And so, I saw in my mind's eye that familiar room of my childhood—the open window, the breezes blowing the curtains to and fro, the moonlight casting strange shadows on the terrace outside, and I heard again that voice which has meant so much to me telling how "when the first railroad started" and all the people had gathered from far and near "to witness its departure," he and a group of fellow students from Transylvania University, mounted on fast horses, galloped ahead "to see if the Wonderful Thing could round the curve without running off the track"; and how "it came in sight, thundering along, puffing out clouds of black smoke, the engineer adding to the confusion by incessantly blowing his shrill whistle," all of which so terrified his horse, he had great difficulty in keeping his seat, but yet, how tremendously impressed he was by the "gallant way in which the gentlemen seated in the coach raised their stovepipe hats in greeting as they passed by like a streak of lightning."
He said the locomotive had been invented by his old friend Tom Barlow, in whose honor he had named our Tom Barlow, his favorite race horse.
He also said the old locomotive looked like a "thresher engine mounted on a flat car," and that the coach was for all the world like an "omnibus with seats on top as well as inside," and furthermore, he added, when it had been proved safe he rode upon it himself, and then "rode home on horseback" (a distance of thirty miles) to tell his mother all about it.
And this was all that was left of that Wonderful Thing, this bit of scrap iron and a few stone sills!
Finding myself gazing vacantly at that relic of the Past, and that people were noting my abstraction, I hastily gathered myself together and crossing the street to our beautiful Union Station, I started on my journey. In a magnificent chair car, luxuriously furnished and upholstered, a liveried porter raised the windows and adjusted screens, turned on an electric fan, offered me the latest magazines and papers fresh from the press, placed a footstool at my feet and a cushion at my back. My safety was provided for by double tracking and unseen but perfectly trained employees, but neither the reading matter in my lap, the comfort of my surroundings, nor the always charming scenery from the car window, could drive from my thoughts the quaint old railroad; and when I came back to Lexington in the fall, in my eager desire to know more about it, I immediately began my research which has grown into this history of
"A Pioneer Railway of the West."
Maude Ward Lafferty.
The first locomotive engine in the world was built just one hundred years ago by George Stephenson and used at Newcastle, England, at the Killingworth Colliery.