England:

• Rails are a much earlier innovation than locomotives: horsedrawn carts on wooden rails used in germany since 16th century, in England since 17th century.  Iron rails about 1770
• mostly these were mine railroads, but by end of 1825 there were 300-400 miles of iron public railroad
• the idea of a moving steam engine was obvious, but there were problems.
• need for high pressure steam engines
• widespread belief that there would not be enough friction, that rise would have to be less than 1 foot per 100
• experiments with steam carriages--eg. Cugnot in France in 1770--had led to English laws to keep steam carriages from scaring horses by requiring a man walking in front of it with a flag or lantern
• early experiments on mine railways

  
Penydarren Locomotive

• First experimental locomotive built by Richard Trevithick in 1803-4 for the 10 mile Penydarren colliery railway .  One cylinder, 8 1/2 inches in diamter, 4 1/2 foot stroke, probably 30-50 lb/sq in. working pressure.  It was too heavy for the track so the owners used it as a stationary engine.
• Trevithick tried again in 1805 with no more success, went to South American in disgust
• by 1812 similar locomotives started to be used on colliery railroads (in the north of England--Leeds and on Tyneside) between mine and warf.  Economical because Napoleonic wars increased price of animal feed.
• Locomotives on common carriers
• 1825 Stockton & Darlington RR--built by George Stephenson using colliery railway technology.  25 miles long, first public railroad built to use steam, but horses were often substituted.  Not a convincing trial.
• Builders of Liverpool-Manchester railroad were locked in a debate over whether to use horses or locomotives.  Decided to sponsor a contest to see if locomotives were practical at all and pick the best design
•  held Oct. 1829.  Contest was to pull 20 tons at 10 mph and make 40 trips over a 1 1/2 mile course.
• 10 entries were expected but only three appeared--Timoth Hackworth, engineer of the Stockton and Darlington RR entered the Sans Pareil, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson entered the Novelty (which had the advantage of being a particularly light weight design), and Robert Stephenson entered the Rocket.

• Sans Pareil failed to complete the course, Novelty also broke down, but Rocket not only completed the course but averaged 15 mph, winning the 500 pound prize
• More important this convinced people of the practicality of locomotives.  It was a major spectator sport--more than 10,000 people saw the trials
• Liverpool-Manchester builders ordered seven locomotives.  They built their rails to the gauge of Stephenson's locomotive--the 4 ft. 8 1/2 inch gauge of the Killingworth Colliery Wagonway.  That is still the standard gauge today.
• This competed for the first time with canals, since it connected an industrial center with its port.  Canal interesters tried to block its building in Pariament.  Speed was the key advantage--unexpectedly 1/2 of revenue came from passengers.
• England saw a railway boom 1831-37.  400-500 miles opened to traffic for a total of 1331 miles by 1840.  After a lull from 1839 to 1843 the boom turned into a mania--2000 miles opened to traffic 1844-1847.  In 1847 more than 1/4 million men were employed in constructing 6,455 miles of railways, with a total expenditure on railways about 10% of national income

 Horsecar on the Baltimore and Ohio

• Horsedrawn tramways were used in Boston as early as 1804, in the 1820s in quarries

locomotives were first imported from England; the Stourbridge Lion in 1829 for a coal road (where it was unsuccessful) and the John Bull in Pennsylvania in 1831

 John Bull

• Early railroads included Boston to Lowell, Philadelphia and Columbia (to Pittsburgh) partly by canal and partly by rail (completed 1832), and Baltimore and Ohio (chartered 1827 opened 1830)
• The Baltimore and Ohio successfully ran a locomotive called Tom Thumb in 1830, but they weren't able to get a second locomotive running until 1834
• The South Carolina Canal and Rail-Road Company hired an engineer names Horatio Allen who built the first successful domestic-built locomotive, Best Friend of Charleston , in 1830.  The line extended from Charleston to Hamburg on the Savannah River--136 miles opened in 1833.   Allen was also was a pioneer in the 1830s in adapting locomotive design to American conditions by inventing the swivel truck.

• wooden ties in loose gravel instead of granite blocks
• T-rail--requires less iron and skilled labor

 railroad construction (image HD217)

• equalizing lever suspension (1839) to prevent damage on rough roadbeds
• swivel or bogie truck--jointed locomotive for sharp curves--invented by Horatio Allen and John Jervis
• engines that burned anthracite (though wood was used for a long time)
• cowcatcher--because roads were not walled off.  Isaac Dripps' first design impaled the cow on prongs--difficulty of extricating the cow alive led to design to sweep the cow aside
• gauge standardized by law in 1863--30 years after England.  Issue of states rights but also Erie Railroad deliberately chose 6 ft. gauge to prevent diversion of traffic
• standard time 1883
• railroads became big companies and had to develop new management techniques
• J. Edgar Thomson specialized in the construction of ambitious railroads--saw technical and financial problems as so interconnected as to be inseparable  (also gave Atlanta its name)

Transcontinental Railroad

• Federal congress started early debating land grants for a trancontinental railroad--debates over the constitution and sectional jealousies over the route.
• In 1850 there was a federal land grant for a railroad from Illinois to Alabama, but the transcontinental railroad was blocked by route partisans until the civil war.
• 1862 Pacific Railway act set a route from Omaha Nebraska to Sacramento Calif, completed May 10, 1869.
• Other routes in 1880s, 5 lines by 1893
• Atlanta grew and Chicago boomed because they were railway centers--manufactured goods were increasingly shipped nationally
• cities grew rapidly--the railroad tended to concentrate industry that had previously been dispersed in factory cities and towns built at waterpower sites

 Linking the Railways