OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 31A ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 April 11, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits - Part 31 A. Notes by S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Steam on Wheels The first important use of steam had been to pump water. The second was locomation on water. The third, somewhat more difficult because it required wheels and tracks, was locomation on land. This adaption, however, had been in prospect from the earliest days of steam power James Watt, a great thermo-dynamic engineer, who made the stationary steam engine practical by his improvements in the latter half of the eighteenth century, included among his inventions a plan for a steam locomotive for the use on ordinary highways, but he never carried it to completion. His engine was probably a crude prototype of those which was operating on English highways, using our old threshing machine engines, each of them hauling two or three small goods cars after a manner of todays motor truck trains. About the year 1800 practical engines to propel carriages were developed by Richard Trevithick in England and Oliver Evans in America. Both of these inventors used what is known as the " Cornish boiler," a cylindrical vessel with a cylindrical flue inside. Trevithick soon took athe next step ad in 1804, used his steam carriage on a railway. It should be understood that " railway " then meant what the British called a " horse tramway." The first line of that type in Cleveland had been the Cleveland and Newburgh Railroad, running out Euclid Avenue, across Doan Brook and up to the stone quarry on the Heights. Its rails were wooden and motive power was two horses driven tandem, though the charter was drawn to permit the " transportation of passengers and freight, by the power and force of steam, animals or other mechanical force, or a combination of them." Travithick, running his steam engine on such a tramway in Wales, and gaining forced draught by turning his exhaust steam into a smoke funnel, prepared the way for the Rocket built by George Stephenson, twenty five years later. The latter engine, must have been justified its name to the slow moving folk of1829, cause it beat all its competitors by using a stronger steam blast to accelerate coal combustion, and by providing a larger heating surface in the boiler through the use of many small tubes to carry the hot gases through the boiling water. He also changed the steam cylinders from a vertical to a horinzontal poition, providing a reversing device and improved the throttle control. The locomotive, though subject to many future refinements, had now substantually evolved into a permanent form. They say this " Rocket " is said to have decided once and for all, the question whether horses or steam should prevail on railways. This was the first defeat of the horse since the beginning of civilization. One year later America had 23 miles of railway. The canal craze was already merging into a railway craze. A real estate enthusiast in Cleveland was talking of the day when, with the inevitable spread of allotments along the Lake Erie shore, under the double stimulus of steamship and rail service, there would be " a continuous city from Niagara to the Cuyahoga." Thus in 1836, riding the crest of the great land inflation, came the first steam transportation project in the state, the Ohio Railroad. Tragedy though it proved to be, it is funny in retrospect. This was the celebrated " railroad on stilts." Some genius had originated the brilliant idea of building a railroad without expensive grading and filling by the simple procedure of laying the track on piles driven into the ground. In a timber country, it was figured, such a line would cost only $16,000 a mile. The road was extended from Richmond on the Grand River, between Fairport and Painsville, to Manhattan on the Maumee, just north of Toledo. It was organized in Painesville and a state charter was obtained by Representative Nehemiah Allen of Willoughby. Ohio's Blunder ? That was the golden age of incorporation. Legislatures, delirious with expansion fever, were ready to grant almost anything. The Ohio Railroad Company was authorized not only to build its crazy railroad, but to engage in banking activities, including the actual issuance of money. Needless to say, it used the privilege. When the bubble burst, the company had outstanding nearly $400,000 of worthless bills. The Ohio legislature early in 1837, in a final excess of generosity just before the panic boke, enacted its ill-famed " plunder law." extending state aid to railroads and other corporations. When a company could show two-thirds of its capital stock sold, the state would become a partner by taking the other third, paying for its shares with funds obtaind by bond issues. The Ohio Railroad Company natuarally took advantage of this law. Suitable figures were submitted and few questions were asked. Ohio had to have a railroad. And there was probably a feeling, after the panic, that the railroad would restore prosperity. Construction started in Fremont in June, 1839, working westward. Later there were sections built between Fremont and Cleveland, reaching nearly to the Cuyahoga. First the right of way was cleared 100 feet wide. Then piles were driven in pairs, seven feet apart and 15 feet from pair to pair, the piles being from seven to 28 feet in length according to the grade, and 12 to 16 inches in diameter. Each pair of piles was joined by a cross-tie 9 feet long and 8 by 8 inches and 15 feet long, surrmounted by iron strapping which weighed 25 tons to the mile. For this work there was provided an ingenious machine worthy of a better cause. It was a combination pile driver and circular saw, mounted on long sills and moving forward with the progress of the track. In front were half-ton trip-hammers, one for each side, supported on heavy timbers 30 feet high and operated by a portable steam engine. When the piles were drawn, the saw, mounted hortizontally, cut them off at the track level. One such machine was worked by a crew of eight men and could build about 20 rods a day. Behind it came a locomotive sawmill operated by three men, preparing the rails. And behind the sawmill, on the completed track, moved a boarding house on wheels for the workmen. Probably never before or since has the world seen such a construction train. It was all in vain. State and nation were in gloom of business collapse. Funds run short. The " Plunder Law " was repealed. There were quarrels about which end of the line should be completed first. When the work stopped and the investigation began, in 1843, the state auditor reported these distressing facts; " For the $249,000 donated by the state, it had on its hands some 63 miles of wooden superstructure laid on piles, a considerable portion of which was already rotten, and the remainder going rapidly to decay. Of the original stock subscriptions amounting to nearly $2,000,000, only $13,980 had been paid in cash. About $10,000 had been paid in labor and material and $ 533,776 in lands and town lots. The balance was unpaid in any form. The real estate taken in payment was nearly all turned in at the most extravegant rates, which is to say, it was accepted at boom prices after the panic arrived. Land poor subscribers had been glad to unload, and railroad investment was romantic. For this adventure, like many another of the same speculative era, the taxpayers paid. Certain private individuals had to bail out the State with their own private funds, drawn on out of State banks, on their own private properties." There had been ambitious dreams of railroads before this fiasco. In the very year of Stephenson's " Rocket," 1829, an American dreamer bearing the same name as the famous New York governor and canal-builder, De Witt Clinton, had projected a Great Western Railway running from New York City to Lake Erie by the way of the headwaters of the Genesee and Allegheny rivers, thence along the southern shore through Cleveland and Sandusky, across the Maumee and Wabash rivers to the junction of Rock River with the Mississippi. But that effort was so premature that it never got started. Of historic importance in connection with early railroading was the establishment of the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company in 1834, with a capitalization of $ 100,000, incorporated by Charles Hoyt, Luke Risley, Richard Lord and Josiah Barber, a West Side enterprise. It was credited with having made the first locomotive west of the Alleghanies, for a Michigan railway operating between Detroit and Pontiac. So excellant was the first pioneer engine tat after twelve years of use it was sold for almost as much as its first cost. The same company made the machinery for the " Emigrant, " first screw propeller on the Lakes. It likewise built the locomotives which opened traffic on the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati and the Cleveland, Painsville and Ashtabula railroads. It was long the largest iron manufacturing concern in the city. Among its various activities it made cannon for the government. It was the first plant in that part of the country to use steam power instead of horse power to " blow " its furnaces. Ohio railroading really began in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century, though some of the main lines were planned in the fourth. Financing was impractical until the rivival of business in the early 1840's Cleveland played a leading role. The first train ran in Cleveland in 1849. These early railroads before the civil war, would amuse the generation of today who are accustomed to gigantic size, power and speed. Yet they were far more wonderful in their day than our ponderous enginery and mile-long trains we see today. The track consisted at first of iron strap rail spiked to wooden ties. The straps were three inches wide and about three-fourths of an inch thick. The " T" rail, originated in England, and at first was imported from that country, appeared in America in 1851. Such rails were 12 to 18 feet long and weighed 56 pounds per yard. The engine weighed about 30 tons and ran 20 miles an hour. They were usuallly given individual names like steamships. Those made in Cleveland had 15-inch cylinders and six-foot driving wheels. The fuel was wood, and a " wood train " was kept busy stocking the sheds along the route. With good luck an engine was known to run nearly 100 miles on one tender of wood. The use of coal started on the Clevealand and Pittsburgh line in 1856. When it was found a locomotive could run more than 100 miles on less than 5 tons of coal, this concentrated fuel quickly supplanted wood. Freight cars were 26 feet long, ad would almost have gone into a modern citizen's back yard garage. Baggage cars were 28 feet lng. Passenger coaches extended to about 40 feet. There were no sleeping cars until after the Civil war. The first schedules were meant for local traffic and convenience only. Freight trains were run hap-hazzard. Only the consolidation of the short lines made through trains possible and brought the elaborate time tables of today.. The same year which launched the fatuous Ohio Railroad brought other and more parctical projects which succeeded when the depression passed way. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To be continued in 31 B.