General Discussion (Classic Trains)

Henry, yes your turn. The Best Friend of Charleston was the first locomotive in the world to pull a passenger train in 1830. The boiler and other parts were cast at West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, just south of Breakneck Point (tunnel picture) and across the Hudson from Storm King and the U.S. Military Academy. The foundry existed to make cannons at a secure location away from the coast, in peacetime it could diversify. The erecting shop was on Beach St. at West St. in Manhattan. Southern Railway's 1928 replica is not an exact copy of the original, which exploded in 1831.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FtsRIRjninUC&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q=&f=true

Tom Thumb's brass engine was built at Sterling Works in New York to Peter Cooper's specifications and he used it in his factory "for pumping water and other purposes." The locomotive, as distinct from the engine, he built at Mount Clare.

Peter Cooper in the Boston Herald, July 9, 1882:

"It is now about fifty-five years since I was drawn into a speculation in Baltimore. Two men there, whom I knew slightly, came up and asked me to join them in buying a tract of three thousand acres of land within the city limits. It included the shore for three miles, and the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was going to run through it. The road was chartered, and a little of it was graded. Its cars were to be drawn by horses; nobody thought of the possibility of steam. I consulted my friend Gideon Lee, ... and he advised me that it was a good scheme. He said the land was worth five hundred thousand dollars, whether the road was ever finished or not. So I went to Baltimore, saw the land, and agreed to take one-third, and paid my money, twenty thousand dollars.

"They drew on me every little while for taxes, etc., and when, at the end of a year, I went down again, I found out that neither of my partners had paid a cent on the purchase, and that I had been sending down money to pay their board! The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had got some wooden rails laid, and thinking it might amount to something, I bought my swindling partners out, paying one of them ten thousand dollars. I thought it would pay, for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had run its tracks down to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles, and had laid 'quakehead' rails, as they called them, strap rails, you know, and had put on horses. Then they began to talk about the English experiments with locomotives. But there was a short turn of one hundred and fifty feet radius around Point of Rocks, and the news came from England that Stephenson said that no locomotive could draw a train on any curve shorter than a nine hundred foot radius. The horse-car didn't pay and the road stopped. The directors had a bad fit of the blues. I had naturally a knack at contriving, and I told the directors that I believed I could knock together a locomotive that would get the train around Point of Rocks. I found that my speculation was a loss unless I could make the road a 'go.'

"I had not only learned coach-making and wood carving, but I had an iron-foundry and had some manual skill in working in it. But I couldn't find any iron pipes. The fact is that there were none for sale in this country. So I took two muskets and broke off the wood part, and used the barrels for tubing to the boiler, laying one on one side and the other on the other. I went into a coach-maker's shop and made this locomotive, which I called the 'Tom Thumb,' because it was so insignificant. I didn't intend it for actual service, but only to show the directors what could be done. I meant to show two things: first, that short turns could be made; and, secondly, that I could get rotary motion without the use of a crank. I effected both of these things very nicely. I changed the movement from a reciprocating to a rotary motion. I got steam up one Saturday night; the president of the road and two or three gentlemen were standing by, and we got on the truck and went out two or three miles. All were very much delighted, for it opened new possibilities for the road. I put the locomotive up for the night in a shed. All were invited to a ride Monday - a ride to Ellicott's Mills. Monday morning, what was my grief and chagrin to find that some scamp had been there, and chopped off all the copper from the engine and carried it away - doubtless to sell to some junk dealer. The copper pipes that conveyed the steam to the piston were gone. It took me a week or more to repair it. Then (on Monday it was) we started - six on the engine and thirty-six on the car. It was a great occasion, but it didn't seem so important then as it does now. We went up an average grade of eighteen feet to the mile, and made the passage (thirteen miles) to Ellicott's Mills in an hour and twelve minutes. We came back in fifty-seven minutes. Ross Winans, the president of the road, and the editor of the Baltimore Gazette, made an estimate of the passengers carried and the coal and water used, and reported that we did better than any English road did for four years after that. The result of that experiment was that the bonds of the road were sold at once, and the road was a success."