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23 • Beginnings No one knows the exact origin or date of the first railroad.1 It is probable that in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries mechanics and tinkerers in Great Britain and on the continent, especially in the German states, made the earliest developments. “Its invention, like most other valuable inventions of the present day [1829],” as an early student of railroads opined, “is the result of gradual improvement.” Fortunately, a free-flowing transfer of technology from the Old to the New World laid the foundation for the most significant invention in the development of modern society: the railroad. It mobilized, drove, and advanced the Industrial Revolution. During the Railway Age observers of the American scene likely agreed that the railroad seemed ideally suited for what Alexis deTocqueville,thatperceptiveFrenchvisitorinthe1830s,calledthe“restless temper” found in the sprawling republic.2 Although it is impossible to date the “first” railroad, it is known that activities in Great Britain by the mid-1700s had led to the construction of widely scattered private “plateways,” “tramways,” or “waggonways” that served collieries and slate and stone quarries in England, Scotland, and Wales. These primitive affairs fit the standard definition of a railroad: an overland right-of-way with a fixed path consisting of paired wooden rails thatareelevatedtosupportself-guidedvehiclesonflangedwoodenwheels (wheels with projecting rims or collars). For more than two centuries an assortment of Lilliputian carriers used animals (horses, ponies, mules, and oxen),gravity, human traction,andoccasionallywind topropel these cars to a nearby river, canal, or tidewater port. These bulky cargoes then moved wholly or in part by water transport to their final destinations.3 Just as it is not possible to date initial tramway operations in Britain or elsewhere, it is hard to pinpoint when and where the first railroad appeared on American soil. A good candidate for that honor would be the ARailRoad? 2 T h e L o u i s v i l l e , C i n c i n n at i & C h a r l e s t o n R a i l R o a d 24 Beacon Hill Railroad (BHR) in Boston, Massachusetts, one of approximately twenty-five “wooden rail-roads” that dotted the eastern seaboard prior to the 1830s. In 1805 this pygmy pike, which consisted of about onefifth of a mile of track, began to shunt cars filled with dirt and rock so that a real estate development company could pare down historic Beacon Hill to fill in nearby tidal marshes. In reality the BHR was a contractor’s railway designed for heavy “cut-and-fill” work, replicating what some British builders had installed to facilitate work on bridges, lighthouses, and tunnels . Although details about the short-lived BHR are scarce, at least one commentaryexists:“TherewasaRailRoadrunninginasouthwesterlydirection from the top of the hill. It struck Cedar Street a little to the South of Mt. Vernon Street, and struck Charles Street on the east side.” Added the brief narrative: “It was used with a large pulley at the top fastened to each set of cars, and one set of cars went up while the other went down, both being attached together. There were branch rails at the top and the bottom.Itwouldbedifficulttosayhowmanymenandteamstherewere.”4 More is known about another Massachusetts wooden tramway, the Granite Railway (GR), sometimes called the Quincy Rail Road or the Quincy Granite Rail Road. In 1823 a patriotic organization, formed to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill of June 17, 1775, decided to erect a gigantic 220-foot granite (syenite) obelisk on neighboring Breed’s Hill in the Charleston section of Boston. In order to transport materials to the work site, the initial strategy was to load stone at a quarry in West Quincy and haul it overland by wagon the three miles to the Neponset River for placement on barges for movement to Charleston Harbor. On March 4, 1826, the General Court of Massachusetts granted a charter to organizers of the GR for conducting “general transportation,” although stone blocks would be the sole commodity transported. This document holds significance, attesting to the founding of the first railroad to be constructed under a state charter and hence supporting the claim that the GR was the “first railroad in America.” Later in 1826 this 3-mile wooden tramway, which had cost about $11,000 per mile, opened between the quarry and the river and functioned as its backers had intended . For the next quarter century the GR made modest updates and continued to provide...

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