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160-666: Later amendments substituted a new technology, railroads , in place of the planned but costly 82-mile (132 km) canal connecting the Delaware River in Philadelphia to the Susquehanna River . The route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh remained a patchwork of canals and railroads until the Pennsylvania Railroad was built in the 1850s. Trans-Appalachian settlement had begun in earnest during

320-408: A crank on a driving axle. Steam locomotives have been phased out in most parts of the world for economical and safety reasons, although many are preserved in working order by heritage railways . Electric locomotives draw power from a stationary source via an overhead wire or third rail . Some also or instead use a battery . In locomotives that are powered by high-voltage alternating current ,

480-586: A dining car . Some lines also provide over-night services with sleeping cars . Some long-haul trains have been given a specific name . Regional trains are medium distance trains that connect cities with outlying, surrounding areas, or provide a regional service, making more stops and having lower speeds. Commuter trains serve suburbs of urban areas, providing a daily commuting service. Airport rail links provide quick access from city centres to airports . High-speed rail are special inter-city trains that operate at much higher speeds than conventional railways,

640-731: A fourth rail system in 1890 on the City and South London Railway , now part of the London Underground Northern line . This was the first major railway to use electric traction . The world's first deep-level electric railway, it runs from the City of London , under the River Thames , to Stockwell in south London. The first practical AC electric locomotive was designed by Charles Brown , then working for Oerlikon , Zürich. In 1891, Brown had demonstrated long-distance power transmission, using three-phase AC , between

800-542: A funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel . The line is still operational, although in updated form and is possibly the oldest operational railway. Wagonways (or tramways ) using wooden rails, hauled by horses, started appearing in the 1550s to facilitate

960-492: A hydro-electric plant at Lauffen am Neckar and Frankfurt am Main West, a distance of 280 km (170 mi). Using experience he had gained while working for Jean Heilmann on steam–electric locomotive designs, Brown observed that three-phase motors had a higher power-to-weight ratio than DC motors and, because of the absence of a commutator , were simpler to manufacture and maintain. However, they were much larger than

1120-509: A navigational canal that would allow deep keeled coastal ships to reach docks and pickup and transship coal down the Lehigh Canal (which White had full ownership of by 1818) to Easton, Pennsylvania . An employee of White's had figured out how to get "Rock Coal" to burn properly during the War of 1812 renewing serious interest in exploiting these relatively untapped coal resources within

1280-431: A steam engine that provides adhesion. Coal , petroleum , or wood is burned in a firebox , boiling water in the boiler to create pressurized steam. The steam travels through the smokebox before leaving via the chimney or smoke stack. In the process, it powers a piston that transmits power directly through a connecting rod (US: main rod) and a crankpin (US: wristpin) on the driving wheel (US main driver) or to

1440-469: A transformer in the locomotive converts the high-voltage low-current power to low-voltage high current used in the traction motors that power the wheels. Modern locomotives may use three-phase AC induction motors or direct current motors. Under certain conditions, electric locomotives are the most powerful traction. They are also the cheapest to run and provide less noise and no local air pollution. However, they require high capital investments both for

1600-494: A 36-mile (58 km) route that included 11 levels, 10 inclined planes fitted with stationary engines that could raise and lower boats and cargo, a 900-foot (270 m), viaduct over the Little Conemaugh River , and many bridges. Infrastructure included 153 drains and culverts . The railroad climbed 1,398 feet (426 m) from the eastern canal basin at Hollidaysburg and 1,171 feet (357 m) from

1760-663: A Railroad to be constructed at the expense of the state and to be styled "The Pennsylvania Railroad" (Act of March 24, 1828, Pamph. Laws, p. 221) . Begun with Navigations construction along the Susquehanna and the West Fork of the Susquehanna with surveys for the best route over the barrier of the northern Allegheny Mountains , the system in time ran from Philadelphia on the Delaware estuary westwards across

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1920-912: A canal by the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad at historic Wright's Ferry . Engineers faced complications at the northern end of the Eastern Division Canal, where it met the Juniata Division Canal and the Susquehanna Division Canal at Duncan's Island. Boats had to cross from one side of the Susquehanna River to the other between either the Susquehanna Division or the Juniata Division on the west side and

2080-654: A canal tunnel of 817 feet (249 m) was built through Bow Ridge to avoid a long bend on the Conemaugh River, 10 miles (16 km) west of Blairsville. Saltsburg Canal Park, where Loyalhanna Creek joins the Conemaugh River to form the Kiskiminetas River, recognizes the canal's economic contribution to Saltsburg . Download coordinates as: For more on the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad , see William Hasell Wilson, The Columbia-Philadelphia Railroad and Its Successor (1896). A reprint of this booklet

2240-488: A change in elevation of 584 feet (178 m) over the full length of the canal, which opened in 1832. From the canal basin, westbound boats began their journey by being elevated about 10 feet (3 m) by a lock that brought them to the level of a wooden aqueduct on which they were towed 600 feet (183 m) to the south side of the Juniata. At North's Island, 18 miles (29 km) from the Susquehanna, they were towed by

2400-550: A diesel locomotive from the company in 1909. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railway in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h (62 mph). Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through

2560-478: A double track plateway, erroneously sometimes cited as world's first public railway, in south London. William Jessop had earlier used a form of all-iron edge rail and flanged wheels successfully for an extension to the Charnwood Forest Canal at Nanpantan , Loughborough, Leicestershire in 1789. In 1790, Jessop and his partner Outram began to manufacture edge rails. Jessop became a partner in

2720-446: A fairly new design, invented for the purpose by White, were used so water could be retained until required for use. When the dam became full and the water ran over it long enough for the river below to regain its ordinary depth, the sluice ates were let down, while the boats, which were lying in the pool above, passed down with the artificial flood. In this manner the difficulty was overcome. Crews were sent up Mount Pisgah to improve

2880-423: A half in width, laid upon wooden ties, which were kept in place by means of stone ballast. The loaded cars or wagons, as they were then termed, each having a capacity of approximately one and a half tons, were connected in trains of from six to fourteen, being attended by men who regulated their speed. Turn-outs were provided at intervals and the empty cars were drawn back to the mines by mules. They descended with

3040-437: A large turning radius in its design. While high-speed rail is most often designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also offer freight service. Since 1980, rail transport has changed dramatically, but a number of heritage railways continue to operate as part of living history to preserve and maintain old railway lines for services of tourist trains. A train is a connected series of rail vehicles that move along

3200-498: A larger locomotive named Galvani , exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. The seven-ton vehicle had two direct-drive reluctance motors , with fixed electromagnets acting on iron bars attached to a wooden cylinder on each axle, and simple commutators . It hauled a load of six tons at four miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) for a distance of one and a half miles (2.4 kilometres). It

3360-501: A loading chute at the huge slack water pool at Mauch Chunk . Riding this success, the two companies were merged into the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which resolved to apply American Canal era technology, including canals, locks, and rails to bring coal to their foundries and the stoves and furnaces of Philadelphia and beyond. On March 20, 1818, the company was granted various powers they sought to secure navigation in

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3520-423: A locomotive. This involves one or more powered vehicles being located at the front of the train, providing sufficient tractive force to haul the weight of the full train. This arrangement remains dominant for freight trains and is often used for passenger trains. A push–pull train has the end passenger car equipped with a driver's cab so that the engine driver can remotely control the locomotive. This allows one of

3680-477: A number of trains per hour (tph). Passenger trains can usually be into two types of operation, intercity railway and intracity transit. Whereas intercity railway involve higher speeds, longer routes, and lower frequency (usually scheduled), intracity transit involves lower speeds, shorter routes, and higher frequency (especially during peak hours). Intercity trains are long-haul trains that operate with few stops between cities. Trains typically have amenities such as

3840-676: A piece of circular rail track in Bloomsbury , London, the Catch Me Who Can , but never got beyond the experimental stage with railway locomotives, not least because his engines were too heavy for the cast-iron plateway track then in use. The first commercially successful steam locomotive was Matthew Murray 's rack locomotive Salamanca built for the Middleton Railway in Leeds in 1812. This twin-cylinder locomotive

4000-465: A pivotal role in the development and widespread adoption of the steam locomotive. His designs considerably improved on the work of the earlier pioneers. He built the locomotive Blücher , also a successful flanged -wheel adhesion locomotive. In 1825 he built the locomotive Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the northeast of England, which became the first public steam railway in

4160-547: A primary energy source at the time, to the company's primary markets in the Northeastern United States . By the early 1830s, the Lehigh Canal and its bridges along the Delaware River inspired the development and connection of four other regional canals. Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's success, along with White's reputation for advancing the state of mining and civil engineering, jump started

4320-439: A revival in recent decades due to road congestion and rising fuel prices, as well as governments investing in rail as a means of reducing CO 2 emissions . Smooth, durable road surfaces have been made for wheeled vehicles since prehistoric times. In some cases, they were narrow and in pairs to support only the wheels. That is, they were wagonways or tracks. Some had grooves or flanges or other mechanical means to keep

4480-623: A separate amending act, the state authorized the Delaware Canal, which was delayed for a few more years costing LC&N many dollars, until it was finally dug alongside, and generally in sight of the Delaware River between Easton down river to Bristol. When completed in 1832 by the state it also didn't work—having leaking issues and water supply problems like those that plagued the Union Canal and Schuylkill Navigation, and

4640-739: A single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, and was the prototype for all diesel–electric locomotive control systems. In 1914, world's first functional diesel–electric railcars were produced for the Königlich-Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen ( Royal Saxon State Railways ) by Waggonfabrik Rastatt with electric equipment from Brown, Boveri & Cie and diesel engines from Swiss Sulzer AG . They were classified as DET 1 and DET 2 ( de.wiki ). The first regular used diesel–electric locomotives were switcher (shunter) locomotives . General Electric produced several small switching locomotives in

4800-407: A standard. Following SNCF's successful trials, 50 Hz, now also called industrial frequency was adopted as standard for main-lines across the world. Earliest recorded examples of an internal combustion engine for railway use included a prototype designed by William Dent Priestman . Sir William Thomson examined it in 1888 and described it as a "Priestman oil engine mounted upon a truck which

4960-632: A terminus about one-half mile (800 m) away. A funicular railway was also made at Broseley in Shropshire some time before 1604. This carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the River Severn to be loaded onto barges and carried to riverside towns. The Wollaton Wagonway , completed in 1604 by Huntingdon Beaumont , has sometimes erroneously been cited as the earliest British railway. It ran from Strelley to Wollaton near Nottingham . The Middleton Railway in Leeds , which

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5120-409: A water powered continuous rope to the north side of the river across a slack water pool formed by a dam. From North's Island to Huntingdon, the river was dammed in three more places to feed water to the canal, and above Huntingdon, 14 more dams were needed to create 16 miles (26 km) of slack water navigation in the river to supplement 22 miles (35 km) of travel in segments of canal. In addition,

5280-408: A wheel. This was a large stationary engine , powering cotton mills and a variety of machinery; the state of boiler technology necessitated the use of low-pressure steam acting upon a vacuum in the cylinder, which required a separate condenser and an air pump . Nevertheless, as the construction of boilers improved, Watt investigated the use of high-pressure steam acting directly upon a piston, raising

5440-587: A wire mill foundry at the Schuylkill River falls near Philadelphia . White and Hazard were delighted by the quality of the fuel, and subsequently bought the LCMC's final two barges to survive the trip down the Lehigh River. In 1815, convinced they could much improve the reliability of its delivery, they began in 1815 to inquire after the rights to mine the LCMC's coal and hatched a plan to improve

5600-531: Is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks , which usually consist of two parallel steel rails . Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport , next to road transport . It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed . Rolling stock on rails generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, allowing rail cars to be coupled into longer trains . Power

5760-410: Is a single, self-powered car, and may be electrically propelled or powered by a diesel engine . Multiple units have a driver's cab at each end of the unit, and were developed following the ability to build electric motors and other engines small enough to fit under the coach. There are only a few freight multiple units, most of which are high-speed post trains. Steam locomotives are locomotives with

5920-399: Is dominant. Electro-diesel locomotives are built to run as diesel–electric on unelectrified sections and as electric locomotives on electrified sections. Alternative methods of motive power include magnetic levitation , horse-drawn, cable , gravity, pneumatics and gas turbine . A passenger train stops at stations where passengers may embark and disembark. The oversight of the train is

6080-444: Is to pass," wrote one of the commissioners, "I need only tell you that I considered it quite an easement when the wheel of my carriage struck a stump instead of a stone." The public, meanwhile, was divided. Some held that the attempt to operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and would prove profitable to investors. Others were just as positive that improvement's to

6240-408: Is usually provided by diesel or electrical locomotives . While railway transport is capital-intensive and less flexible than road transport, it can carry heavy loads of passengers and cargo with greater energy efficiency and safety. Precursors of railways driven by human or animal power have existed since antiquity, but modern rail transport began with the invention of the steam locomotive in

6400-556: Is worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive purposes." In 1894, a 20 hp (15 kW) two axle machine built by Priestman Brothers was used on the Hull Docks . In 1906, Rudolf Diesel , Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898. The Prussian State Railways ordered

6560-569: The American Industrial Revolution . The company ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first vertically integrated company in the United States. In 1792, a hunter named Philip Ginter discovered anthracite coal on Pisgah Mountain near present-day Summit Hill, Pennsylvania close to the border Schuylkill and Carbon counties. The following year, in 1793,

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6720-611: The Ashley Planes and made or supported means to other novel solutions of transport problems; and created transport corridors still important today. It also pioneered the mining of anthracite coal in the United States, acquiring virtually the entire eastern lobe of the Southern Pennsylvania Coal Region , and brought in Welsh experts to bootstrap Iron production using blast furnace technology in

6880-663: The Canal Age in the U.S. It also spurred historically significant investments in raw materials and bulk transportation infrastructure projects. The company also supported funding efforts behind the Schuylkill Canal project, which began in 1814, and was finally funded and finished with the company's support. White and Hazard had backed the Schuylkill project since their mills were on the River, but became disgusted with

7040-534: The Industrial Revolution in the United States . The company also established the Lehigh Canal , whose construction began in 1818. The Lehigh Canal became usable in 1820, was improved further between 1821 and 1824, and was finally transformed into a two-way canal between 1827 and 1829. The Lehigh Canal played a hugely influential role in the nation's ability to transport anthracite coal ,

7200-648: The Lehigh and Delaware rivers. The mining camps were over nine miles from the Lehigh River at Mauch Chunk. Sporadically active between the years of 1792 and 1814, the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was able to sell all of the coal it could mine to fuel-hungry markets but lost many a boatload on the rough waters of the unimproved Lehigh River, contributing to lost operating profits for the company and sometimes outright losses. The owners later sold some coal to Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who operated

7360-499: The Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LCMC) was founded. It was incorporated the following year, in 1793, and the company also acquired 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) in and around Panther Creek Valley and Pisgah Mountain , and the aim of hauling anthracite coal from the large deposits on Pisgah Mountain near what is now Summit Hill, Pennsylvania , to Philadelphia via mule train to arks built near Lausanne on

7520-622: The Lehigh Valley , building the first six such furnaces and puddling furnaces to create steel, which the company then provided to its own wire rope (steel cable) manufactury, the countries first it set up in Mauch Chunk. Completing the vertical integration, the wire ropes were then marketed to other mining operations, cable railways, and other industries needing high tensile reliability in managing weighty loads. In 1822, Lehigh Coal Company bought out partner George Hauto and formed

7680-718: The Ohio Country , and also for East Coast seaboard populations that were blooming in the pre-industrialization period. After the 1779 Sullivan Expedition broke the power of the Five Civilized Nations of the Iroquois towards the end of the American Revolutionary War , settlement became viable from the lower Susquehanna Valley to Upstate New York as far as Lake Erie . The U.S. was able to claim trans-Appalachian territories from

7840-670: The Reading Railroad , then headed northwest across the Columbia Bridge over the Schuylkill River . Just after crossing the river, it traveled up the Belmont Plane, an inclined plane in the current location of West Fairmount Park , and continued west across the eastern part of the state to Columbia , where the Columbia Plane headed down to the Susquehanna River . At that point, the eastern division of

8000-603: The Schuylkill Navigation was lagging hope when backers took to quarreling over the best way to proceed. White distanced himself from that project and settled for an alternative route down the Lehigh and Delaware rivers. After surveying and deciding improving navigation on the Lehigh could be feasible, returned to lease the operations of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company and improve navigability on the Lehigh river. The first 60 miles of this planned canal project would follow

8160-620: The United Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th century. The first passenger railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway , opened in 1825. The quick spread of railways throughout Europe and North America, following the 1830 opening of the first intercity connection in England, was a key component of the Industrial Revolution . The adoption of rail transport lowered shipping costs compared to water transport, leading to "national markets" in which prices varied less from city to city. In

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8320-615: The United Kingdom , South Korea , Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands. The construction of many of these lines has resulted in the dramatic decline of short-haul flights and automotive traffic between connected cities, such as the London–Paris–Brussels corridor, Madrid–Barcelona, Milan–Rome–Naples, as well as many other major lines. High-speed trains normally operate on standard gauge tracks of continuously welded rail on grade-separated right-of-way that incorporates

8480-661: The borough of Allegheny favored a north bank canal ending in the borough, across the river from Pittsburgh. Eventually, the canal was run along the physically more favorable north bank, but the state agreed to build the main terminal and turning basin in Pittsburgh and a secondary terminal and connecting canal, the Allegheny Outlet, in the borough. Getting the main canal across the Allegheny River into Pittsburgh required an aqueduct of 1,140 feet (347 m),

8640-468: The navigations improving commerce on the Lehigh and Schuylkill Rivers , though in 1824 both systems needed further development. But the same decision makers were also continually reading the copious press coverage about the progress, the works designs, and engineering feats accomplished or building as the Erie Canal progressed. Philadelphia's luminaries were vying with other coastal cities to become

8800-414: The overhead lines and the supporting infrastructure, as well as the generating station that is needed to produce electricity. Accordingly, electric traction is used on urban systems, lines with high traffic and for high-speed rail. Diesel locomotives use a diesel engine as the prime mover . The energy transmission may be either diesel–electric , diesel-mechanical or diesel–hydraulic but diesel–electric

8960-458: The puddling process in 1784. In 1783 Cort also patented the rolling process , which was 15 times faster at consolidating and shaping iron than hammering. These processes greatly lowered the cost of producing iron and rails. The next important development in iron production was hot blast developed by James Beaumont Neilson (patented 1828), which considerably reduced the amount of coke (fuel) or charcoal needed to produce pig iron. Wrought iron

9120-418: The rotary phase converter , enabling electric locomotives to use three-phase motors whilst supplied via a single overhead wire, carrying the simple industrial frequency (50 Hz) single phase AC of the high-voltage national networks. An important contribution to the wider adoption of AC traction came from SNCF of France after World War II. The company conducted trials at AC 50 Hz, and established it as

9280-568: The 'Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal') built by the states engineering managers a few years later. The route was nearly the same, but the Delaware Canal as the state built it had numerous engineering flaws, including locks both too short and unpaired (single & supporting only one way traffic) locks LC&N's experience and expertise would have mitigated. LC&N had started coal flowing to Philadelphia using short squared-off blocky barges it called coal arks , but in 1822-23

9440-469: The 1840s St. Louis , Chicago , and St. Joseph , Missouri would develop similarly). The markets of this burgeoning population were targeted by the business class of Philadelphia and New Jersey. The War of 1812 exacerbated a difficult energy crisis, and bituminous coal imports from Liverpool, England, ground to a halt under an 1812 embargo. Industrialists in Philadelphia pressed for some solution to their foundries' fuel needs and by year's end, legislation

9600-540: The 1880s, railway electrification began with tramways and rapid transit systems. Starting in the 1940s, steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locomotives . The first high-speed railway system was introduced in Japan in 1964, and high-speed rail lines now connect many cities in Europe , East Asia , and the eastern United States . Following some decline due to competition from cars and airplanes, rail transport has had

9760-521: The 1930s (the famous " 44-tonner " switcher was introduced in 1940) Westinghouse Electric and Baldwin collaborated to build switching locomotives starting in 1929. In 1929, the Canadian National Railways became the first North American railway to use diesels in mainline service with two units, 9000 and 9001, from Westinghouse. Although steam and diesel services reaching speeds up to 200 km/h (120 mph) were started before

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9920-508: The 1960s in Europe, they were not very successful. The first electrified high-speed rail Tōkaidō Shinkansen was introduced in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan. Since then high-speed rail transport, functioning at speeds up to and above 300 km/h (190 mph), has been built in Japan, Spain, France , Germany, Italy, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China),

10080-464: The 40 km Burgdorf–Thun line , Switzerland. Italian railways were the first in the world to introduce electric traction for the entire length of a main line rather than a short section. The 106 km Valtellina line was opened on 4 September 1902, designed by Kandó and a team from the Ganz works. The electrical system was three-phase at 3 kV 15 Hz. In 1918, Kandó invented and developed

10240-712: The Allegheny River to Kittanning. The 1889 Johnstown Flood was caused by the failure of the South Fork Dam , part of the Main Line of Public Works. The dam across the Little Conemaugh River in the hills above Johnstown, Pennsylvania , created a two-square-mile (5.2 km) reservoir. Dubbed Lake Conemaugh , it supplied water to the Western Division Canal. When canal traffic declined, the lake and dam were abandoned, then sold to

10400-525: The Appalachian mountains were being connected back to Atlantic seaboard cities by turnpikes, canals, and other transportation infrastructure works funded mostly by private funds or local governments. By the 1810s the population west of the mountains was exploding. Regional transport hubs were established in Brownsville , Pittsburgh , Cincinnati , Buffalo , Detroit , and New Orleans (and later in

10560-530: The Butterley Company in 1790. The first public edgeway (thus also first public railway) built was Lake Lock Rail Road in 1796. Although the primary purpose of the line was to carry coal, it also carried passengers. These two systems of constructing iron railways, the "L" plate-rail and the smooth edge-rail, continued to exist side by side until well into the early 19th century. The flanged wheel and edge-rail eventually proved its superiority and became

10720-514: The DC motors of the time and could not be mounted in underfloor bogies : they could only be carried within locomotive bodies. In 1894, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Kandó developed a new type 3-phase asynchronous electric drive motors and generators for electric locomotives. Kandó's early 1894 designs were first applied in a short three-phase AC tramway in Évian-les-Bains (France), which was constructed between 1896 and 1898. In 1896, Oerlikon installed

10880-710: The Delaware River from Easton to the Philadelphia suburb town of Bristol , and would later become the Delaware Canal . By 1818, White had obtained the legal permissions "to ruin himself" fixing up the Lehigh, founding the Lehigh Navigation Company and using a quasi-lock of his own design to construct what is now known as the Lower Lehigh Canal between 1818 and 1820. The works had made sufficient improvements by late 1820 to deliver 365 tons of anthracite coal to Easton — by 1825

11040-409: The Eastern Division on the east side. They solved the problem by building a dam 1,998 feet (609 m) long and 8.5 feet (2.6 m) high between the lower end of Duncan's Island and the east bank of the Susquehanna. This formed a pool across which boats could be pulled from a wooden, two-tier towpath bridge at Clark's Ferry. Two Duncan's Island lift locks raised or lowered the boats traveling between

11200-483: The LCN & Co. from rebuilding. In 1827, the Company in one massive well organized effort, completely built the 9.2 miles (14.8 km) of America's second railroad using the road bed of the wagon road built in 1818–19 in just a few months — a gravity railroad named the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad using wooden sleepers on a gravel substrate (as did most more modern railways) — to bring coal from mines to river more efficiently. The work went quickly since

11360-423: The Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. According to a history of the navigations, authored in 1884: The improvement of the Lehigh was begun at the mouth of the Nesquehoning Creek , during the summer of the year 1818, under the personal supervision of Josiah White. The plan adopted was to contract the channel of the river in the form of a funnel, wherever it was found necessary to raise

11520-441: The Lehigh Canal with private funds. LC&N was unquestionably one of the most innovative companies of the era, driving the mining, transportation and industrial development of Pennsylvania by example, implementation, and by funding quite a few projects, as well. This new proposal was to build— at the companies expense — the project that would (in concept) become their version of the eventual Delaware Canal (alternatively

11680-706: The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) by combining the Lehigh Coal Mining Company, the Lehigh Coal Company, which was leased, and the Lehigh Navigation Company. The transactions represented the first merger of interlocking companies in the nation's history. Five years later, the company built the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad , the first coal railroad and just the second railroad company in

11840-407: The Lehigh Coal Company on April 21, 1820. Under the conditions of the lease, it was stipulated that, after a given time for preparation, they should deliver for their own benefit at least forty thousand bushels of coal annually in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts, and should pay, if demanded, one ear of corn as a yearly rental. White and Hazard found a wide divergence of opinion on whether

12000-520: The Lehigh Coal Company was launched with capital stock of $ 55,000. This formed one of the most striking illustrations in American history of the dependence of a commercial venture upon methods of inland transportation. The Lehigh Navigation Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh Coal Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the principle, which was later adopted by

12160-468: The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was founded, but management proved weak and tried to operate in an absentee mode. Company personnel ambitiously attempted to trek to the mine site, dig the anthracites, and then use mules to transport bags of it to the Lehigh River , which required cutting down trees and building crude arks near Lausanne Landing and then shooting the Lehigh River's rapids, hoping to reach

12320-416: The Lehigh River could be tamed, and even fewer believed that the mining of coal from the Lehigh River's surrounding lands was feasible. On three separate occasions, funds were raised to improve the Lehigh River's functionality. By 1820, the two companies had a marginal level of navigability on the Lehigh over four years ahead of their targeted 1824 deadline. Coal was transported by mule track from Summit Hill to

12480-438: The Lehigh River towns Jim Thorpe , formerly Mauch Chunk, to the towns west, and Nesquehoning to its north. Both towns are built into the flanks, the traverses , of the mountain , with flats along the river banks. (A few decades later, railroads would follow the canals.) Within the next two years, White and Hazard constructed a descending navigation system that used their unique "bear trap" or hydrostatic locks , which allowed

12640-400: The Lehigh River, including with boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons on coal. Pennsylvania's state government kept an eye on the operation, however, and a minority felt the two men might succeed. The state reserved the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the company did not succeed satisfactorily. Capital

12800-469: The Lehigh until the 1960s. While some problems were fixable, the Delaware Canal 's lock's design was always a costly economic problem until the Canal became the parkland and current haven for pleasure boats. White and Hazard made the offer in return for a break on tolls, and even included an offer to operate the system at cost—the state garnering all the tolls. This offer too was declined, and in 1827 in

12960-604: The Ohio River to the lower Great Lakes , and west to Minnesota and Wisconsin . As the Revolutionary War wound down in the 1780s, many family groups moved west, establishing scattered settlements from below the Wyoming Valley across the near west into the retreating western frontiers and the lands of the old Ohio Country . In the early 1800s, the new farms established along the moving frontier west of

13120-670: The Pennsylvania Railroad in 1857; the railroad in turn sold them to private interests. They were purchased by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1879, and a private resort was built surrounding the lake. On May 31, 1889, following heavy rains, the South Fork Dam failed, sending 20 million tons (18.2 million cubic meters) of water down the gorge toward Johnstown. More than 2,200 people were killed. The Tunnelview Historical Site shows where in 1830

13280-491: The Pennsylvanian interior. White had previously looking for a source of coal in 1815, finding the mines of the failing and unreliable Lehigh Coal Mine Company , which would eventually deliver more coal through the Lehigh Canal than all of the coal they had previously delivered to market since their founding in 1792. White expected to construct a canal system to ship the coal, but efforts to improve shipping capabilities on

13440-552: The United States' most important and influential port as the country's population expanded westward to the Ohio Country and Northwest Territory regions. The system would also not only open better access to the newly opened Southeastern Coal Region and the initial mines in the Panther Creek Valley but authorized an extension of the Lehigh Canal up to White Haven, and a railroad connecting that upper canal with

13600-575: The United States. Using anthracite as fuel in its production, iron for the first time became plentiful and inexpensive. For a period of thirty years, three decades that shaped the future of the valley, anthracite fueled furnaces throughout the Lehigh Valley produced greater quantities of iron than any other part of the nation. The June 6, 1862 flood proved to show a fatal flaw in White's grand dream. The Upper Grand contributed to its own demise in that

13760-432: The annual anthracite tonnage had climbed to over 28,000 short tons (25,000 t) per annum. White's ventures firmly established anthracite as a reliable inexpensive fuel and proved that once-treacherous inland Pennsylvania waterways could be engineered into profitable industrial shipping routes. A couple years later, the legislature declined another offer by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LC&N) which had built

13920-790: The canal and the Allegheny Portage Railroad. The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, Juniata Division, Canal Section was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. From 1834 until 1854, when the Pennsylvania Railroad Company finished a competing line, the Allegheny Portage Railroad made continuous boat traffic possible over the Allegheny Mountains between the Juniata and Western Division Canals. It followed

14080-454: The canal continued north along the river and then west. The Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad was incorporated in 1829 to build a branch continuing east on Noble Street and Willow Street to the Delaware River . This opened in 1834. The Belmont Plane ran from the Schuylkill River for 2,805 feet (855 m), rising 1 foot (0.3 m) per 15 feet (4.6 m) for a total rise of 187 feet (57 m). Steam-driven cables dragged

14240-493: The coal sources in the Wyoming Valley . All the eastern projects were to reliably provide clean-burning anthracite coal to eastern cities that had already consumed much of the eastern forests for heating fuel. The rail portions of the system were authorized in 1828 by an act of the Pennsylvania General Assembly entitled An act relative to the Pennsylvania Canal, and to provide for the commencement of

14400-434: The company from 1822 until 1865, White and Hazard were constantly seeking innovative solutions to increase business and revenues. The vertical integration many economists credit them with inventing would appeal to them as a very natural way to control costs, hence maximize profitability. The two, and the various members of the corporate board often heard of ideas that separately( ? ) or together needed financial investment which

14560-499: The company was combined with the Lehigh Coal Company with the ouster of George Hauto, but was not rechartered officially until 1822. By late 1820, four years ahead of their prospectus 's targeted schedule, the unfinished but much improved Lehigh Valley watercourse began reliably transporting large amounts of coal to White's mills and Philadelphia. The nearly 370 tons of coal brought to market that year not only salved

14720-413: The company would often join as investors, and often end up providing a later critical boost of finishing financing, investing in such ventures directly, or buying out at a later time as subsidiaries as things developed a proof of concept, track record, better promise, or dependency on another business. From that moment on, anthracite and the canals were of pivotal importance in the industrial development of

14880-522: The country to be constructed after the Granite Railroad in Quincy, Massachusetts . The company was founded by industrialists Josiah White and Erskine Hazard , who sought to improve delivery of coal to markets. and a thickly=accented German immigrant miner named Hauto. The company is known in the Lehigh Valley as the "Old Company", as distinct from the later 1988–2010 company, which

15040-430: The dam pool and the other canals. The Juniata Division Canal was approved in segments starting in 1827 with a canal from near Duncan's Island in the Susquehanna River to Lewistown, 40 miles (64 km) upstream. Subsequently, the state agreed to extend the canal to Hollidaysburg and the eastern end of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, 127 miles (204 km) from the Susquehanna. A total of 86 locks were required to overcome

15200-531: The dams and locks necessary to allow the coal barges to travel on the river meant that huge pools of water sat at the ready. Once the heavy June rains began, and dams began to be breached, devastating tidal waves of flood water burst dam after dam causing a great flood and loss of life. John J. Leisenring Jr., then Superintendent of the LCN & Co. estimated that 200 people lost their lives from White Haven down to Lehighton. The state legislature stepped in and prohibited

15360-430: The duty of a guard/train manager/conductor . Passenger trains are part of public transport and often make up the stem of the service, with buses feeding to stations. Passenger trains provide long-distance intercity travel, daily commuter trips, or local urban transit services, operating with a diversity of vehicles, operating speeds, right-of-way requirements, and service frequency. Service frequencies are often expressed as

15520-402: The end of the 19th century, because they were cleaner compared to steam-driven trams which caused smoke in city streets. In 1784 James Watt , a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, patented a design for a steam locomotive . Watt had improved the steam engine of Thomas Newcomen , hitherto used to pump water out of mines, and developed a reciprocating engine in 1769 capable of powering

15680-471: The end of the 19th century, improving the quality of steel and further reducing costs. Thus steel completely replaced the use of iron in rails, becoming standard for all railways. The first passenger horsecar or tram , Swansea and Mumbles Railway , was opened between Swansea and Mumbles in Wales in 1807. Horses remained the preferable mode for tram transport even after the arrival of steam engines until

15840-527: The engine by one power stroke. The transmission system employed a large flywheel to even out the action of the piston rod. On 21 February 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales . Trevithick later demonstrated a locomotive operating upon

16000-475: The era of great expansion of railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron. Steel rails made heavier locomotives possible, allowing for longer trains and improving the productivity of railroads. The Bessemer process introduced nitrogen into the steel, which caused the steel to become brittle with age. The open hearth furnace began to replace the Bessemer process near

16160-522: The first commercial example of the system on the Lugano Tramway . Each 30-tonne locomotive had two 110 kW (150 hp) motors run by three-phase 750 V 40 Hz fed from double overhead lines. Three-phase motors run at a constant speed and provide regenerative braking , and are well suited to steeply graded routes, and the first main-line three-phase locomotives were supplied by Brown (by then in partnership with Walter Boveri ) in 1899 on

16320-560: The great plain of southern Pennsylvania (goal of connecting the Susquehanna to New York City via canals) through Harrisburg and across the state to Pittsburgh and connected with other divisions of the Pennsylvania Canal . It consisted of the following principal sections, moving from east to west: The canals reduced travel time between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh from at least 23 days to just four. The Main Line of Public Works

16480-471: The highest possible radius. All these features are dramatically different from freight operations, thus justifying exclusive high-speed rail lines if it is economically feasible. Lehigh Coal Mine Company Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania . The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in

16640-460: The lack of a tow path canal for the sixty miles Easton-Philadelphia was very costly to LC&N, and the state's Delaware Canal attempt when opened in 1832 was five years later than promised and didn't work; the State had to hire Josiah White to repair its major deficiencies, then needed LC&N's expertise to operate it. LC&N ended up running both canals into the 1930s, and retained the rights to

16800-714: The latter years of the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Following the war, the British government made several agreements, primarily with the Iroquois , which resulted in official policies to curb the expansion of settlement in the colonial West (today's Midwest). This was one of many British policies that created support for the American Revolution along the American frontier for those hoping to emigrate into

16960-1230: The limit being regarded at 200 to 350 kilometres per hour (120 to 220 mph). High-speed trains are used mostly for long-haul service and most systems are in Western Europe and East Asia. Magnetic levitation trains such as the Shanghai maglev train use under-riding magnets which attract themselves upward towards the underside of a guideway and this line has achieved somewhat higher peak speeds in day-to-day operation than conventional high-speed railways, although only over short distances. Due to their heightened speeds, route alignments for high-speed rail tend to have broader curves than conventional railways, but may have steeper grades that are more easily climbed by trains with large kinetic energy. High kinetic energy translates to higher horsepower-to-ton ratios (e.g. 20 horsepower per short ton or 16 kilowatts per tonne); this allows trains to accelerate and maintain higher speeds and negotiate steep grades as momentum builds up and recovered in downgrades (reducing cut and fill and tunnelling requirements). Since lateral forces act on curves, curvatures are designed with

17120-429: The locomotive-hauled train's drawbacks to be removed, since the locomotive need not be moved to the front of the train each time the train changes direction. A railroad car is a vehicle used for the haulage of either passengers or freight. A multiple unit has powered wheels throughout the whole train. These are used for rapid transit and tram systems, as well as many both short- and long-haul passenger trains. A railcar

17280-719: The longest on the Pennsylvania Main Line route. Linking to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh, the Western Division Canal also linked, through a tunnel of 810 feet (250 m) under Grant's Hill in Pittsburgh, with the Monongahela River . Subsequent Western Division Canal extensions went from Freeport up the Kiskiminetas and Conemaugh Rivers to Blairsville and then to the western end of the Allegheny Portage Railroad at Johnstown. East of Tunnelton,

17440-569: The main portion of the B&;O to the new line to New York through a series of tunnels around the edges of Baltimore's downtown. Electricity quickly became the power supply of choice for subways, abetted by the Sprague's invention of multiple-unit train control in 1897. By the early 1900s most street railways were electrified. The London Underground , the world's oldest underground railway, opened in 1863, and it began operating electric services using

17600-433: The mid-1920s. The Soviet Union operated three experimental units of different designs since late 1925, though only one of them (the E el-2 ) proved technically viable. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp , a General Electric electrical engineer, developed and patented a reliable direct current electrical control system (subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp). Lemp's design used

17760-595: The mouth of the Juniata River. The canal included 14 locks with an average lift of 7.5 feet (2.3 m). The state originally planned a canal of 24 miles (39 km) running between the Union Canal at Middletown to the Juniata. However, the plan changed in 1828, when the state opted to extend the Eastern Division 19 miles (31 km) further south to connect with the newly decided replacement of

17920-421: The mule trails down from the coal deposits at Summit Hill, Pennsylvania , and others to build docks, boat building facilities, and the canal systems head end pool and locks. The canal head end needed a location where barges could be built and timber and coal could be brought into slack water. The challenge was to do it above the gap made by the east end of Mount Pisgah , a hard rock knob that towers 900 feet above

18080-506: The navigation on the Lehigh as a key step. In 1818, building on two predecessor companies, founders Erskine Hazard and Josiah White entered the coal industry to serve customers seeking a steady supply of fuel for foundries and mills on the falls of the Schuylkill River . Its role in accelerating regional industrial development by taking on civil engineering challenges initially thought impossible and creating important transport and mining infrastructure, proved influential in spearheading

18240-412: The noise they made on the tracks. There are many references to their use in central Europe in the 16th century. Such a transport system was later used by German miners at Caldbeck , Cumbria , England, perhaps from the 1560s. A wagonway was built at Prescot , near Liverpool , sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to

18400-487: The passage of coal boats by means of artificial floods. The coal arrived at the head end from the mines at Summit Hill or down along the steep mule trail from near the headwaters of Panther Creek . It floated down the navigation; at journey's end, the barges were sold as fuel or for Delaware basin transports. The navigation company began shipping significant quantities of coal by early 1819, ahead of expectations, and attained their goal of regular shipments in 1820. In 1820,

18560-525: The possibility of a smaller engine that might be used to power a vehicle. Following his patent, Watt's employee William Murdoch produced a working model of a self-propelled steam carriage in that year. The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick , a British engineer born in Cornwall . This used high-pressure steam to drive

18720-507: The railway cars to the top of Belmont Hill. The Plane was the site of a signal event in railroad history. On July 10, 1836, the Philadelphia -based Norris Locomotive Works drove a 4-2-0 locomotive up the Incline, making it the first steam locomotive to climb an ascending grade while pulling a load. The 14,400-pound (6,500 kg) engine, named George Washington , hauled a load of 19,200 pounds (8,709 kg), including 24 people riding on

18880-458: The railway, of dividing the total distance by the total descent in order to determine the grade. The Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of sluice gates connecting with pools that could be filled with reserve water to be drawn upon as needed for navigation. By 1819, the depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton was obtained. The two companies were immediately amalgamated under

19040-414: The right-of-way surveyed by White (well before 1818's charter) ran along the virtually uniform gradient created by grading the original mule trail, work overseen by Hazard in 1818. During the summer of 1827, a railroad was built from the mines at Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk. With one or two unimportant exceptions, this was the first railroad in the United States. It was nine miles in length, and occupied

19200-479: The river's confluence with the Delaware River at Easton on the Pennsylvania border with New Jersey . The Lehigh Coal Mining Company was sporadically successfully in mining and transporting anthracite coal to Philadelphia , and its rights were eventually absorbed by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which leased their own operational rights from their predecessor, the Lehigh Coal Company. In 1792,

19360-399: The river's navigation would follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines. The direct result of the examiners' report and of the public debate ultimately was the organization of the first interlocking companies in American commercial history. The Lehigh Navigation Company was formed with a capital stock of $ 150,000 and

19520-608: The route of present-day Montgomery Avenue in Lower Merion Township, was abandoned. The Columbia Bridge and line east to Broad and Vine Streets were sold to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad as part of its main line. The Reading acquired the Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad in 1870, giving it access to the Delaware River. The section of the old Pennsylvania Railroad running from Philadelphia west through Chester County and, by extension,

19680-494: The route of the old wagon road most of the distance. Summit Hill, lying nearly a thousand feet higher than Mauch Chunk, the cars on the road made this descent by gravity, passing the coal, at their destination to the boats in the river by means of inclined planes and chutes. The whole of this plan was evolved by Josiah White, under whose direction it was consummated in a period of about four months. The rails were of rolled bar-iron, three-eighths of an inch in thickness and an inch and

19840-506: The route went through a canal tunnel of 817 feet (249 m) built to avoid a long loop of the Conemaugh River. The first fully loaded freight boat traveled from Johnstown to Pittsburgh in 1831; the route through Grant's Hill opened in 1832. Over its length of 104 miles (167 km), the canal employed 68 locks, 16 river dams, and 16 aqueducts. From Freeport, a separate extension, the Kittanning Feeder, ran 14 miles (23 km) up

20000-625: The section from 52nd Street west to the main line at Rosemont . The state built the rest from 52nd Street east to downtown, but on a different alignment than the one originally planned; the new line, put into operation October 15, 1850, ended at the west end of the Market Street Bridge , from which the City Railroad continued east. The old line, which ran from the Schuylkill River up the Belmont Plane to Ardmore along

20160-542: The service given by the company did not meet "the wants of the country." In 1817, they leased the Lehigh Coal Mine's properties and took over operations, incorporating it on October 21, 1818, as the Lehigh Coal Company. They petitioned the legislature and proposed acquiring rights to make improvements to the Lehigh River for which there had been a string of supportive legislation going back decades. In 1820, White and Hazard bought out their partner Hauto and dissolved

20320-441: The standard for railways. Cast iron used in rails proved unsatisfactory because it was brittle and broke under heavy loads. The wrought iron invented by John Birkinshaw in 1820 replaced cast iron. Wrought iron, usually simply referred to as "iron", was a ductile material that could undergo considerable deformation before breaking, making it more suitable for iron rails. But iron was expensive to produce until Henry Cort patented

20480-515: The state built three reservoirs on Juniata tributaries to keep the upper parts of the canal filled with water. A canal section of 1.5 miles (2.4 km) has been restored near Locust Campground, 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Lewistown. At the western end of the canal, the Hollidaysburg Canal Basin Park has preserved two canal basins and a connecting lock; a museum at the park illustrates how canal boats transferred between

20640-454: The state needed to hire Josiah White to fix it before it became fully usable in 1834. Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company would operate the Canal into the 1930s, and controlled its resources and those rights attained on the Lehigh until the 1960s when they reverted or conveyed back to the state. Hence the Canal system was envisioned and built at the urging of New Jersey and Pennsylvanian businessmen, especially Philadelphia's bearing witness to

20800-512: The tender and one freight car, up the grade at 15 miles (24 km) per hour. So remarkable was this accomplishment that reports in engineering journals doubted its occurrence. Nine days later, the engine repeated the feat in a more formal trial with an even greater load. In 1850, the state bought the West Philadelphia Railroad, which had been incorporated in 1835 to bypass the Belmont Plane and failed after completing only

20960-475: The time, was Liverpool and Manchester Railway , built in 1830. Steam power continued to be the dominant power system in railways around the world for more than a century. The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen in Scotland, and it was powered by galvanic cells (batteries). Thus it was also the earliest battery-electric locomotive. Davidson later built

21120-475: The timid investment and management attitudes of its board, so they explored property and feasibility examinations elsewhere in 1814–1815 and petitioned to build the canal that next year. Upon their return, the company's two founders took over Lehigh Coal Mining Company's mines and mining rights in a 20-year lease. built the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad and had its hands in many other northeastern Pennsylvania shortline railroads, spurs, and subsidiaries; created

21280-480: The title of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. By 1823, the two companies delivered over two thousand tons of coal to market. Having displayed great technological skills by creating the world's first iron wire suspension bridge, which spanned the Schuylkill River at their wire works, White and Hazard schemed with other industrialists to secure a reliable source of anthracite. To move the coal to market, they entered political negotiations to acquire rights to tame

21440-543: The track. Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate locomotive or from individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Most trains carry a revenue load, although non-revenue cars exist for the railway's own use, such as for maintenance-of-way purposes. The engine driver (engineer in North America) controls the locomotive or other power cars, although people movers and some rapid transits are under automatic control. Traditionally, trains are pulled using

21600-430: The trains in specially constructed cars, affording a novel and rather ludicrous spectacle. Thirty minutes was the average time consumed in making the descent, while the weary trip back to the mines required three hours. The wagon road to become gravity railroad ran from what later became Summit Hill along the south side of Pisgah Ridge to Mount Pisgah to the canal's loading chute over 200 feet (61 m) above

21760-471: The transport of ore tubs to and from mines and soon became popular in Europe. Such an operation was illustrated in Germany in 1556 by Georgius Agricola in his work De re metallica . This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way. The miners called the wagons Hunde ("dogs") from

21920-437: The turbulent and rapids-ridden Lehigh River for navigation. By 1817–18, they had organized the separate Lehigh Navigation Company and had written stock flyers announcing plans to deliver barge loads of coal regularly to Philadelphia by 1824. The LCMC had trouble delivering Anthracite to Philadelphia at costs cheaper than imported Bituminous Coal from Britain or Virginia. Their last expedition had been sent out in 1813 during

22080-514: The war & blockade caused bituminous shortages, and by the time five arks were sent down river, three sank, leaving the directors of LCMC disgusted and unwilling to fund more losses. The company began to prepare plans and surveyed sites, and when the state legislature approved the river work in 1818, immediately hired teams of men and began to install locks, dams, and weirs, including water management gates of their own novel design. The desired opportunity " to ruin themselves ," as one member of

22240-483: The water, throwing up the round river-stones into low walls or wing dams, thus providing a regular descending navigation. It soon became apparent that the carrying out of this plan would not insure sufficient water in seasons of drought to float a loaded ark or boat, and the success of the whole enterprise hung in the balance. White resorted to the expedient of creating artificial freshets. Dams were constructed in Mauch Chunk in present-day Jim Thorpe , and sluice gates of

22400-597: The western basin at Johnstown. At its summit, the railroad reached an elevation of 2,322 feet (708 m) above sea level . In 1826, the state legislature authorized the first segment of the Western Division Canal, from Pittsburgh up the Allegheny River to its confluence with the Kiskiminetas River at Freeport . Pittsburgh residents favored a route that would follow the south bank of the Allegheny River and terminate in Pittsburgh, while residents of

22560-467: The western suburbs of Philadelphia, is still known as the Main Line . The Columbia Plane, which lowered railway cars down to the Eastern Division Canal along the Susquehanna River , was bypassed in 1840 by a new track alignment. The Pennsylvania Canal's Eastern Division, which opened in 1833, ran 43 miles (69 km) along the east side of the Susquehanna River between Columbia and Duncan's Island at

22720-629: The wheels on track. For example, evidence indicates that a 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos paved trackway transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece from around 600 BC. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD. Paved trackways were also later built in Roman Egypt . In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug ,

22880-461: The whole range of tried and untried methods for securing "a navigation downward once in three days for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons." The State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if

23040-619: The winter's fuel shortage but created a temporary glut. After buying out co-founder George Hauto, White and Hazard reworked their lease deal with the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and merged it with the Lehigh Coal Company, acquiring ownership of its 10,000 acres spanning three parallel valleys in the 14 miles (23 km) from Mauch Chunk to Tamaqua . A few months later, they merged the LCC and the Lehigh Navigation Company. In late 1821, they filed papers to incorporate Lehigh Coal & Lehigh Navigation , which took effect in 1822. As operations managers of

23200-559: The world in 1825, although it used both horse power and steam power on different runs. In 1829, he built the locomotive Rocket , which entered in and won the Rainhill Trials . This success led to Stephenson establishing his company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives for railways in Great Britain and Ireland, the United States, and much of Europe. The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all

23360-512: Was a soft material that contained slag or dross . The softness and dross tended to make iron rails distort and delaminate and they lasted less than 10 years. Sometimes they lasted as little as one year under high traffic. All these developments in the production of iron eventually led to the replacement of composite wood/iron rails with superior all-iron rails. The introduction of the Bessemer process , enabling steel to be made inexpensively, led to

23520-602: Was accomplished by the distribution of weight between a number of wheels. Puffing Billy is now on display in the Science Museum in London, and is the oldest locomotive in existence. In 1814, George Stephenson , inspired by the early locomotives of Trevithick, Murray and Hedley, persuaded the manager of the Killingworth colliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. Stephenson played

23680-429: Was already re-doing the upper four locks on the Lehigh Canal to support a steam powered tug pulling boats over 120 feet (37 m) built to support two way traffic with full locks. By 1825 the volume of coal coming down the Lehigh & Delaware to Philadelphia was becoming huge and problematic — LC&N was rapidly over logging the forests feeding the Lehigh to build boats for the one way trip. The extra expenses of

23840-514: Was built by Siemens. The tram ran on 180 volts DC, which was supplied by running rails. In 1891 the track was equipped with an overhead wire and the line was extended to Berlin-Lichterfelde West station . The Volk's Electric Railway opened in 1883 in Brighton , England. The railway is still operational, thus making it the oldest operational electric railway in the world. Also in 1883, Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram opened near Vienna in Austria. It

24000-706: Was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in the Americas was built in Lewiston, New York . In the late 1760s, the Coalbrookdale Company began to fix plates of cast iron to the upper surface of the wooden rails. This allowed a variation of gauge to be used. At first only balloon loops could be used for turning, but later, movable points were taken into use that allowed for switching. A system

24160-536: Was completed in 1834 and was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad on June 25, 1857, for $ 7,500,000. Within a year, the PRR replaced the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh route with an entirely rail-based system. The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad began in Philadelphia at Broad and Vine Streets, ran north on Broad and west on Pennsylvania Avenue, a segment later taken over and submerged and tunneled over by

24320-548: Was introduced in which unflanged wheels ran on L-shaped metal plates, which came to be known as plateways . John Curr , a Sheffield colliery manager, invented this flanged rail in 1787, though the exact date of this is disputed. The plate rail was taken up by Benjamin Outram for wagonways serving his canals, manufacturing them at his Butterley ironworks . In 1803, William Jessop opened the Surrey Iron Railway ,

24480-500: Was issued in 1985. See also John C. Trautwine, Jr., The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad of 1834 , in Philadelphia History , Vol. 2, No. 7 (Philadelphia, PA: City History Soc. of Philadelphia, 1925). This is a pamphlet written for The City History Society of Philadelphia and read at the meeting of March 15, 1921. Download coordinates as: Rail transport Rail transport (also known as train transport )

24640-486: Was less likely to succeed. They secured additional investors by forming two companies, the Lehigh Coal Company (LCC) and the Lehigh Navigation Company, and began seeking legislative approval for improving the Lehigh River 's navigation. The desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. The various powers applied for, and granted, embraced

24800-489: Was light enough to not break the edge-rails track and solved the problem of adhesion by a cog-wheel using teeth cast on the side of one of the rails. Thus it was also the first rack railway . This was followed in 1813 by the locomotive Puffing Billy built by Christopher Blackett and William Hedley for the Wylam Colliery Railway, the first successful locomotive running by adhesion only. This

24960-513: Was on the books for improving the Schuylkill River into the Schuylkill Canal . But this project was underfunded, and other canals were completed first, including the Lehigh Canal in late 1820 and the Erie Canal in 1821. By mid-decade canal projects and some railroads were being proposed, organized, chartered, and built in Pennsylvania and other northeast seaboard states. In 1823, Pennsylvania industrialist Josiah White proposed creating

25120-401: Was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a committee of stockholders go over the Lehigh River ground and pass judgment on the probable success of the effort. The report was favorable so far as the improvement of the Lehigh River was concerned. But the nine-mile road from the river to the mines was unanimously voted impracticable. "To give you an idea of the country over which the road

25280-762: Was tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in September of the following year, but the limited power from batteries prevented its general use. It was destroyed by railway workers, who saw it as a threat to their job security. By the middle of the nineteenth century most european countries had military uses for railways. Werner von Siemens demonstrated an electric railway in 1879 in Berlin. The world's first electric tram line, Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway , opened in Lichterfelde near Berlin , Germany, in 1881. It

25440-636: Was the first tram line in the world in regular service powered from an overhead line. Five years later, in the U.S. electric trolleys were pioneered in 1888 on the Richmond Union Passenger Railway , using equipment designed by Frank J. Sprague . The first use of electrification on a main line was on a four-mile section of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895 connecting

25600-408: Was very similarly named the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company and was known as the "New Company" in the region. White and Hazard very shortly found themselves on the receiving end of investor criticisms that the improvements and mining operation at Summit Hill were failing and were both considered crackpot schemes. The majority opinion was that improvements were possible, but that coal mining

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