Early photo, likely 1850-60 of a horse drawn Granite Railroad train in Milton, Massachusetts. |
I’ll
take Double Jeopardy in the category
of Firsts for $100, Alex.
The
answer is the First American Railroad
What
was the Baltimore & Ohio?
I’m
sorry that incorrect. (Dumb struck look
on contestants, face, a scattering of boos from the audience convinced a
mistake has been made. Pause and slightly supercilious smirk from Alex.) The we question we were looking for was the Granite Railway.
(Rioting
erupts)
But
it is the truth, albeit obscure and accompanied by a couple of asterisks.
The Baltimore
& Ohio was chartered on February 28, 1827 and famously launched passenger
service in 1830 on 13 miles of track.
Passengers rode in open cars pulled by the Tom Thumb, the engine designed and built by Peter Cooper.
But the first
chartered railroad to go into operations in the United States was the Granite
Railway which on October 7, 1826 began hauling stone from quarries in Quincy, Massachusetts for three miles
to the banks of the Neponset River
where the stone blocks were transferred to ferry barges and then hauled by
wagon to the construction site of Boston’s
Bunker Hill Monument.
The railroad was
largely the brain child of Thomas
Handasyd Perkins, an early promoter of the Monument project and a member of
the Massachusetts legislator who obtained a charter from that body on March 4,
1826 granting the right of eminent
domain to establish its right-of-way. Perkins then proceeded to obtain credit,
organize the company retaining for himself the majority of shares, and became
President. Public service was in those
days not seen as a bar to shrewd business.
Perkins obtained
the services of the best know engineer in New
England. Gridley Bryant had already
become famous for the invention of a construction
crane that would make massive monument possible. He won the contract for that construction, as
well as for another important building, the Boston branch of the Bank of the United States. In fact it was undoubtedly Bryant’s idea
to move the massive blocks for the memorial via rail.
Before going
into the technical details of the road, perhaps now is the time to explain some
of the asterisks that might be need to qualify the Granite Railway’s claim to
be first. There were a few short runs of
rails entirely on company property, usually mines, with small tram cars pushed by hand or pulled by
mules. There were one or two other
railroads granted charters but not built.
The Granite was chartered as a common carrier, which meant that although
the Monument was its first customer, other could—and did—pay freight charges to
bring the stone that they bought from the Quincy quarries closer to their
construction projects in rapidly growing Boston.
Finally, the Granite
did not for the first decades of service employ steam engines. Remember we are talking about the first
railway, not the first locomotive.
Gridley used
techniques already developed in England,
but adapted them for the much heavier loads expected from the quarries and
from a deep three foot frost line. Wooden rails were topped with iron strap and
laid 5 feet apart on stone crossties spaced at 8-foot intervals. The cars had six foot in diameter wheels and
were tied together for trains of three to at a time.
In 1830 the line
was expanded by the addition of an incline was to haul granite from the Pine Ledge Quarry to the railway grade
84 feet below. Wagons moved up and down the 315 foot long incline in an endless
conveyor belt.
Gridley
continued to make improvements to the line.
In 1837 the wooden rails were replaced by iron-topped granite. And there were technological innovations that
helped make modern railroading possible, most importantly railway switches known as frogs, the turntable,
and double-truck cars. Gridley never took patents on these innovations,
believing they should be widely available for the good of the public.
Like the
construction of the Monument, the little railroad became a tourist
attraction. Dignitaries like Daniel Webster—a patron of the
Monument, investor in the road, and supplicant to have his “purse refreshed”
for legislative services rendered in the U.S.
Senate—trekked out of the Hub City to
watch the marvel in operation. In 1833
the English actress and noted diarist
Fanny Kemble wrote admiringly of her visit, even though much more ambitious
railroads employing steam power had been in operation in her home country for
some years.
Sometimes
visitors were allowed to ride in empty cars, if they were not fussy about stone
dust on their clothing. That led to one the
first American railway fatalities when Cuban
tourist Thomas Achuas was
pitched over a cliff into a quarry when the car his party was riding in
derailed on July 25, 1832.
In 1871 the Old Colony and Newport Railway bought
the company out and began operating on its right-of-way. The new operator brought the old railroad up
to industry standards installing standard
gage steel rails and introducing steam engines and a bridge over the Neponset
River to eliminate the tedious and slow transfer of stone to ferry barges.
The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad
eventually took over the old Granite right-of-way. In 1903 it covered the rails of the Incline
with steel plating and introduced motor
trucks to haul stone over that short distance.
When the last
Quincy quarry finally closed in 1963, service on the line as abandoned. In 1985 the Metropolitan District Commission purchased 22 acres, including Granite Railway Quarry for the Quincy Quarries Reservation.
The Incline was
listed with the National Register of
Historic Places on June 19, 1973, and the railway itself was added on October
15, 1973.
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation
and Recreation now maintains the Quincy Quarries Reservation. There are rock climbing opportunities, ruins
of the Incline and trestles, and a
2.5 Rails-To-Trails multi-use path
for cyclists and pedestrians from Central
Avenue in Milton/Adams and ending
on Taylor Avenue near the I-93 overpass in Quincy.
If you walk that
trail today at a brisk pace, you are undoubtedly beating the time of those old
horses with their heavy loads.
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