Steam railroad

“ The most striking effect of steam power, applied on a railroad, is the extreme speed of transport which is attained by it; and it is the more remarkable, as this advantage never was foreseen before experience proved it. When the Liverpool and Manchester line was projected, the transport of heavy goods was the object chiefly contemplated; and although an intercourse in passengers was expected, it was not foreseen that this would be the greatest source of revenue to the proprietors. ”

“ Although the steam-engine itself is more naturalized amongst us than with any other nation of Europe, railroad travelling has unquestionably outraged more of the associations we once cherished and were proud of, than it could possibly effect in countries of less rural and picturesque beauty than England. ”

“ The Grasshopper locomotive and the Corliss engine, each in its own way, made a vital contribution to the development of America. Each is included in the Carillon Park exhibits because it represents a significant forward step in man’s constant quest for a better and fuller life.
2 Steam Comes to the Rails
The famed “Atlantic” drawing early type railroad coaches in Baltimore and Ohio railroad exhibit. The “Atlantic” is original, the coaches replicas.
The steam railroad represents an evolution unique in the story of man’s progress. ”

“ While the sailing vessel falls short of the steamship as an aid to commerce, the difference between the two is very much less than that between the horse and the locomotive, the iron rail and the ordinary road, and the railroad has achieved a revolution in transportation equal to that made by the steam engine in manufacture. ”

“ When employed without qualification the term railway or railroad is generally understood to indicate a road consisting of two parallel lines of rails or of multiples of such units upon which cars are hauled by locomotive steam engines. With the adoption of electric power in place of steam on considerable sections of railway line, steam locomotion has become a less distinctive characteristic of railways than was formerly the case, and the term when unqualified has a less definite meaning than formerly, yet ordinarily a steam railway is understood when the term railway is used by itself. ”

“ The real birth of the railroad, however, was in England. As in the United States, tramways provided the predecessor. They were first employed in the coal districts adjacent to Newcastle, to convey coal from the pits to the River Tyne for shipment abroad.
The weakness in all the early British engines was that they could not produce steam as rapidly as they used it up, nor did they have sufficient power to move quickly, or pull more than their own weight. It remained for George Stephenson to overcome these weaknesses and prove the practicability of the movable steam locomotive. ”

“ The steam vehicle for stationary purposes, and also for the locomotive, were being rapidly developed and refined. The railroad settled down to the idea of a power unit drawing numerous wagons. That has been consistently adhered to to the present day, and only in the past decade have we gone back to the old and first principles of embodying the mechanical propelling means in the same vehicle that transports the passengers or goods. ”

“ The competition at Rainhill, on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, had been so widely advertised, and promised to afford such conclusive evidence relative to the value of the locomotive steam-engine and the railroad, that engineers and others interested in the subject came from all parts of the world to witness the trial. ”

“ One of the most important and interesting occasions in the history of the application of the non-condensing steam-engine to railroads, as well as in the life of Stephenson, was the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad in the year 1829. ”

“ Then in 1812 John Stevens of New York got interested in the steam idea and urged the commissioners of his state to build a railroad between Lake Erie and Albany, suggesting that a steam engine not unlike the one that propelled the Hudson River ferryboats could be used as power for the trains. He was enthusiastic over the scheme but the New York officials had no faith in the proposition, insisting that a steam locomotive could never be produced that would grip the rails with sufficient tension to keep cars on the track or draw a heavy load. ”

“ The engine that takes the train over the road weighs 35 tons, and has 1,100 square feet of heating-surface for generating steam for cylinders 17 by 24 inches, which, through the pistons, transmit power to wheels 60 inches diameter. The engine is an ordinary eight-wheeled bituminous coal-burning American type of locomotive, built by one of our best makers, and well adapted for pulling any kind of train over a Western railroad. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. ”

“ A hundred years more have passed over our heads, and what do we behold? On all sides the powerful, and swift locomotive, well named the iron-horse, rushes onward, bound for the ends of the earth, hauling men and goods to right and left with a speed and strength that would have seemed magical to our forefathers. On the ocean the steam engine performs the same service, carrying great ships across the Atlantic in less than a week, and laughing at the puny efforts of the sail. The horse, for ages indispensable to man, is threatened with banishment. Electric power has been added to that of steam. ”

“ The modern railway was created by the Stephensons in 1830, when they built the locomotive "Rocket." The development of the railway since is due to the development of the locomotive. Civil engineering has done much, but mechanical engineering has done more.
The invention of the steam-engine by James Watt, in 1773, attracted the attention of advanced thinkers to a possible steam [2] locomotive. Erasmus Darwin, in a poem published in 1781, made this remarkable prediction:
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hundreds and thousands of miles of railroads were built in different parts of the country. Now, great lines connect the north and south, the east and west. Huge engines, very unlike Stephenson’s little Rocket, travel a mile a minute: instead of taking weeks to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, people can make the journey in five days.
Before the steam railway was invented by an Englishman, an American inventor had applied the use of steam to water-travel and had invented a steamboat. James Watt, a Scotch inventor, had prepared the way by his invention of the steam engine. ”

“ The astonishment with which such performances must be viewed, might be qualified, if the art of transport by steam on railways had been matured, and had attained that full state of perfection which such an art is always capable of receiving from long experience, aided by great scientific knowledge, and the unbounded application of capital. But such is not the present case. The art of constructing locomotive engines, so far from having attained a state of maturity, has not even emerged from its infancy. ”

“ A gas turbine loco which will be more powerful than No. 18000 is under con-struction in this country now. ‘But no one would dream of suggesting that the age of the steam locomotive is past in Britain. Indeed, for many years to come British Railways will have to depend mainly on the steam locomotive. Whether it’s intended for shunting or hauling goods trains, or for passenger expresses, as this one is, the steam loco is still a satisfactory piece of mechanism, and it is as fast as any rival form of traction. ”

“ The furnace being necessarily smaller and less powerful than those used in locomotive engines on railroads, the steam can be generated with sufficient abundance and rapidity, only by exposing to the action of the fire a much greater quantity of surface, in proportion to the whole quantity of water, than is attempted in engines on railways; and it is in the attainment of this object that the ingenuity of steam-carriage projectors has been for the most part displayed. ”

“ The wave of a white flag by day, a white lamp by night, is railway language for “Yes,”—a sharp decisive whistle from the foremost guard,—whether the sound be heard above the hissing of the escaping steam or the motion only be perceived it matters not, the engine driver understands it,—up goes his regulator, on goes his steam, the fireman (who has freed his break as soon as the engine is ready for starting) looks to the rear of the train as it begins to move from the station. If the engine don’t “slip,” the regulator, further raised, admits more steam to the cylinder ”

“ They were much safer than the two-track system of railroads peculiar to the old period of 1899, when steam engines, going around curves at two miles per minute, were liable to lose their heads and lay down in the ditch to try and figure out where they were at. ”

“ Apply these feelings to the case of the coachmen who were born in an age that knew nothing of steam. Every stand-by was rooted up in the coming of railways, and the steam-engine was just as strange a monster to them as the electric dynamo is to many of ourselves. Often they could not transfer their allegiance to the railway, even though they starved. It was not always stubbornness or pride that held them aloof, but a certain and easily-understood lack of adaptability that forbade one who had held the reins to handle the starting-lever of the locomotive. ”

“ As we look back upon all the wonderful changes presented by the nineteenth century, from the steamship to the telegram, it is probably the steam engine which comes puffing into the centre of the picture as the greatest and most substantial innovation of them all. The locomotive indeed filled a priceless place in the scheme of things, for it linked up in a manner never before comprehended the goods and the market. ”

“ Savery, Newcomen, a host of other workers, culminating in Watt, working always by steps that were at least so nearly obvious as to give rise again and again to simultaneous discoveries, changed this toy of steam into a real, a commercial thing, developed a trade in pumping engines, created foundries and a new art of engineering, and almost unconscious of what they were doing, made the steam locomotive a well-nigh unavoidable consequence. ”

“ To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold applications to mining, navigation, and manufactures of all kinds, would carry us into unmanageable detail. Let us confine ourselves to the latest embodiment of steam power—the locomotive engine. ”

“ That almost all the progress which this country has made in the last half-century is mainly due to the development of the railway system. All the other vast developments of the power of steam, all the developments of manufacturing and mining industry would have availed but little for the greatness and prosperity of this country—in fact they could hardly have existed at all if there had been wanting those internal communications which have been furnished by the locomotive engine to railways brought into use by Stephenson. ”

“ The reporter, as before noticed, has various modes in view, by which the branch to Leith may be made of a very easy line of draught, or be thrown into a succession of levels, by a species of lockage or stepping. Where sudden acclivities occur on the line of a railway they are generally overcome by an inclined plane, of greater or less extent, according to the particular rise, and on this the loaded wagons are brought up by a steam-engine. ”

“ Up to that time the inventive faculties of man had lain almost dormant, but with the advent of the steam-engine there commenced that splendid series of discoveries and inventions which have since, to use the words of Dr. Bruce, revolutionised the state of the world. Amongst these the most momentous in its consequences to the human race is the railway system— (cheers) —and with that system including the locomotive engine as its essential element, the name of George Stephenson will ever be pre-eminently associated. ”

“ Taking part in the contest, which now became a serious one, between the advocates of steam on the common road and those urging the introduction of locomotives and their trains on an iron track, he calculated that a road-engine capable of carrying 20 or 30 passengers at 10 miles per hour, could, on the rail, carry ten times as many people at three or four times that speed. ”

“ In connection with the marvellous growth of our railway system there is nothing of so paramount importance and interest as the evolution of the locomotive steam engine.
At the present time it is most important to place on record the actual facts, seeing that attempts have been made to disprove the correctness of the known and accepted details relative to several interesting, we might almost write historical, locomotives. ”

“ The construction of an ordinary steam locomotive is an intricate operation, necessitating machine-shops, erecting-shops, foundries, forges, etc., covering acres of ground, as at Crewe, Doncaster, Derby, or Swindon. Not a hundred engines are exactly alike in pattern, and each one is supposed to be composed of over five thousand different parts, all of which have to be stowed away in a necessarily limited space. ”