page_title: Holyoke Street Railway
section_title: Pioneering thermite rail welding
hierarchical_section_title: Holyoke Street Railway / Rail / Pioneering thermite rail welding
caption_attribution_description: English: Holyoke Street Railway workers set up apparatus necessary for welding track joints with thermite, this project which ran for 18 days starting on August 8, 1904, marked the first time an American railway had used this now-standard method.
context_page_description: The Holyoke Street Railway was an interurban streetcar and bus system operating in Holyoke, Massachusetts as well as surrounding communities with connections in Amherst, Belchertown, Chicopee, Easthampton, Granby, Northampton, Pelham, South Hadley, Sunderland, Westfield, and West Springfield. Throughout its history the railway system shaped the cultural institutions of Mount Tom, being operator of the mountain's famous summit houses, one of which hosted President McKinley, the Mount Tom Railroad, and the trolley park at the opposite end of this funicular line, Mountain Park.
  In the history of American railroad engineering, the system was the first in the United States to make use of exothermic welding, better known as thermite welding, to lay track for regular use. Railway engineer George E. Pellissier would not only be the first in the country to implement this now-standard operating procedure, but would further develop Hans Goldschmidt's welding process for the street railway, subsequently serving as an engineer and superintendent for the inventor's Goldschmidt Thermite Company before returning to Holyoke as an assistant general manager.
context_section_description: As a transportation system, the railway also held at least one unprecedented piece of technology prior to its numerous competitors  in the early 20th century- thermite welding. During the 1890s in Germany, Hans Goldschmidt developed the modern process for exothermic welding for railways. This process, now an international standard in railway construction, was first used commercially in tram lines in Essen, Germany in 1899. Over the next several years other cities including Leeds and Singapore would adopt this construction method, and in 1904 its inventor would open the Goldschmidt Thermit Company offices in New York City. While development of this process continued, an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, George E. Pellissier (1878-1961), followed Goldschmidt's work closely and approached the Holyoke Street Railway proposing that they use the new thermite process for their own lines. Soon after the railway ordered 160 joints to be placed on an approximately mile-long tract of rail on Main Street, and on August 8, 1904 Holyoke became the first rail line in the United States to lay track with the process. That same year Hartford would join the ranks as the second in country.
  While Hartford would be met with some issues due to what was later described as a rushed installation, the Holyoke installation served as a proof-of-concept for the advantages of the method. With thermite welding, a small crew of unskilled laborers with no prior knowledge of welding or specialty metalwork could be sent out with a crucible, pre-made molds, and a set amount of thermite. For railway companies the new technique would lead to a more reliable and inexpensive method of laying down new tracks that would make future system expansion more practical than bolted or welded separate joint techniques used up to that time.
  This represented the beginning of Pellissier's career with the railway company, as he would obtain a full-time engineer position upon graduation and went on to present his work to the American Street and Interurban Railway Association in 1905. The Holyoke engineer would not only serve as merely Goldschmidt's first American customer, but rather Pellissier would go on to work for the inventor's American company in New York, designing their Jersey City welding plant and also contributing improvements to the thermite installation process. In 1910 the Holyoke Street Railway, which had since used thermite for regular work, served as an urban laboratory for Pellissier's refinements on the process for the Goldschmidt Company, during which he tested a new technique for whole-rail welds, an improvement contributing to the development of continuous welded rail.
caption: Railway workers and George Pellissier (center left) stand next to a thermite crucible prior to ignition during the laying of the first tracks in the United States using the thermite weld technique, August 1904
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