The history of the first locomotives in America. From original ...

106 HISTOKY OP THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVES IN AMERICA.
The first locomotive ever built in the United States
was constructed to determine a principle, at that early-
period, susceptible of a great diversity of opinions, even
among the engineers and scientific men of that day, viz.,
the ability of a locomotive to keep upon the track in nm-
ning a curve. When steam made its appearance on the
Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, in England, it
attracted much attention in this country, and the ques-
tion of its early adoption became the subject of a great
deal of speculation and argument. There was this difficulty
in the way of introducing an English engine upon
an American road : In England the roads were virtually
straight, or with very long curves; but in America they
were full of curves, sometimes of as small a radius as
two hundred feet. There was not capital enough in
the United States, applicable to railroad purposes, to
justify engineers in setting Nature at defiance in their
construction. If a tunnel through a spur could be saved,
in an American railroad, by a track round it, the tunnel
would be avoided, and a circuitous route adopted, although
the distance was increased for miles in conse-
quence ; so, if embankments could be saved by heading
valleys in place of crossing them, it was done. This led
to sharp curves upon the American roads, where there
would be straight lines in England.
No better illustration of this is to be seen than hear
the Relay House, or Washington Junction, of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, where the curve, as the road
turned into the gorge of the Patapsco, was originally
located, with less than three hundred feet radius, to
avoid the necessity of the cut that has since been made
through the rocky northern jaw of the gorge. A tunnel,
too, is now cut at the Point of Rocks, thrdugh the hard
intractable material which is there met with, in a spur
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