The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

by Thomas Curtis Clarke

Fig. 3.—Boston & Worcester Railroad, 1835.

In the latter part of 1827, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company put the Carbondale Railroad under construction. The road extends from the head of the Delaware & Hudson Canal at Honesdale, Pa., to the coal mines belonging to the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company at Carbondale, a distance of about sixteen miles. This line was opened, probably in 1829, and was operated partly by stationary engines, and partly by horses. The road is noted chiefly for being the one on which a locomotive was first used in this country. This was the "Stourbridge Lion," which was built in England under the direction of Mr. Horatio Allen, who afterward was president of the Novelty Works in New York, and who is still (1889) living near New York at the ripe age of eighty-seven. Before the road was opened, he had been a civil engineer on the Carbondale line. In 1828 Mr. Allen went to England, the only place where a locomotive was then in daily operation, to study the subject in all its practical details. Before leaving this country he was intrusted by the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company with the commission to have rails made for that line, and to have three locomotives built on plans to be decided by him when in England. This, it must be remembered, was before the celebrated trial of the "Rocket" on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which was not made until 1829. Previous to that trial, it had not been decided what type of boiler was the best for locomotives. The result of Mr. Allen's investigations was to produce in his mind a decided confidence in the multitubular boiler which is now universally used for locomotives. Other persons of experience recommended a boiler with small riveted flues of as small diameter as could be riveted. An order was therefore given to Messrs. Foster, Rastrick & Co., at Stourbridge, for one engine whose boiler was to have riveted flues of comparatively large size, and another order was given to Messrs. Stephenson & Co., of Newcastle-on-Tyne, for two locomotives with boilers having small tubes. The engine built by Foster, Rastrick & Co. was named the "Stourbridge Lion." It was sent to this country and was tried at Honesdale, Pa., on August 9, 1829. On its trial trip it was managed by Mr. Allen, to whom belongs the distinction of having run the first locomotive that was ever used in this country. In 1884 he wrote the following account of this trip:

When the time came, and the steam was of the right pressure, and all was ready, I took my position on the platform of the locomotive alone, and with my hand on the throttle-valve handle said: "If there is any danger in this ride it is not necessary that the life and limbs of more than one should be subjected to that danger."

The locomotive, having no train behind it, answered at once to the movement of the hand; ... soon the straight line was run over, the curve was reached and passed before there was time to think as to its not being passed safely, and soon I was out of sight in the three miles' ride alone in the woods of Pennsylvania. I had never run a locomotive nor any other engine before; I have never run one since.

Horatio Allen.

The two engines contracted for with Messrs. Stephenson & Co. were made by them, and Mr. Allen has informed the writer that they were built on substantially the same plans that were afterward embodied in the famous "Rocket." They were shipped to New York and for a time were stored in an iron warehouse on the east side of the city, where they were exhibited to the public. They were never sent to the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's road, and it is not now known whatever became of them. If they had been put to work on their arrival here the use of engines of the "Rocket" type would have been anticipated on this side the Atlantic.

The first railroad which was undertaken for the transportation of freight and passengers in this country, on a comprehensive scale, was the Baltimore & Ohio. Its construction was begun in 1828. The laying of rails was commenced in 1829, and in May, 1830, the first section of fifteen miles from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills was opened. It was probably about this time that the animated sketch of the car given by Peter Parley was made. From 1830 to 1835 many lines were projected, and at the end of that year there were over a thousand miles of road in use.

Whether the motive power on these roads should be horses or steam was for a long time an open question. The celebrated trial of locomotives on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, in England, was made in 1829. Reports of these trials, and of the use of locomotive engines on the Stockton & Darlington line, were published in this country, and, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams says, "The country, therefore, was not only ripe to accept the results of the Rainhill contest, but it was anticipating them with eager hope." In 1829 Mr. Horatio Allen, who had been in England the year before to learn all that could then be learned about steam locomotion, reported to the South Carolina Railway Company in favor of steam instead of horse power for that line. The basis of that report, he says, "Was on the broad ground that in the future there was no reason to expect any material improvement in the breed of horses, while, in my judgment, the man was not living who knew what the breed of locomotives was to place at command."