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The First Quarter-Century of Steam Locomotives in North America / Remaining Relics and Operable Replicas with a Catalog of Locomotive Models in the U. S. National Museum. United States National Museum Bulletin 210 cover

The First Quarter-Century of Steam Locomotives in North America / Remaining Relics and Operable Replicas with a Catalog of Locomotive Models in the U. S. National Museum. United States National Museum Bulletin 210

Chapter 22: TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
By Smith Hempstone Oliver
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About This Book

A detailed survey documents surviving relics and operable replicas of early steam locomotives in North America, concentrating on engines built during 1825–1849. It provides technical descriptions, builder attributions, provenance and condition reports for extant originals and reconstructed examples, and reproduces photographs and plates. A catalog lists full-size operable replicas and museum models, and appendices offer picture credits, acknowledgments, a bibliography, and an index. The volume situates mechanical details within a brief narrative of the locomotive’s development and the fading of steam-era practices.

FOOTNOTES

[1]The Museum catalog numbers of these are, respectively, USNM 180149, 209826, 180030-A and 277700, and 180030-B.
[2]Davis and Gartner have an earlier claim to engineering fame, for in conjunction with John Elgar they had constructed in York, in 1825, the first American-built vessel with a metal hull, the sheet-iron steamboat Codorus.
[3]Although he spelled his name Gartner, and it appears in that form in the early annual reports of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Co., and in all subsequent histories of that road, his tombstone (in lot 34, section H of the Prospect Hill Cemetery in York, Pa.) bears the name in its Anglicized form, Israel Gardner.
[4]The correct name of the builder of the Rocket, according to Dendy Marshall, was Braithwaite, Milner and Co. The two brass maker’s plates on the opposite sides of the front of the locomotive’s boiler read “Braithwaite & Co./ London./ March 1838.” However, as they are of the same size and shape as the shop plates of the Philadelphia and Reading in the early 1890’s, and as there was no plate on the locomotive in the late 1880’s (see figure 51), it is quite likely that these plates are not original with the locomotive. They were probably made and installed at the time it was refurbished for exhibition at Chicago in 1893.
[5]Railroads are known not to have existed in Mexico prior to 1850, and although locomotives of the 1825-1849 period could possibly have found their way into that country at some later date, none are to be found there today, according to advice from the Mexican National Railways (Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico). Central America falls outside the scope of this work, as do the Islands of the Caribbean. However, a railroad was opened in Cuba in 1837, and another was started across the Isthmus of Panama in 1849 and completed in 1855 (its first locomotive was received soon after the midcentury mark had been passed), so there is the remote possibility that somewhere in this area the remains of a pre-1850 locomotive could exist.

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25, D. C. - Price $1.00

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1956 O-F—353689

 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  • Silently corrected obvious typographical errors; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.