Wonders and Curiosities of the Railway; Or, Stories of the Locomotive in Every Land (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. AMERICA not only ranks first among the nations in -'- the development and extension of the railroad, but in this country the origin of the institution was entirely independent of that in England. We can match Richard Trev- ithick with Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia; and Thomas Gray with Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken. Our first locomotives were entirely home-made, and as quaint and curious as they were unique. In short, the fertile genius of the American seized upon the locomotive from the very start as just the tool needed for the rapid conquest of the Continent, and new-world railway appliances are now confessed to be unsurpassed in ingenuity and efficiency. In the very year that Trevithick finished his Pen-y-dar- ran locomotive, Oliver Evans traversed the streets of Philadelphia with a steam-wagon, or boat on wheels, which he called the "Oruktor Amphibolis." Evans has been called the Watts of America, on account of his numerous inventions of steam machinery. In 1813 he published a little volume in which he made the following remarkable prophecy: " The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam-engines from one city to another, almost as fast as birds can fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour. " Passing through the air with such velocity, changingthe scenes in such rapid succession, will be the most exhilarating exercise. " A carriage will set out from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast in Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day. " To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid (so nearly level as not to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line), made of wood or iron, on smooth paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to ...