The engine arrived at Philadelphia about the middle of August, and was then transshipped by sloop to Bordentown, near Trenton, whence a few miles of rail were soon to head northeastward toward South Amboy. The mechanics who assembled the locomotive found it a mysterious and completely unfamiliar device. After considerable experimentation the task was successfully accomplished under the leadership of Isaac Dripps, a local youth who later rose to a position of importance in the Pennsylvania Railroad.
In its first test the locomotive was fired up to 30 pounds steam pressure, and Dripps, with Stevens by his side, opened the throttle of the first locomotive of what was to become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. The engine was disassembled for a few minor modifications shortly after this trial, and a few weeks later, on November 12, the official first trip was made.
The John Bull as it appeared when first placed in service in 1831 was described in detail by J. Elfreth Watkins in his “Camden and Amboy Railroad,” published in 1891. He wrote:
The engine originally weighed about ten tons. The boiler was thirteen feet long and three feet six inches in diameter. The cylinders were nine inches by twenty inches. There were four driving wheels four feet six inches in diameter, arranged with outside cranks for connecting parallel rods, but owing to the sharp curves on the road these rods were never used. The driving wheels were made with cast-iron hubs and wooden (locust) spokes and felloes. The tires were of wrought iron, three-quarters of an inch thick, the tread being five inches and the depth of flange one and a-half inches. The gauge was originally five feet from center to center of rails. The boiler was composed of sixty-two flues seven feet six inches long, two inches in diameter; the furnace was three feet seven inches long and three feet two inches high, for burning wood. The steam ports were one and one-eighth inches by six and a-half inches; the exhaust ports one and one-eighth by six and a-half inches; grate surface, ten feet eight inches; fire-box surface, thirty-six feet; flue surface, two hundred and thirteen feet; weight, without fuel or water, twenty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-five pounds.
After the valves were in gear and the engine in motion, two levers on the engineman’s side moved back and forth continuously. When it was necessary to put the locomotive on the turn-table, enginemen who were skilled in the handling of the engines first put the valves out of gear by turning the handle down, and then worked the levers by hand, thus moving the valves to the proper position and stopping the engine at the exact point desired.
The reversing gear was a very complicated affair. The two eccentrics were secured to a sleeve or barrel, which fitted loosely on the crank-shaft, between the two cranks, so as to turn freely. A treadle was used to change the position of this loose eccentric sleeve on the shaft of the driving wheel (moving it to the right or left) when it was necessary to reverse. Two carriers were secured firmly to the body of this shaft (one on each side of the eccentrics); one carrier worked the engine ahead, the other back. The small handle on the right side of the boiler was used to lift the eccentric-rod (which passed forward to the rock shaft on the forward part of the engine) off the pin, and thus put the valves out of gear before it was possible to shift the sleeve and reverse the engine.
As no tender came with the locomotive, one was improvised from a four-wheel flat car that had been used on construction work, which was soon equipped to carry water and wood. The water tank consisted of a large whiskey cask which was procured from a Bordentown storekeeper, and this was securely fastened on the center of this four-wheeled car. A hole was bored up through the car into the barrel and into it a piece of two-inch tin pipe was fastened, projecting below the platform of the car. It now became necessary to devise some plan to get the water from the tank to the pump and into the boiler around the turns under the cars, and as a series of rigid sections of pipe was not practicable, young Dripps procured four sections of hose two feet long, which he had made out of shoe leather by a Bordentown shoemaker. These were attached to the pipes and securely fastened by bands of waxed thread. The hogshead was filled with water, a supply of wood for fuel was obtained, and the engine and tender were ready for work.
The distance between the two main axles on the locomotive is just 5 feet, and the gauge is 56½ inches. The overall length of the locomotive, including the pilot, is 25 feet; of the tender, 12 feet.
Watkins has given the cylinder bore as 9 inches, a figure also used by C. F. Dendy Marshall in his “Two Essays in Early Locomotive History,” and by J. G. H. Warren in his “A Century of Locomotive Building,” both excellent publications. In fact, however, the cylinder bore of the John Bull was recently measured and found to be 11 inches. The stroke of 20 inches as cited by all is correct.
Figure 30.—Another pre-1900 view of John Bull, which was built in England by Stephenson in 1831.
Many changes, some minor and some major, were incorporated in the John Bull during the next few years. The most noticeable was the addition of a 2-wheeled pilot, suggested in 1832 by Robert L. Stevens to guide the locomotive around the sharp curves common in the tracks of that era. In order to attach the pilot to the front axle, the outside rods and cranks connecting the front and back axles had to be permanently removed, thus reducing the number of drivers from four to two. The John Bull has ever since been driven by only the two rear wheels ([figure 30]). The wheels of the pilot are 29 inches in diameter.
Another early permanent change was the replacement of the wooden-spoked wheels with those of cast iron. The old wooden carriage-type wheels could not stand up under service in America, where sharp curves in the tracks prevailed. A wheel, said to be one of the originals ([figure 31]) but lacking the flanged metal tire, was presented to the National Museum (USNM 181194) by the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. in 1894. An inch or so less in diameter than 54 inches, the wheel would certainly be of the original size if the tire were in place. The 14 spokes and the felloe are of wood. Metal bands, similar to the crank rings of the America (now affixed to the reconstructed wheels of the restored Stourbridge Lion, see [p. 20]), are included in the construction of this old wheel of the John Bull.