The Railroad Builders | Page 9

rapid railroad building in other parts of the country in the years
immediately following. The experiences of a participant in this trial trip
are described about forty years later in a letter written by Judge J.L.
Gillis of Philadelphia:
"In the early part of the month of August of that year [1831], I left

Philadelphia for Canandaigua, New York, traveling by stages and
steamboats to Albany and stopping at the latter place. I learned that a
locomotive had arrived there and that it would make its first trip over
the road to Schenectady the next day. I concluded to lie over and
gratify my curiosity with a first ride after a locomotive.
"That locomotive, the train of cars, together with the incidents of the
day, made a very vivid impression on my mind. I can now look back
from one of Pullman's Palace cars, over a period of forty years, and see
that train together with all the improvements that have been made in
railroad travel since that time.... I am not machinist enough to give a
description of the locomotive that drew us over the road that day, but I
recollect distinctly the general make-up of the train. The train was
composed of coach bodies, mostly from Thorpe and Sprague's stage
coaches, placed upon trucks. The trucks were coupled together with
chains, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive
started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the
passengers who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from
under their hats, and in stopping, came together with such force as to
send them flying from the seats.
"They used dry pitch for fuel, and there being no smoke or spark
catcher to the chimney or smoke-stack, a volume of black smoke,
strongly impregnated with sparks, coals, and cinders, came pouring
back the whole length of the train. Each of the tossed passengers who
had an umbrella raised it as a protection against the smoke and fire.
They were found to be but a momentary protection, for I think in the
first mile the last umbrella went overboard, all having their covers
burnt off from the frames, when a general melee took place among the
deck passengers, each whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. They
presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station. Then
rails were secured and lashed between the trucks, taking the slack out
of the coupling chains, thereby affording us a more steady run to the
top of the inclined plane at Schenectady.
"The incidents off the train were quite as striking as those on the train.
A general notice of the contemplated trip had excited not only the
curiosity of those living along the line of the road, but those living
remote from it, causing a large collection of people at all the
intersecting roads along the route. Everybody, together with his wife

and all his children, came from a distance with all kinds of conveyances,
being as ignorant of what was coming as their horses, and drove up to
the road as near as they could get, only looking for the best position to
get a view of the train. As it approached a the horses took fright and
wheeled, upsetting buggies, carriages, and wagons, and leaving for
parts unknown to the passengers if not to their owners, and it is not
now positively known if some of them have stopped yet. Such is a
hasty sketch of my recollection of my first ride after a locomotive."
The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was originally constructed with
inclined planes worked by stationary engines near each terminus, the
inclinations being one foot in eighteen. The rail used was a flat bar laid
upon longitudinal sills. This type of rail came into general use at this
period and continued in use in parts of the country even as late as the
Civil War.
The roads that now make up the New York Central were built
piecemeal from 1831 to 1853; and the organization of this company in
the latter year, to consolidate eleven independent roads extending from
Albany to Buffalo, finally put an end to the long debate between canals
and railroads. The founding of this company definitely meant that
transportation in the United States henceforth would follow the steel
route and not the water ditch and the towpath. Canals might indeed
linger for a time as feeders, even, as in the case of the Erie and a few
others, as more or less important transportation routes, but every one
now realized that the railroad was to be the great agency which would
give plausibility to the industrial organization of the United States and
develop its great territory.
Besides the pioneer Mohawk and