The Heavy Metal Pride of Engineering (Part 2)

While Britain's "Puffing Billy" ran on rails, American railroaders chased both horses and steam trains. In 1830, Thomas Earle published A Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications, a 120-page tract that examined both horse-powered tramways and locomotive-driven railways. "The first thing to be determined in the formation of a Rail-road," Earle began, "is the kind of power that is to be employed on it, whether horse, or steam engines". For reasons ranging from the grade of the road to the dirt that horses throw upon the track, Earle wrote, "it is desirable not to use both kinds of power on the same road".

Author's Note: This is the second entry in a series about the history of American locomotives. Click here for Part 1.

Horses vs. Steam

Thomas Earle's study, which the author advised was "compiled from the best and latest authorities", ended by exhorting the "the national government" to build a robust network of railways in "the sections of the country on which artificial improvements are both most desirable and profitable". With equanimity, he sketched freight-hauling scenarios in which horses "will probably supersede the use of steam", provided that animal power "can be advantageously applied to a carriage". When traditional horsepower proved ineffective, "then light steam engines, probably of a weight not exceeding two tons, will be used", most significantly in Pennsylvania's coal country.

One hundred years later, the Lima Locomotive company would build the Allegheny, a 778,000-pound steam locomotive that could haul a coal train up a .577% grade to a 2,072-foot mountain summit.

John Stevens and Horatio Allen

Thomas Earle's two-ton prediction may seem quaint, but hindsight is 20/20 vision. In Earle's world, America's first railroad was only five years old. In 1825, Colonel John Stevens had designed and built a steam locomotive that could haul several passenger cars around his Hoboken, New Jersey estate. Col. Stevens, an engineer and inventor whose Phoenix steamboat had, in 1809, become the first steamship to navigate the open ocean, is thus regarded as the "father" of American railroading for building this non-public line.

Another American inventor, Horatio Allen, also deserves credit for envisioning a nation powered by steam. Born in Schenectady, New York, Allen was a Columbia-educated civil engineer who worked for the Delaware and Hudson (D&H) Canal Company, an interstate transportation firm with canals stretching from Creek Locks, New York to Honesdale, Pennsylvania. In 1828, Allen traveled to England to buy four locomotives for the D&H's first railway, a line from the coal fields near Carbondale, Pennsylvania to a company canal.

Built by England's Foster, Rastrick, and Company, the Stourbridge Lion (image at left) traveled by sea to New York, where it was tested under steam at the West Point Foundry, an ironworks in Cold Spring that would later build Parrot rifles. On August 8, 1829, this "heavy metal pride of engineering" made its first run on rails at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Weighing 7.5 tons, the locomotive named after the West Midlands city in which it was built was also much heavier than Thomas Earle's two-ton prediction.

Resources:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3awVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=thomas+earle+steam+railroad&source=bl&ots=OCBxHr4qh_&sig=VvoKFQ8qKWRc8hWY0QgjPVjb2qE&hl=en&ei=wgO2S9KbH8H88Aa8hN1c&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CB0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://railga.com/charlhmbrg.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stevens_%28inventor%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Allen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stourbridge_Lion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_and_Hudson_Canal_Company

http://explorepahistory.com/images/ExplorePAHistory-a0b9v9-a_349.JPG