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Foreword: The vanishing iron horse 4
Remaining relics and operable replicas representing the first
quarter-century of steam locomotives in North America 6
America’s first rail locomotive 10
Two British-built locomotives 14
Peter Cooper and Phineas Davis 22
The West Point Foundry Association 26
National Museum’s John Bull 38
Three Grasshoppers 47
Two midwestern locomotives 53
A One-Armed Billy 58
A Rocket in America 60
A Canadian relic 63
The final decade 66
Supplement: Models, in the National Museum, of locomotives not
included in this work 75
Picture credits 104
Acknowledgments 105
Bibliography 106
Index 109
FOREWORD
The Vanishing Iron Horse
As the midpoint of the 20th century was reached, the curtain was falling
upon the final phases of steam locomotive operation in North America.
Almost certainly, after another decade there would remain in service
comparatively few representatives of the engine which had been the
primary source of motive power of the railroads for over a hundred
years.
In that comparatively short time the steam locomotive had changed the
United States from a small country with a few seaports, and with towns
and settlements little farther inland than river navigation permitted,
to a great nation covered with cities and spanning a continent. It had
made possible the confederation of the isolated provinces of Canada into
a great Dominion. Now, by the 1950’s, owing to the emergence of another
type of motive power, it had become obsolete and its days could be
numbered.
No future generation would experience the thrill enjoyed by its
predecessors. No future American could stand awed beside the track and
behold the majestic onrush of the iron horse, be deafened by the blast
of the exhaust, the crash and clatter of steel on steel, and the hiss of
escaping steam, or be momentarily shaken as the locomotive thundered
past in a blurred flash of connecting rods, valve mechanism, and
pounding wheels.
No child at night would ever again awaken to the eerie echo of a far-off
steam whistle crying at a lonely crossing, or by day look out from a
hillside at the long white plume of steam that marked a distant train
charging down the valley below. The present generation of Americans can
gaze back upon these things with nostalgia. The next will never know
them.
Here and there a steam engine will be saved, but the people of a
different era will note them and quickly pass on, wondering. Only a few
will pause to marvel and ponder over the development of the steam
locomotive.
It is to the everlasting credit of our forebears that some few examples
and relics of the early engines have been preserved; and the appearance
of this study of them, coming in the final hour of the steam locomotive,
is most appropriate. The author has gone to painstaking lengths to find
and sift and bring together the most complete record ever compiled of
these examples and relics remaining of the earliest of North American
railway engines and of working replicas of them.
Students of locomotive and railroad history are familiar with the almost
impossible task confronting the researcher who undertakes to trace the
history of early engines. The contemporary account is often a
will-o’-the-wisp pursued endlessly through the yellowed pages of
century-old newspapers and books; the seemingly authentic fragment of
fact is found to be faulty just when it seems flawlessly correct; the
colorful description of some ephemeral engine of the past just cannot be
reconciled with contemporary accounts and finally proves to have been
prepared long afterward, replete with the inaccuracies which most
unfortunately result from the inroads made by time upon the
recollections of the most careful observer.
Through all this confusing maze the author step by step has made his
way, the result being a most noteworthy and valuable contribution to the
literature of the steam locomotive. To students of its history, to the
vast body of railway enthusiasts all over the world, and to those
generally interested in the development of mechanical industry and
transportation, this work must appeal as unique and one that will be
long remembered.