger, and $4.92 for each car sent over the rails. At first, therefore, firms and corporations engaged in the transportation business owned their own cars, their own horses, employed their own drivers, and charged such rates as the state tolls and sharp competition would allow. The result was dire confusion. The road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in opposite directions to pass each other. But the drivers were an unruly set, paid no attention to turnouts, and would meet face to face on the track, just as if no turnouts existed. A fight or a block was sure to follow, and somebody was forced to go back. To avoid this, the road was double-tracked in 1834, when, for the first time, two locomotives dragging long trains of cars ran over the line from Lancaster to Philadelphia. As the engine went faster than the horses, it soon became apparent that both could not use the road at the same time; and after 1836 steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotive was furnished by the state, which now charged for hauling the cars.[1]
[Footnote 1: On the early railroads see Brown's History of the First
Locomotives in America.]