Creation Of Railroads In Arkansas In The 1800′s

Posted on July 13, 2011 in: Arkansas Railroads

In the mid-nineteenth century, the newly created state of Arkansas needed an efficient means of transportation to speed its development. Railroads were constructed in order to get goods to markets elsewhere and to bring in new technologies, as well as people to work in and populate the state.

The construction of railroads had a significant impact on the state, creating towns where none had existed while all but eliminating others due to their lack of ready rail access. Many of the cities and towns in the state were named after prominent railroad executives who influenced, and in some cases were essential to, these communities’ development. While very little passenger service still exists, many of the same routes are used to transport a wide variety of goods throughout the state and beyond.malvern railway station.jpg

Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood
As early as 1835, plans were being made for the construction of railroads in the future state of Arkansas. A group led by Roswell Beebe was planning surveys that had been ordered by the U.S. Department of War for a railroad running from Cairo, Illinois, to Fulton (Hempstead County). These plans eventually resulted in the Cairo and Fulton Railroad, and Beebe became the railroad’s first president.

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The story of the Northern Railway in 1830

Posted on July 13, 2011 in: Northern Railway

NORTHERN RAILROAD

Rails into Racquetteville.jpg The first action taken toward the construction of a railroad to link Port Kent on Lake Champlain with Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence River and the gateway to the Great Lakes came as early as 1830, according to the late Watson Berry, North Country columnist and historian, who said that James Hayward, eminent engineer, was hired to ascertain the feasibility of constructing such a railroad. In his report submitted January 1, 1831, Mr. Hayward described the three types of railroad beds and tracks: The wood and iron, the stone and iron, and the iron railway consisting of wrought iron resting on cast iron “chairs’ at distances of about three feet. He favored the stone and rail construction consisting of an iron rail resting upon a continuous line of granite blocks of suitable size and length supported by a rubble wall and secured from lateral motion by embedding them in stone and gravel. This is the type of structure recommended a few years later for several New England railroads. Spruce, cedar, and tamarack were the only woods used, according to Mr. Berry.

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Train Wallpapers

Posted on April 12, 2011 in: Train Pictures

railroadsandtrains.com-train-wallpapers-100-optimized.jpgEnjoy Looking through our large selection of pictures and wallpapers HERE!

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New York Central Signals in 1912 and 1918

Posted on April 11, 2011 in: New York Central 1912, Signals

This article reviews rule books of 1912 and 1918 to see what they reveal about signaling and train operation during this period of rapid change, especially the more unusual practices. In 1912, the company name was the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, but by 1918 “and Hudson River” had been dropped. The other companies making up the New York Central System, such as the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati and St. Louis (Big Four), the Michigan Central and the Boston and Albany, issued their own rule books. The New York Central had been formed in 1869 by the amalgamation of the chain of smaller companies between Albany and Buffalo, as had always been intended. The Vanderbilts added the Hudson River Railroad between New York and Albany, and the New York and Harlem, to create the NYC&HRRR. The main line from Manhattan to Buffalo was 442 miles long, and the New York, New Haven and Hartford entered Manhattan over its rails.
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Richard Trevithick

Posted on April 25, 2010 in: History

Richard TrevithickRichard Trevithick, was born in Illogan, Cornwall, in 1771. Richard was educated at Camborne School but he was more interested in sport than academic learning. Trevithick was six feet two inches high and was known as the Cornish giant. He was very strong lad and by the age of eighteen he could throw sledge hammers over the tops of engine houses and write his name on a beam six feet from the floor with half a hundredweight hanging from his thumb. Trevithick also had the reputation of being one of the best wrestlers in Cornwall.

Trevithick went to work with his father at Wheal Treasury mine and soon revealed an aptitude for engineering. After making improvements to the Bull Steam Engine, Trevithick was promoted to engineer of the Ding Dong mine at Penzance. While at the Ding Dong mine he developed a successful high-pressure engine that was soon in great demand in Cornwall and South Wales for raising the ore and refuse from mines.
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George Pullman

Posted on April 25, 2010 in: History

GeorgeThe Pullman Sleeping Car was invented by cabinet-maker turned building contractor turned industrialist George Pullman in 1857. Pullman’s railroad coach or sleeper was designed for overnight passenger travel. Sleeping cars were being used on American railroads since the 1830s, however, they were not that comfortable and the Pullman Sleeper was very comfortable.

George Pullman and Ben Field began the commercial manufacture of the Sleepers in 1865. When a Pullman car was attached to the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln’s body the demand for the sleeping car increased.

As the railroad industry developed, George Pullman established the Pullman Palace Car Company to manufacture railroad cars. Funded by George Pullman at a total cost of $8 million, the town of Pullman, Illinois was built on 3,000 acres west of Lake Calumet in 1880 to provide housing for his company workers. He established a complete town around the company where employees of all income levels could live, shop, and play.  Pullman luzury car

Pullman, Illinois was the site of a vicious labor strike beginning in May 1894. Over the previous nine months, the Pullman factory had reduced its workers’ wages but did not lower the cost of living in its houses. Pullman workers joined Eugene Debs’s American Railroad Union (ARU) in the spring of 1894 and shut down the factory with a strike on May 11. Management refused to deal with the ARU and the union prompted a nationwide boycott of Pullman cars on June 21. Other groups within the ARU started sympathy strikes on behalf of the Pullman workers in an attempt to paralyze the nation’s railroad industry. The U.S. Army was called into the dispute on July 3 and the arrival of the soldiers sparked widespread violence and looting in Pullman and Chicago, Illinois.

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The strike unofficially ended four days later when Eugene Debs and other union leaders were jailed. The Pullman factory reopened in August and denied local union leaders an opportunity to return to their jobs.

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Johnny

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John Blenkinsop

Posted on March 20, 2010 in: History

NECESSITY was the mother of invention for Leeds mining engineer John Blenkinsop.

With the cost of horse fodder skyrocketing because of the Duke of Wellington’s requirements in the Peninsular War, the manager of Middleton Colliery wanted a cheaper way to move coal from the mine to his outlet in Leeds. And he realised the answer lay beneath his feet.

He ordered Leeds steam-engine manufacturers Fenton, Murray and Wood to build him a locomotive, and he and the firm’s engineer Matthew Murray – at the time a major rival to James Watt – teamed up in 1811 to build the engine for a wagonway that had connected the colliery with Leeds Bridge since 1758.

With Richard Trevithick’s experience at Penydaren fresh in his mind, Blenkinsop opted to make his engine as light as possible, but feared this might cause problems with adhesion of the wheels on the track.

Accordingly, he invented a rack-and-pinion system in which gear teeth on the driving wheel of the engine meshed with a rack on one side of the rails, like many modern Swiss mountain railways. After patenting the system, he persuaded his employers, the mine owners, to adopt it.

The first engine, believed to have named after the Prince Regent, made its first public appearance on June 24th, 1812. It weighed five tons, had two vertical cylinders inside the top of the boiler to preserve heat – Murray’s idea – and could haul 90 tons at 4mph on a level track.

Although there was a rack on only one side of the track, the engine, and its successors, had a cogwheel on either side, so the machines could be turned regularly to even out wear. Nevertheless, wear on the gearing was a problem that dogged Blenkinsop’s line for twenty years.

A second engine made its debut at the official opening of the line on August 12th, 1812, and it was christened Salamanca in honour of a British victory in a Peninsular War battle that had taken place precisely three weeks earlier.

Murray produced two further engines for the line, the first coming into service on August 4th, 1813, and the other on November 23rd the following year.

The engines cost £380 each to build and proved expensive to run, but the costs were bearable because they replaced no fewer than 50 horses and an estimated 200 men. They were still in use at the colliery well into the 1830s.

Three more were built by Robert Daglish for Orrell colliery, near Wigan, between 1812 and 1816. When Blenkinsop died in 1831, his engines were still in everyday use.

Johnny

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William Hedley

Posted on March 20, 2010 in: History

WILLIAM HEDLEY might well have been remembered today as the true father of the railways – if only he had seen the new transport revolution for what it was, and not simply as a means to an end.

Hedley was first and foremost a mine engineer – and an excellent one at that. His only real interest in steam locomotion was as an economical method of transporting coal from his employer’s colliery to the River Tyne.

Nevertheless it was Hedley, and not George Stephenson, whose ingenuity would turn what was simply an interesting idea into a practical transport system that would sweep the world.

Hedley was born in the Tyneside village of Newburn on July 13th, 1779, and fortuitously was sent to school in the neighbouring village of Wylam.

His path to school, took him alongside the Wylam Colliery wagonway, which would eventually play such a significant role in locomotive development. At that time, the wagonway was used by horses pulling single chaldron wagons on wooden rails from the colliery to the river staithes at Lemington on Tyne, where the coal was loaded into vessels known as “keels” for onward transport. read more »

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George Stephenson

Posted on March 20, 2010 in: History

The Father of the Railways, George Stephenson (1781-1848) was the son of a Northumbrian colliery steam-engine keeper. He was born in the village of Wylam on the River Tyne, a few miles west of Newcastle.

He began his working life alongside his father at Dewley Colliery but he was ambitious and took the first steps towards fame by learning to read and write at night school. Fascinated by machinery, Stephenson became enginewright at Killingworth Colliery in 1812 and studied the work of Watt and Trevithick.

In 1813, hearing about the success of William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth with their Puffing Billy at Wylam Colliery, he persuaded Nicholas Wood, his own colliery manager, to let him try his hand at building a railway engine. The result, the following year, was the less-than-impressiveBlucher. read more »

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Train Order Accidents

Posted on February 13, 2010 in: Accidents: Train Orders

This paper critically reviews a number of railway accidents that represent failures of the distinctively American time table and train order method of operation, taken from ICC accident reports with occasional added background. It would be more pleasant to review operations that did not involve accidents, but the stories are not available, so we must do with the pictures we have, and be satisfied with the hard lessons. The table of accidents below makes it easy to jump to any particular account. It is much easier to do this than to browse the unclassified ICC reports directly. This treatment is now deeper and more extensive and technical than that in Shaw.

The availability of historic ICC accident reports for the years 1911-1966 on the internet makes it easy to research operation under time table and train orders to find out how failures occurred. The computer search is much more powerful than poring over piles of documents, however limited its capabilities. Shaw’s book discusses accidents in which there were public casualties, ignoring the more frequent events when there were few casualties, and those largely confined to employees. However, these less tragic happenings teach lessons as important as those taught by the more spectacular ones, and they are more pleasant to consider. They are also a view of operations in the classic period of American train orders, perhaps a major resource, and so are of intrinsic interest. The discussion here will carry forward Shaw’s treatment, and extend it at several points. I differ with Shaw, largely on emphasis, on a few points. The reader can form his or her own opinions, since the information is freely available on the Internet, at the link given in the References.

Most train operation today, worldwide, is by signal indication. The driver of a train responds to immediate, simple stimuli and must obey them precisely. Operation by time table and train orders requires completely different skills, including memory, analysis and judgment, reference to time and to written instructions, and calculations of time and distance. It is, therefore, infinitely more interesting and stimulating. American railroad men were once proud of their skills, and rightly so. Today, many people who are employed by railroads seem to be either uninterested in developing the necessary mental skills, or are incapable of doing so, while the demands have become less challenging as the traffic is less varied, many lines have vanished, and ownership become more concentrated and bureaucratic and less personal, so that changed operating practices are essential.
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