![]() During these decades, technology associated with the steam locomotive continued to improve, and innovations were made in the design of the tracks themselves. The Petersburg Railroad, later part of the Atantic Coast Line, ran from the Virginia City into North Carolina.īy 1840, railroad track in the United States had reached almost three thousand miles by 1850, more than nine thousand miles by 1860 over thirty thousand miles. By 1835 railroads ran from Boston to Lowell, Massachusetts, the beginnings of the future Boston and Maine to Worcester, Massachusetts, first link in the Boston and Albany Railroad and to Providence, Rhode Island, the genesis of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. ![]() Later part of the Pennsylvania system, in 1831 the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown in 1832 and the railroad connecting New Orleans with Lake Pontchar-train, afterward part of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, on 17 September 1832. ![]() Steam-powered railroads operating in the early 1830s included the Mohawk & Hudson, the earliest link in the future New York Central system, begun on 9 August 1831 the Camden and Amboy, Other railroads quickly followed the South Carolina and the Baltimore & Ohio. The age of the railroad in America had begun. The Best Friend pulled train cars, the first locomotive to do so in the United States, along six miles of track out of Charleston. Unfortunately, The Best Friend exploded the following year, but not before the South Carolina Railroad inaugurated service on 25 December 1830. Tested in October of 1830, the engine performed admirably. He named the locomotive The Best Friend of Charleston. Miller was commissioned by the South Carolina to construct what would be the first locomotive built in America for use on railroad. The Baltimore & Ohio and the South Carolina railroads instituted contests for locomotive designs. With the viability of steam-powered locomotives proven, the race was on to build other, larger locomotives. The thirteen-mile trip was made from Baltimore to Ellicot's Hill in Maryland. Peter Cooper rose to the challenge and on 28 August 1830 drove his diminutive Tom Thumb locomotive at speeds approaching fifteen miles per hour while towing a car filled with thirty people. By 1828, railroad track was being laid not only by the Delaware & Hudson, but also by the Baltimore & Ohio and the South Carolina Railroads. Undeterred, railroad companies continued to seek a viable steam-powered locomotive. One, Stourbridge Lion, was tested on 8 August 1829, but proved to be too heavy for the tracks that had been constructed and was subsequently retired. Horatio Allen, working for the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, purchased four of these early steam locomotives and brought them to the United States. The English had been experimenting with steam-powered locomotives since the late eighteenth century and had developed a prototype by 1828. The first locomotive for use on railways was imported from England in 1829. In 1827, quarry and mine operators in Quincy, Massachusetts, and Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, constructed the first full-size railways. The earliest railways in the United States were short, wooden railways built by quarries and mines along which horses pulled loads to nearby water ways. Beginning in the nineteenth century in the United States, a vast system of railroads was developed that moved goods and people across great distances, facilitated the settlement of large portions of the country, created towns and cities, and unified a nation.Įarly railways were a far cry from the great system of railroads that were built in the nineteenth century and that continue to be used today.
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