Railroad Steam Engines or Locomotives and a Little History
The old steam engine or locomotive in the picture below was designed by the American inventor John Stevens in 1825.
He had been quick to see the possibilities of railroads, and in February of 1815, the New Jersey legislature granted him a charter to build a railroad from New Brunswick to Trenton. This was the first charter issued to a railroad in the United States. Later, Stevens built a railroad between Philadelphia and Columbia, a distance of 82 miles.
This picture illustrates an English locomotive, the "Stourbridge Lion," brought to the United States by a young American engineer, Horatio Allen. After a successful three-mile run over the shaky rails of the time, Allen reversed his engine and brought it back to the starting point at Homesdale, Pennsylvania. Crowds of spectators cheered as he stepped down from the locomotive. Allen was the first engineer to pilot a commercial locomotive, but his accomplishment turned out in failure because the Stourbridge Lion was too weak to pull heavy carts full of coal.
The picture above shows the locomotive named "Tom Thumb" because it was so small. It is running a race with a horse, which won because the steam engine broke down. This was the first steam locomotive built in America, by Peter Cooper, who succeeded with his invention because his steam engine was the first to use tubes in the boiler system.
Above, we see a photograph of the celebration that took place at Promontory, Utah upon the completion of America's first transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific, which started in the West, and the Union Pacific in the East, met here in 1869, after a strong rivalry between the construction gangs of the two railroads. A Central Pacific crew managed to lay ten miles of track in one day, and it won a $10,000 wager from the Union Pacific.
These skyscraper type of trains were used to house men working on the Western railroads. Labor was a big problem during the building of the transcontinental railroads. Men were continually lured away from the roads by rumors of gold strikes. Note the large round device on the flat car. Perhaps, it is an electric searchlight to use for night work?
In 1870, it normally took eight days for steam engines to cross the United States. However, the time was shortened as the design of locomotives improved. Diamond Stocker engines, like the 1870 model illustrated above, broke the old speed records. In 1876, The Jarrett and Palmer Special made a run across the continent in three and a half days. That record stood until 1934, when Union Pacific Company sent a streamlined train from Los Angeles to New York in 56 hours and 55 minutes.
"Smash the world record!" That was the order given to the famous engineer Charlie Hogan, when a new locomotive, the 999 rolled out of the New York Central's shops. On May 11, 1893, Hogan opened up the throttle of the 999 and rushed down the tracks at a speed of 112.5 miles per hour. The new record in turn was broken on June 12, 1905, by a Pennsylvania passenger train, which covered three miles in 85 seconds, an average of 127 miles per hour!
We would be remiss here not to include at least one nighttime photograph of an important locomotive, one of two with their brilliant carbon arc searchlights blazing away. The train on the right above belonged to Prince H. R. H. Henry of Prussia, which was in the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway station at Milwaukee on March 4, 1902. "The photograph was taken at 9 p. m. by the light of the searchlight headlights," stated the 1902 edition of Our Wonderful Progress. "This is the latest device for averting collisions, as the piercing rays can be seen for many miles along the track and flashing against the sky."
This type of carbon arc locomotive headlight, an important feature on many old steam engines or locomotives, was manufactured by the Edwards Company.
This page was last modified on Monday, February 01, 2010