Stourbridge Lion

The Stourbridge Lion was a steam locomotive of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The name of the locomotive is derived from Stourbridge, the headquarters of the manufacturer Foster, Rastrick and Company, and the front painted on the boiler lion's face.

The Stourbridge Lion was a trial run without load taken on August 9, 1829 in Pennsylvania, which is considered to be a first ride intended for commercial use steam locomotive in the United States. The Stourbridge Lion and the three sister locomotives never went into commercial operation, because they were too heavy for the routes of the railway company.

History

One of the oldest railroads in the United States operated by the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, which later became Delaware and Hudson Railway. The Company received in 1823 the task between New York City and the coal fields at Carbondale (Pennsylvania) to build channels and operate. The transportation of coal should first be paid entirely on the water, but the engineers of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company covered as early as 1825 to a railway transport on the first 25 km of the section, which pass through the hilly terrain of the Moosic Mountains. The western end of the channel was therefore not planned in Carbondale, but in Honesdale (Pennsylvania), where the coal should be brought to the canal boats.

John B. Jervis, who later became the inventor of the wheel arrangement 2'A Jervis, was appointed in 1827 as Chief Engineer of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company. He planned for the railway line eight Leaning rope levels and three horizontal sections, which should be operated with locomotives. The board of the company was the plan of Jervis well-disposed, but was a bit hesitant in the implementation because the then-new technology of railways received but not yet experience.

1828 traveled Horatio Allen, a former employee of Jervis, to England, to familiarize yourself with the railway system. Allen received Jervis contract for the planned railroad to buy locomotives and rails. Allen wrote back in July that he had ordered four locomotives for the railway - three of Foster, Rastrick and Company and one of Robert Stephenson and Company.

The Pride developed by Robert Stephenson of Newcastle reached on 15 January 1829, the United States, developed by John Urpeth Rastrick Stourbridge Lion four months later on 13 May, 1829. The other two locomotives of Rastrick with the name Hudson and Delaware are not further details are known.

The locomotive was assembled after transport in the West Point Foundry in New York State again and tested in the jacked up with the wheels in the air with steam from the factory and presented to the interested public. After a further transport to Honesdale, Pennsylvania there was a highly regarded test-drive the Stourbridge Lion on August 8, 1829. Locomotive worked well, but destroyed the busy tracks. The systems designed for 4 -ton vehicles tracks were not up to the 7.5 -ton locomotives, which is why it was decommissioned after another test drive on September 9.

Fate and preserved parts

A letter from 1834 shows that the railroad locomotives tried to sell what she could not. They seemed unsuitable for the new railways and to be outdated with their Balancierhebeltreibwerk. In addition, built in 1830 with its own American locomotives with a more suitable design. Therefore, the four locomotives of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company served only as a donor of wrought iron to the middle of the 1840s. 1845 was only the boiler of the Stourbridge Lion left, which was further used in the foundry of John Simpson in Carbondale for five years for a stationary steam engine, before the owner moved to the West Coast and sought his fortune in the California gold rush.

The foundry was sold a few years later to new owners, who continued to use the boiler before 1871 before 1874 tried the now 40 -year-old boiler for sale as historically valuable object for $ 1000. The sale did not succeed, but the boiler at the National Railway Technology Exhibition 1883 in Chicago by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company shown, many boiler fittings were stolen on the way to the exhibition or the exhibition itself by souvenir hunters partly under programs use either sledgehammer and chisel. Early, the owner of the Kessles, trying to make with this win, he exhibited by the torso in Scranton and for visiting demanded 10 cents per head. The company failed and the vessel arrived in 1890 along with a cylinder, two Balancierhebeln and four wheel tires in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. However, the tires could also make Pride of Newcastle belong, which had the same Treibradsatzdurchmesser. At the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the tires were issued in any case along with the crank rings with this locomotive.

The Smithsonian Institution tried the locomotive rebuild using existing parts, but the company failed because only a few parts are present, clearly the Stourbridge Lion can not even be assigned. For a while, the parts were in the transportation Hall at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC issued before the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum came on loan to Baltimore, where they are seen together with a model of the locomotive.

Contestation of the First trip

It is not certain whether the voyage of the Stourbridge Lion was actually the first trip of a locomotive on the track. According to some sources, the first ride on the Pride of Newcastle could have taken place behind closed doors. Little is known of the locomotive, even though they arrived before the Stourbridge Lion in America. On the recommendation of Horatio Allen they should be used on the horizontal line through the peak of the compound. There is a presumption that the locomotive has already been tested on July 26, 1829 without the public and either shows that the locomotive was unsuitable for the operation or a boiler explosion occurred, which destroyed the locomotive.

1981 appeared in a New York antique dealer a small coffin-shaped Holzschattule on with the inscriptions John B. Jervis, 1829, D & H Canal Company on one side, America on the other side and Blew up July 26, 1829. Onto the inside of the lid. Further information about the incident are not known. It is assumed that the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was trying to cover up the incident to prevent the share price of the Company's securities collapses.

Replica

The Delaware and Hudson Railroad built in 1932 an operational replica of the Stourbridge Lion, with all hardware as the original hand- forged. The replica was shown in 1933 at the A Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago and is now exhibited in the Museum of Honesdale Historical Society of Wayne County.

Technical Description

The locomotive had a simple fire-tube boiler without smoke chamber. The chimney led at the end of the flame tube through the boiler roof to the outside. Slide exhaust pipes, the cylinder was high at the front out of the boiler, combined with a tee and fed to the blast pipe in the chimney.

The drive of the locomotive consisted of two beam engines, the cylinders were placed laterally to the left and right of the rear end of the boiler. The rods were mounted close to the piston rod at the rear ends of the Balancierhebel and driven wheels of the rear axle of the locomotive. Connecting rods connected the two wheel sets with each other.

The wheels of the locomotive had spokes and rims made ​​of wood, only the hub was made ​​of cast iron and the spoke on which attacked the coupling rod, made ​​of wrought iron. At a first engine balance weights have been applied to the wheels of the drive axle.

Instead of a Tender Enders a coal wagon was carried around water resources. The water was transferred from the piston pump, which was driven with a rod of the Balancierhebeln in the boiler. To preheat the water came first with gravity into a container under the boiler, through which the exhaust steam of the cylinder were performed. It must have been one of the oldest applications of a Speisewasservorwärmanlage on a steam locomotive.

Agenoria

Foster, Rastrick and Company built according to the three specific locomotives for America in 1829 another locomotive of the same type. They bore the name Agenoria and was at the Kingswinford Railway, also called Shutt End Railway, used, where it was used on the 3 km long connection between two inclined cable planes .. It is now in the National Railway Museum in York, England issued.