Early Locomotives

Train accidents, like our modern automobile accidents were a common part of life in the 19th century.  And remedies were called for, but remedies seemed useless because the Americans need to get there quickly, to build cheaply, and to so as fast as possible didn't change.  The Americans tested European locomotives to see if they would run better on American rails...the results are not surprising.

In 1834, Michel Chevalier was sent to inspect the American works and compare them to what was working well in France.  He observed that compared to the safety construction of something like a curve radius (which the minimum in France was 2500 feet), the American rails had as little as 400 feet on the Baltimore and Ohio, with the normal being 1000 feet.  It was even doubted that steam engines could safely make these curves.  So let's test it...

The English brought over their own locomotives to test the American railroad and their winding curves.  They were unable to negotiate the curves (which was where most accidents happened.)  The Starbridge Lion was the first working steam-powered engine to run on American rails, hauling coal from Carbondale, Pennsylvania to Hornsdale, Pennsylvania.  The line had to cross the Lackawaxen Creek on a light wooden trestle.  In a 1829 demonstration, the engine was too heavy and was left to deteriorate into museum pieces today.

The English locomotives were admired for their solidity, rigidity and heavy construction, but they were totally unsuited for the American rails.  America needed specifically designed locomotives that were light and flexible and able to take steep grades, sharp curves and light wooden trestles.  The early American locomotive was shaped by flimsiness, haste, lack of raw iron, and lack of capital in general.  The great distances the rails traveled and the high speed they needed became an obsession with early locomotive designers.

Next time...Radical advances in railroad engines

______________________________

Today in Pioneer History: "On September 28, 1918, a Liberty Loan parade in Philadelphia prompts a huge outbreak of the Spanish Flu in the city.  By the time the pandemic ended, an estimated 20 million to 50 million people were dead worldwide.  The virus was most likely started in the Midwest on a farm, traveling among pigs, sheep, moose, bison, elk, birds...mutating into a version that took hold of the human population.  By June of 1919 the virus seemed to have disappeared from North America.