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 210Oliver, Smith Hempstone
History
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
Oliver, Smith Hempstone
Locomotives -- History
The scene is now shifted to South Carolina and New York. The West Point
Foundry Association, situated in New York City, had been the location of
a stationary demonstration under steam of the blocked-up _Stourbridge
Lion_ on May 28, 1829, shortly after it was unloaded from the ship that
brought it from Liverpool. The Association soon thereafter built a
locomotive (figure 18) for the South-Carolina Canal and Rail-Road Co.,
which was building a line from Charleston to Hamburg, S. C., just across
the Savannah River from Augusta, Ga. Prior to its adoption of the steam
locomotive, the railroad had used horses to draw its cars, and had even
experimented with a wind-propelled sail car.
The locomotive, the _Best Friend of Charleston_, which was to become the
first to operate on a regularly scheduled run in this country, was
constructed at a cost of $4,000 in the summer of 1830, and arrived at
Charleston on October 23 of that year, on the ship _Niagara_. The same
Horatio Allen who had tested the _Stourbridge Lion_ for the Delaware and
Hudson had become chief engineer of the South-Carolina Canal and
Rail-Road Co. and was one of those responsible for the plans of the
_Best Friend_.
Local machinists at Charleston were hired to reassemble the locomotive
and prepare it for its first trial, but when the run was made on
November 2, 1830, the wheels were discovered to be unsatisfactory. They
were replaced by sturdier ones, and following a subsequent test on
December 9, the locomotive was accepted. After several more experimental
runs, some with passengers, the official first run, carrying 141
persons, finally took place on Christmas Day 1830.
Notice of the coming event had been published the previous day, so it
became the first steam railroad train run scheduled by “timetable” to be
made in the Western Hemisphere. All previous locomotive operations on
this side of the Atlantic had been purely experimental—for test or
demonstration purposes. At the time of this run the tracks of the
railroad extended only about 6 miles out of Charleston, but by October
3, 1833, the full 136 miles to Hamburg had been completed. The
South-Carolina Canal and Rail-Road was then the longest continuous
railroad in the world (see figure 19).
A description of the _Best Friend_ by David Matthew, who in 1830 had
been foreman of the West Point Foundry Association, is contained in a
letter he wrote in 1859 to the historian William H. Brown. Later quoted
by Brown in his “History of the First Locomotives in America,” the
letter says in part:
The _Best Friend_ was a four-wheel engine, all four wheels drivers.
Two inclined cylinders at an angle, working down on a double crank,
inside of the frame, with the wheels outside of the frame, each wheel
connecting together outside, with outside rods. The wheels were iron
hub, wooden spokes and felloes, with iron tire, and iron web and pins
in the wheels to connect the outside rods to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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