. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, N. J., had by 1825 longbeen intrigued with the idea of constructing a steam locomo-tive, having had considerable success with steam as a methodof propulsion on water. In that year he constructed a smallexperimental 4-wheeled engine, the first rail locomotive tobe built in this country. The unflanged wheels were kept onthe flat rails by vertical bars that projected down from eachcorner of the locomotive. These were fitted on their lowerends with horizontal rollers bearing on the inside of the rails. Equipped with a vertic
. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, N. J., had by 1825 longbeen intrigued with the idea of constructing a steam locomo-tive, having had considerable success with steam as a methodof propulsion on water. In that year he constructed a smallexperimental 4-wheeled engine, the first rail locomotive tobe built in this country. The unflanged wheels were kept onthe flat rails by vertical bars that projected down from eachcorner of the locomotive. These were fitted on their lowerends with horizontal rollers bearing on the inside of the rails. Equipped with a vertical water-tube boiler, and with itshorizontal 1-cylinder power plant geared to a rack locatedbetween the two rails, it was built only for demonstrationand experimentation. It was often run, however, on a smallcircular track laid out on the lower lawn of Stevens estateat Hoboken. This was the first steam railroad in America. 10 Figure 1. — Original boiler, now inNotionol Museum, of experimentallocomotive built in 1 825 by Col. Of this original locomotive only the boilerand safety valve remain. They are on exhibi-tion at the National Museum (USNM180029), where they were deposited in 1888by the Stevens Institute of Technology. Theboiler (figure 1) contains 20 wrought-irontubes, each a little over 1 inch in outside di-ameter, set closely together in a circle andoriginally surrounding a circular grate, nowmissing. It is 4 feet high, including the headers,and 1 foot across, and was formerly enclosedby a jacket of thin sheet iron topped by a con-ical hood on which rested the smokestack. Wood used as fuel was dropped onto the grate through adoor in the hood, and water was put into the boiler througha pipe in the bottom header. Steam was taken from a 1-inchpipe in the top header. The boiler when new is reported tohave sustained with safety a steam pressure of 550 poundsper square inch. The design of the boiler was patented byStevens on April 11, 1803. The safety valve (fi
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