The engine arrived at Philadelphia about the middle of August, and was then transshipped by sloop to Bordentown, near Trenton, whence a few miles of rail were soon to head northeastward toward South Amboy. The mechanics who assembled the locomotive found it a mysterious and completely unfamiliar device. After considerable experimentation the task was successfully accomplished under the leadership of Isaac Dripps, a local youth who later rose to a position of importance in the Pennsylvania Railroad. In its first test the locomotive was fired up to 30 pounds steam pressure, and Dripps, with Stevens by his side, opened the throttle of the first locomotive of what was to become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. The engine was disassembled for a few minor modifications shortly after this trial, and a few weeks later, on November 12, the official first trip was made. The _John Bull_ as it appeared when first placed in service in 1831 was described in detail by J. Elfreth Watkins in his “Camden and Amboy Railroad,” published in 1891. He wrote: The engine originally weighed about ten tons. The boiler was thirteen feet long and three feet six inches in diameter. The cylinders were nine inches by twenty inches. There were four driving wheels four feet six inches in diameter, arranged with outside cranks for connecting parallel rods, but owing to the sharp curves on the road these rods were never used. The driving wheels were made with cast-iron hubs and wooden (locust) spokes and felloes. The tires were of wrought iron, three-quarters of an inch thick, the tread being five inches and the depth of flange one and a-half inches. The gauge was originally five feet from center to center of rails. The boiler was composed of sixty-two flues seven feet six inches long, two inches in diameter; the furnace was three feet seven inches long and three feet two inches high, for burning wood. The steam ports were one and one-eighth inches by six and a-half inches; the exhaust ports one and one-eighth by six and a-half inches; grate surface, ten feet eight inches; fire-box surface, thirty-six feet; flue surface, two hundred and thirteen feet; weight, without fuel or water, twenty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-five pounds. After the valves were in gear and the engine in motion, two levers on the engineman’s side moved back and forth continuously. When it was necessary to put the locomotive on the turn-table, enginemen who were skilled in the handling of the engines first put the valves out of gear by turning the handle down, and then worked the levers by hand, thus moving the valves to the proper position and stopping the engine at the exact point desired.