1880 History of Blair County - Johnstown, PA

6 Hl.-^T(»RY OF ALTOONA AND BLAIR COUNTY.jniiicr, by the iiainc of Savarv, constructed one in 1718. In 1770James Watt made an imi)roved engine.In 1804, Richard Trevithick,of Cornwall, constructed a l(K'omotive to run upon the Merthyr-Tydvil railroad, in AVales.It drew, at the rate of five miles an hour,several wagons laden with ten tons of bar iron. In 1814, GeorgeStephenson, of England, completed the firsteffectivt' locomotive, andthat was not very effective. The " Rocket," which he constructedin 1829, succeeding other locomotives he had built, took a premiumof £500, offered by the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad company.Shortly after, Mr. Seguin, a French engineer, introduced locomotivesin France. In September, 1809, the first experimental railroad trackin the United States was laid l)y John Thomson, a civil engineer, ofDelaware county, Pennsylvania, and constructed under his directionby Somerville, a Scotch millwright, for Thos. LeiptT, of Philadelphia.It was sixty yards inlength, and graded to one and one-half inch tothe yard. The gauge was four feet, and the slee})ers were eight feetapart. The experiment with a loaded car was so successfid that Leiperhad the first ])ractical railroad built in the United States, constructedfor the trans})ortation of ston(^ from his ([uarries on Crumcreek to his landing on Ividlev creek, Delaware county, Pennsylvania,a distance of about one mile. It continued in use for aliout nineteenyears. The first railroad in America over which a locomotiveAvas run was that of the Delaware & Hudson Canal company, atHonesdale, Pennsylvania, to connect their mines with the canal. Thelocomotix'e was called "The Stowbridge Lion." It was tried on theroad on the Sth day of August, 1829—found too heavy for successfuluse on the roadway, was housed up and finally taken to piecesand destroyed. The first stone on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad waslaid on the 4th July, 1828, by Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland.At first the cars were propelled by sails, afterwards liy steam.The first locomotive regularly run on that road w^as made by PhineasDavis, at York, Pennsylvania, in 1831. The first gauge of railroads^(as in England) was four feet eight and one-half inches, correspondingwith tile width of ordinary English wagons.Content with general railway memoranda we will now sjjcak of the-PEN NSYLVANI A RAILROAD.On the loth day of Ai)ril, 184(), an act was passed to incorp(jratethe Pennsylvania Railroad coini)any. The ca])ital was fixed at $7,-500,000, with the ])rivilege of increasing the same to $10,000,000.On June 22, 184(), books were opened for subscriptions to the stock