Steve and the Steam Engine

by Sara Ware Bassett

"Were any more railroads like the Quincy road built in America?" questioned Steve.

"Yes, a railroad very much like it was built in the Pennsylvania mining country to transport coal from the mines at Summit down to the Lehigh Valley for shipment. An amusing story is told of this railroad, too. It extended down the mountainside in a series of sharp inclines between which lay long stretches of level ground. Now you know when you coast downhill your speed will give you sufficient impetus to carry you quite a way on a flat road before you come to a stop. So it was with this railroad. But the force the cars gained on the hillside could not carry them entirely across these long levels, and therefore platform cars were built on which a number of mules could be transported and later harnessed to the cars to pull them across the flat stretches. At the end of each level the mules would be taken aboard again and carried down to the next one, where they were once more harnessed to the cars. Now the tale goes that to the chagrin of the railroad people the mules soon grew to enjoy riding so much that they had no mind to get out and walk when the level places were reached and it became almost impossible to make them. All of which proves the theory I advanced before—that too much luxury is not good for any of us and will even spoil a perfectly good mule."

Steve chuckled in response.

"I'm afraid with railroads like these America did not make much progress," he said.

"No very rapid strides," owned his father. "Nevertheless men were constantly hammering away at the railroad idea. In out-of-the-way corners of the country were many persons who had faith that somehow, they knew not how, the railroad would in time become a practical agency of locomotion. When the Rainhill contest of engines took place in England before the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester road, and Stephenson carried off the prize, Horatio Allen, one of the engineers of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, was sent over to examine the locomotives competing and if possible buy one for a new railroad they hoped to put into operation. Unluckily none of the engines were for sale but he was able to purchase at Stourbridge a steam locomotive and this he shipped to New York. It reached there in 1829—a ridiculous little engine weighing only seven tons. Before its arrival a track of hemlock rails fastened to hemlock ties had been laid and as the Lackawanna River lay directly in the path of the proposed road a wooden trestle about a hundred feet high had been built across the river. This trestle was of very frail construction and calculated to sustain only a four-ton engine and therefore when the seven-ton locomotive from Stourbridge arrived and was found to weigh nearly double that specification there was great consternation."

"Did they tear the trestle down and build another?" asked Steve with much interest.

Mr. Tolman did not heed the question.

"Now in addition to the disconcerting size of the engine," he continued, "the wooden rails which had been laid during the previous season had warped with the snows and were in anything but desirable condition. So altogether the prospect of trying out the enterprise, on which a good deal of money had already been spent, was not alone disheartening but perilous."

"The inspectors or somebody else would have put an end to such a crazy scheme jolly quick if it had been in our day, wouldn't they?" grinned the boy.

"Yes, nobody could get very far with anything so unsafe now," his father responded. "But all this happened before the era of inspectors, construction laws, or the Safety First slogan. Hence no one interfered with Horatio Allen. If he chose to break his neck and the necks of many others as well he was free to do so. Therefore, nothing daunted, he got up steam in his baby engine, which was the more absurd for having painted at its front a fierce red lion, and off he started—along his hemlock railroad. The frail bridge swayed and bent as the locomotive rumbled over it but by sheer miracle it did not give way and Allen reached the other side without being plunged to the bottom of the river."