THE "JOHN BULL" ARRIVES AT BORDENTOWN.
The following circumstances connected with the arrival of the engine at Bordentown, N.J., are related by Isaac Dripps, Esq., for many years master mechanic of the Camden and Am boy Railroad, and afterward superintendent of motive power of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who is now, after a busy life, enjoying a peaceable retirement at his pleasant home in West Philadelphia.
Mr. Dripps, who is now in the eighty-second year of his age, was employed by Robert and Edwin Stevens in repairing and assisting with their steamboats on the Delaware River and at Hoboken as early as 1829. When the "John Bull" arrived in Philadelphia he was detailed by Robert Stevens to attend to the transportation of the engine to Bordentown, where it was landed safely the last week in August, 1831.
The boiler and cylinders were in place, but the loose parts—rods, pistons, valves, etc.—were packed in boxes. No drawings or directions for putting the engine together had come to hand, and young Dripps, who had never seen a locomotive, found great difficulty in discovering how to put the parts in place, alone and unassisted, as Robert Stevens, who had returned from Europe, was absent at Hoboken at the time attending to other matters.
DIMENSIONS OF ENGINE AND PARTS.
The bronze bass-relief upon the monument, made from the working drawing furnished by Mr. Dripps, is an exact representation of the locomotive when it arrived in America.
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 turntable, 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.
Great similarity will be noticed in the American locomotives built for many years after the arrival of the "John Bull," especially in the matter of making the keys, brasses, etc., on the connecting rods, and in the construction of valves, fire box and tubes. Even the old plan of setting the ends of the exhaust nozzle high up in the smoke box, which was discontinued when the petticoat pipe came in use, is now again resorted to in connection with the extended smoke box of modern locomotives.