The Coolidge examiner., 1933-08-25

~
~ 80 Century" There, across the stage
~ Esf Of a Greek theater, with the blue
~ waters of Lake Michigan as a back
ground. parades the colorful story
" of the romance of transportation
in America during the last 200
Y years.
Indians afoOt, on horseback in
birchbark canoe and on dragging travox lead
the way. Close behind them presses the on
coming white man-n creaking numbering two
wheeled carts. in Concord stage coaches, in
chaises, in COnest0ga wagons. in steamboats, and
canaboats. in fast packet boats and swift Yam
kee clipper ships. Now the covered wagons are
rolling out to Oregon" and the pony express
rider dashes up and quickly speeds away.
The pages of history turn rapidly and the
horse-drawn wagons and carriages are succeeded
by new marvel, the "horseless carriage" or
automobile. And almost before man has mas
tered this new form OF quick travel across the
land, the Wrights leap up from the sand dunes
of Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina, and the dream
Of Icarus is a reality Man is now travelling
through the air
In the midst of all this splendid pageantry of
the conquest of water, land and air there is one
chapter which stirs your imagination as perhaps
no other one does. That is the Parade of the
Iron Horse" You view appreciatively the his
toricay authentic costumes of more than a
hundred actors in the pageant You are amused
and delighted by the pantomime of some OF these
actors as they reproduce the thoughts and feel
ings and actions of past generations of Amer
leans. And at times you are deeply stirred as
you say to yourself, 81 am seeing history in the
making"
But when those locomotives. from Peter Coo
per's little TON Thumb" on down to one of the
modern Ttans, come rolling across the stage
with ringing bells, putting smokeStacks and
screaming whistles then-ah thenl It's hard
for you to stife that little-boy urge to stand up
and yell For in these black monsters you see
the inventive genius of America: you see the
symbol of the final conquest of the wilderness :
you the instrument which first bound to-
gether the broad expanse of these United States
of America; you see a whole century of the
development of the machine age
The first iron horse" paradoxcally enough
was more horse than iron. The first railroad
built in America for carrying passengers and
freight was the Baltimore & Ohio Chartered in
1927. it began laying the rails for its 13 miles
of road from Baltimore to Elc0tts Mills on
July 4, 1928. with Charles Carroll of Carroll
ton, the only living signer of the Declaration
of Independence. lifting the first shovelfu of
dirt. Incidentally this historic is graphic
ally reproduced in the Baltimore & Ohio's ex-
hibit in the Travel and Transport building)
The road was opened In May, 1890 In the
meantime the promoters had been experiment.
ing with various sorts of ears. One was horse
drawn passenger car. (Such is shown in illus
tratOn No. aboye) Another was a fiat car
fitted with a treadmill operated by a horse but
upon its trial trip it came to grief-a cow on
the track upset it Another experiment, which
also unsuccessful. made with sail
boat wheels, called the Meteor"
Then the inventive genius of Peter Cooper
came into the picture. He built a tiny locomotive
with a boiler about the size of the one which
stands behind your kitchen stove and with hues
made of gun barrels. To this he gave the ap.
propriate name of tom Thumb" and made some
trial runs the partly-inished railroad in 1890
From this experience he reconstructed his To-
comotive and on August 2S 1890 the TON
Thumb pushed. instead of pulled, car with
81 passengers over the entire 13 miles of the
road. attaining speed of four miles an hour
few days later occurred the famous race
between the tom Thumb" and horse-drawn
over the double track between Baltimore &
Ellicott'S Mills. At the start the gray horse
leaped into the lad and held it for awhile Then
the putting Tom Thumb" began to catch up
it drew abreast the straining animal-then
passed it. But just shouts of triumph went
up from Cooper's passengers belt slipped or
the mechanism of TON Thumb, SO the gray
horse won the to Baltimore.
But despite this victory the officials of the
new railroad had enough confidence in the fu.
ture of steam locomotives to offer a prize of
$4,000 for the best engine which should De de
lvered to the road for trial before June ! 1921
This prize was by Phineas Davis of York
Pa. a matchmaker He called his locomotive
ths york" but the pioneer railroad men took