The history of the railroad divides itself sharply into epochs. In the beginning, the different roads--such as Erie, Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, and New York Central--were being pushed west over the Alleghany Mountains to the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. There followed an era where the railroads were reaching Chicago and St. Louis. That was the era which saw the weird railroads of the Middle West, the strange stock-watering companies that made the very names of Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois financial bywords in the late forties and the early fifties. The first railroad in Ohio was the old Mad River & Lake Erie, which was built in 1835, from Sandusky, south about a hundred miles to Columbus, the State capital. The pioneer engine on the road, the _Sandusky_, was the first locomotive ever equipped with a whistle. The first railroad of the prairies was the Northern Cross railroad--now a part of the Wabash--extending from Merodosia on the Illinois River, to Springfield. It was started in 1837, and late in the following fall a locomotive built by Rogers, Grosvenor, and Ketchum of Paterson, N. J.,--the founders of a famous locomotive works--was landed from a packet-steamer at Merodosia. Then was the first puff of a locomotive heard upon the prairies of the great West. A contemporary account says: "The little locomotive had no whistle, no spark-arrester, no cow-catcher, and the cab was open to the sky. Its speed was about six miles an hour, and where the railroad and the highway lay parallel to each other there was frequently a trial of speed between the locomotive with its 'pleasure cars' and the stage-coaches. Sometimes the stage-coaches came in ahead. Six inches of snow were sufficient to blockade the trains drawn by this American engine." In 1846 James M. Forbes was building the Michigan Central west from Detroit, 145 miles to Kalamazoo. A little later it was extended to the east shore of Lake Michigan, at New Buffalo; eventually it reached Chicago with its own rails. While the Michigan Central was pushing its rails, its chief competitor to the south, the Michigan Southern,--afterwards a part of the Lake Shore, and eventually united with its traditional rival in the extended New York Central system--was also pushing toward Chicago as a goal. Both roads reached Chicago in 1852. But railroad building was slow work. The country expanded too quickly after the golden promises of the railroad promoters. Money came too easily; then there would come a fearful financial time, and the reputable railroad enterprises would be halted beside the "fly-by-night" schemes. As late as 1850, Ohio had only the single trunk-line connecting Sandusky and Cincinnati; but the railroad to Cleveland that was afterwards the main stem of the Big Four and the trunk-line connection east to the Baltimore & Ohio, were nearing completion. * * * * *