Early Railroaa's in Me United the United States, where the subject of providing means of internal communication at this time was an absorbing question, the success of the Liverpool and Manchester experi ments attracted profound attention. Crude tramways had already been introduced. In 1809, Thomas Leiper of Philadelphia had constructed and operated what is believed to have been the first railroad in the United States. It was -used for the transportation of stone from his quarries on Crum Creek to his landing- on Ridley Creek, a distance of about one mile. The Quincy Railroad, which is often quoted as the first railroad in Amer ica, was not completed and operated until 1827. This was four miles long, and ran from a granite-qnarry to the port of Neponset, in Massachusetts. Another and more extensive one, nine miles in length, was built in the same year from the coal-mines at Mauch Chunk, in Pennsylvania, to the Lehig,h River. The first two of these roads were operated by horse-power, and the last by means of inclined planes with stationary engines and gray itv. In the following year (iS2S) a number of important railroads were projected. The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company built a railroad in that year from its mines to the canal at Honesdale, in Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore and Ohio and Charleston and Hamburg Railroads were com menced.
Ea; ly Locomotives 11 Me United first locomotive engine put to service in America was ou the Delaware and Hudson Canal Com pany's line at Honesdale. This was the English-built "Stourbridge Lion." This engine was tried on the road in August, 1829, but was found to be too heavy for the roadway, and was shortly retired; it appears never to have been put to regular service. The Charleston and Hamburg Rail road placed the first American-built locomotive in service on its road in 1S3o. This was the " Best Friend" (fi/. 22, fig. S), and was bnilt at the West Point Foundry, at Cold Spring, New York. It was succeeded early in the following year by the " West Point," of the same builders (fig. io). Both of these locomotives are said to have done good service.
In this vear, also, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was equipped with its first locomotive, the " York," of American build. In Figure is shown the so-called " Grasshopper " locomotive, a peculiar American type of engine, of which a number were built and operated for many years on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. From this time onward the development of the railroad in the United States progressed rapidly. Fig ures 5 and 6 (pl. 23) are pictures of early American passenger-railway trains.
The conditions prevailing in the United States are so different in many respects from those obtaining in European countries—as, for example, in the comparative newness of the country, in the very unequal distribution of the population, and in the great distances to be traversed—that the American system of railroad construction and operation differs in several interesting and important features from the European. Some of the more notable of these differences will appear farther on.
Growth of Railroad such beginnings has grown up the wonderful system of transportation which at the present day covers almost every portion of the earth with a network of rails, and which, has wrought more radical changes in the social and industrial order than any other sin gle cause. With the rapid growth of the railroad, inventive inp,-enuity has wonderfully improved and rendered more effective every detail of its ser vice. The ever-increasing demands upon the speed and power of the loco motive have culminated to-day in the luxuriously-appointed express-train, transporting its passengers at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and the Rocket, weighing less than five tons and drawing a weight of fifteen tons, has given place to the fifty-ton freight-engine drawing after it the enormous burden of nearly seven hundred tons. To what extent the rail road systems of the world have grown may be seen from the following table, which exhibits the mileage constructed and operated down to the end of the year 184 the latest period for which reliable data are accessi ble, and which is given on the authority of Poor's Manual of Railroaa's