Mr. Stevens received no favorable answer to his proposals, but being
acquainted with Mr. Guest (afterward Sir John Guest), a member of
Parliament, proprietor of large iron works in Dowlais, Wales, he
prevailed upon him to have rails rolled at his works. Mr. Guest became
interested in the matter and accompanied Mr. Stevens to Wales, where
the latter gave his personal supervision to the construction of the
rolls. After the rolls were completed the Messrs. Guest hesitated to
have them used, through fear of damage to the mill machinery, upon
hearing which Mr. Stevens deposited a handsome sum guaranteeing the
expense of repairing the mill in case it was damaged. The receipt for
this deposit was preserved for many years among the archives of the
Camden and Amboy Company. As a matter of fact, the rolling apparatus
did break down several times. "At first," as Mr. Stevens in a letter
to his father, which I have seen, described it, "the rails came from
the rolls twisted and as crooked as snakes," and he was greatly
discouraged. At last, however, the mill men acquired the art of
straightening the rail while it cooled.
The first shipment,[3] consisting of five hundred and fifty bars
eighteen feet long, thirty-six pounds to the yard, arrived in
Philadelphia on the ship Charlemagne, May 16, 1831.
Over thirty miles of this rail was laid before the summer of 1832.
A few years after, on much of the Stevens rail laid on the Camden and
Amboy Railroad, the rivets at the joints were discarded, and the bolt
with the screw thread and nut, similar to that now used, was adopted
as the standard.
The rail was first designed to weigh thirty-six pounds per yard, but
it was almost immediately increased in weight to between forty and
forty-two pounds, and rolled in lengths of sixteen feet. It was then
three and a half inches high, two and one-eighth inches wide on the
head and three and a half inches wide at the base, the price paid in
England being £8 per ton. The import duty was $1.85.
The first shipment of rail, having arrived in America, was transported
to Bordentown, and here, upon the ground on which we stand, and which
this monument is erected to mark forever, was laid the first piece of
track (about five-sixths of a mile long) in August, 1831. The Camden
and Amboy Company, following the example of the Manchester and
Liverpool Railroad, laid their first track upon stone blocks two feet
square and ten to thirteen inches deep. These blocks were purchased
from the prison authorities at Sing Sing, N.Y. Some of these stone
blocks have been used in constructing the foundation for this
monument.
[Footnote 3: A list of the vessels chartered to transport the rails,
with dates, tonnage, etc., is given below:
No. of Tonnage. Rate of
Date. Ship. Bars. tons. cwt. lb. Duty.
May 16, 1831. Charlemagne 550 504 0 14 $1.85
May 19, 1831. Salem 963 744 2 14 1.85
April 7, 1832. Caledonia 38 63 3 07 1.85
April 23, 1832. Armadilla 525 1,000 3 21 1.85
May 4, 1832. George Clinton 624 986 2 14 1.85
June 2-18, 1833. Henry Kneeland 204 377 3 21 1.85
May 8, 1832. Cumberland 1,464 2,790 1 00 1.85
June 2, 1832. Gardiner 601 1,136 0 00 1.85
June 5, 1832. Globe 499 943 1 14 1.85
June 6, 1832. Jubilee 70 130 0 21 1.85
July 18, 1832. Hellen 1,080 2,004 3 21 1.85
July 19, 1832. Nimrod 937 1,745 3 00 1.85
Aug. 2, 1832. Emery 240 454 2 00 1.85
Aug. 7, 1833. Ajax 364 700 0 21 1.85
Aug. 13, 1832. Concordia 622 1,174 3 14 1.85
Aug. 14, 1830. William Byrny 1,120 2,138 1 07 1.85
Aug. 20, 1832. Mary Howland 932 1,755 3 07 1.85
Aug. 23, 1832. Pulaski 488 924 1 00 1.85
Aug. 24, 1832. Robert Morris 1,985 3,732 0 14 1.85
Aug. 27, 1832. Ann 506 961 2 27 1.85
Sept. 3, 1832. Montgomery 1,369 2,959 0 14 1.85
Sept. 4, 1832. Marengo 534 1,004 2 07 1.85
Oct. 12, 1832. Vestal 237 460 2 07 1.85
This iron proved to be of such superior quality that after it was
worn out in the track, the company's mechanics preferred it to new
iron in making repairs. Some of this rail is still in use in side
tracks. It is pronounced equal in durability to much of the steel
rail of to-day. ]