A reconstruction of an original Granite Railway car photographed on site in 1925. |
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 legislature 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 civil 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, others 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. Woodeeen rails were topped with iron strap and laid 5 feet apart on stone cross ties spaced at 8-foot intervals. The first cars had six foot in diameter wheels and each was loaded with a single large
block or two or two or three smaller ones pulled by a single horse.
The incline viewed from the river in the1920's. |
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 on 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. By this time new,
larger capacity cars were in service in trains
of three pulled by multiple horse teams in single hitch.
A Granite Railway loaded train from near the end of the horse drawn era circa 1880. |
The New York, New Haven & 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.
Ruins of the Incline today. |
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 brisk pace, you are
undoubtedly beating the time of those old horses with their heavy loads.
I'm a railroad fan, so this post was a particular favorite!
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