64. In America the locomotive was set at regular work on railroads, for the first time, on the 8th of August, 1829.[1]
This first locomotive was built by Foster, Rastrick & Co., at Stourbridge, England, and was purchased by Mr. Horatio Allen for the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's road from Carbondale to Honesdale, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, placed an experimental locomotive on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1829. It ran about fifteen miles an hour at maximum speed.
The first American locomotive to do real service continuously was the "Best Friend" (Fig. 34), built at the West Point Iron Foundery,
Fig. 34.—The "Best Friend," 1830.
in the year 1830, for the South Carolina Railroad, on which road it ran from January, 1831, to June 17th of the same year, when it was destroyed by the explosion of its boiler.
A second locomotive (Fig. 35) was built at West Point for the same road in 1831, which resembled somewhat those built at about the same time, and a little later, by Stephenson.
It was at this time (1831), also, that Mr. Horatio Allen introduced the first eight-wheeled locomotives ever built, and gave them a form (Fig. 36) which will be at once recognized by the engineer as the prototype of a recently-built locomotive which has been brought out in Great Britain. In this year, also, an engine, the De Witt Clinton, was built for John B. Jervis of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad.
65. At about the time of the opening of the early railroads, the
- ↑ "History of the First Locomotive in America," W. H. Brown. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1872.
