. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . uction 86 These figures show that nearly twothousand miles of railroad had been builtin years, a most extraordinaryachievement for a new country. RAILROAD MILEAGE EXCEEDS THE NECES-SARY POWER. The progress of railroad building inthe United States, as compared withthat of Great Britain, conveys a goodidea of the energy displayed by Ameri-can public men in pushing improvedmethods of land transportation. In1840 Great Britain, with what was thenunparalleled financial resources, mile
. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . uction 86 These figures show that nearly twothousand miles of railroad had been builtin years, a most extraordinaryachievement for a new country. RAILROAD MILEAGE EXCEEDS THE NECES-SARY POWER. The progress of railroad building inthe United States, as compared withthat of Great Britain, conveys a goodidea of the energy displayed by Ameri-can public men in pushing improvedmethods of land transportation. In1840 Great Britain, with what was thenunparalleled financial resources, miles of railroads and the UnitedStates had 2,755 miles. Por this mile-age, the United States, however, hadonly 270 locomotives, the small amountof motive power being due in somemeasure to the high price nf locomotivesand difficulty in obtaining them. A con-siderable part of the mileage was oper-ated by horses, which were the first formof motive , power used, and they wereslowly being pushed aside by the loco-motive, just as they have of late beenpushed aside in street car service byelectric JOSEPH HARRIbON. liRITAIN THE WORKSHOP OF EARLY LOCO-MOTIVE BUILDING. As the principal center for the build-ing of machinery at this time was GreatBritain, American railroad companiesnaturally imported from that country thelocomotives which they could not havebuilt at home, and there was at first anidea that foreign built locomotives mustnecessarily be better than the home-madearticle. In Woods Treatise on Rail-ways, published in 1838, particulars aregiven of sixteen locomotives which hadbeen built by the Stephensons for Ameri-can railways, and there were othermakers who found the United States aprofitable market. Edward Burys firstengine, built in 1831, was sold to thePetersburg Railroad of Virginia, whereit was long known as the Spitfire, andthe firm, Bury, Curtis & Kennedy, builtseveral engines for Southern railroads,and the first engine owned by the Bostonand Providence Railroad
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectrailroa, bookyear1901
