Chapter 17

- - 1862, The start of The Great Railroad - -

- 3 Generations Back -

In 1862, Donnie’s Great Grandfather, Justice Alexander Edson, created The Great Railroad in Great Britain.

One day, Justice Edson had noticed something of tremendous importance. A middle-sized boat near the mouth of the River Clyde was moving along, making a puk-puk sound.

There were no sails! Further, nobody was rowing or poling the boat. Justice thought the puk-puk sound could be related to the boat moving through the water. He was unsure; the movement was the thing that most intrigued him.

Two days later, Justice saw the same boat; this time, it was tied to a barge. It was purposefully moving along, pushing the barge before it. It still made that absurd puk-puk noise.

Justice had yet to learn where the boat came from. He knew where a factory was that manufactured many of the barges used on the River Clyde. So he went to the barge works and visited the owner. Great-grandfather Justice had known the owner, Bertram Dent, for many years.

Bertram explained it was called a pusher boat. It uses water and heat to turn water into steam. The steam powers an engine that turns the paddles at the back of the boat. The engine is a new invention in the past 25 years, and it’s called a steam engine. It is just starting to catch on with boats and ships.

Great-Grandfather Justice had heard of the steam engine but thought it was used to power pumps and mills. Moving a boat using a steam engine was an eye-opening idea.

In the mid-1800s, England, Scotland, and Wales had severe transportation problems. Two primary methods were available for moving goods. One was driving cargo wagons across the vast network of turnpikes and roads. There are over a thousand very expensive turnpikes across the island. This network of roads and turnpikes was costly and unpleasant to use at best.

The other way of moving goods and people is by ship or barge. The ship method requires loading and sailing the cargo around the island to another port. Depending on wind and conditions, various issues can delay the cargo, or worse, it may have a shipwreck.

With barges, there is a loose conglomeration of rivers and canals built over 150 years. To move things by barge requires horses or mules to tow the barge from point to point. For this purpose alone, many horses and mules are needed. Horses require vast amounts of hay and other feed. Horses only pull well for hours.

Parts of the river and canal system are decaying and in disrepair. It takes a lot of constant labor to maintain these systems, plus the laborers to operate the barges. Since the ratio of men to women is 1:10, hard labor is often unavailable or done mainly by more muscular women. Transportation is a costly but lucrative business.

Fast passenger transportation is by coach. To a great extent, this is principally the domain of the wealthy.

These older methods of moving cargo required loading and unloading several times. This was the nature of things. You put cargo on a wagon, and the wagon delivers it to a barge. It gets loaded on the barge, which moves the cargo closer to its destination. Then, the barge is offloaded to another wagon on the other side of the country. Finally, it gets unloaded at its destination.

Handling cargo, and handling it repeatedly, with the vagaries of the entire system, means transferring cargo about the island is extremely expensive.

A wagon can then deliver the cargo to its ultimate destination. Many miles between points invite a lot of thievery along the way. The other issue is this is the simple version of moving freight.

The wagon-barge-wagon cargo method can get even more complex. Cargo is often broken up several times as it goes from place to place to its final destination. Many items have different destinations.

Then there are the issues caused by many different companies handling the cargo. This creates more complexity and lowers the reliability. Any farmer or manufacturer knows the problems and the costs of doing business. Often, a shipment is sent the wrong way by accident or on purpose.

Justice saw a Possible Solution to a large part of the problem. It had not escaped him that the steam engine moved a barge much faster than a horse could. He further understood that a tired horse plodded along even slower. If it could push a barge, it could haul a few wagons.

After talking to people and digging into steam engines, he had a few good leads. He was eventually introduced to a steam pusher captain. That captain had shown him the engine and explained how it worked.

The engine has a tall steel tower-looking thing the captain called the boiler. It had a fire burning at the bottom. A water tank supplied water to create steam through a valve to the boiler. More water can create more steam to turn the paddle wheel faster. Then, the captain went into greater detail about the engine itself.

Unfortunately, he could not show the engine internals. He did give a passable description of the idea. He explained how a piston was pushed up and down by the steam. A set of valves determines these motions and the speed.

This up-down piston motion was converted to a circular motion. This happened below the piston, where it is connected to a crankshaft. Gears change the rotation. This provides moving forward and backward.

The captain gave him the address of the engine manufacturer. Justice met the manufacturer soon after. That day, he was introduced to engineers who filled his head with too much information. It was simply too difficult to understand at once.

The steam engine had been around for a while. It was first invented to power water pumps to drain water from coal mines. Ideas for making use of an engine started percolating in Justice’s mind.

He hired three engineers and set up a factory to experiment with his ideas. As a ship owner, he toyed with installing a steam engine in his ships. For instance, if it could power a ship from Glasgow to Boston, that would be a big boon to his business.

The engineers quickly dissuaded him of this. They pointed out that the ship would only have enough space for coal and water and little space for cargo. The ship would arrive in Boston fast but essentially empty. Steam engines are notoriously hungry for fuel and water.

A ship like this could be used for a few luxury passengers and official mail. However, others were already working on that idea.

Justice was somewhat dissuaded by the steamship idea. His other idea was to make a steam puller running on land. Replace the paddle wheel with a wheel resting on the ground. It could pull cargo trailers.

The engineers got excited. They immediately started mentioning issues that would need to be solved. For example, running across the current roads would be a huge problem. They are too uneven.

There are some acceptable roads, but most are pretty bad. Steam can be tireless compared to horses and mules. They envisioned a constant speed of eight or ten miles an hour. This was not possible on the existing roads. Then there is the weight issue. Getting coal or wood and water for the engine is another problem.

One of the engineers had just installed a steam-powered pump not far away. It was down inside the Garscubbe coal mine. ( pronounced “gar-scub”)

He mentioned they had a unique system of getting mine carts loaded with coal to move it up the mine to the surface. The carts rode on two steel rails.

Men could push the cart along the rails, but a miniature mule was usually used to haul the loads up the last tunnels. His idea was that a steam-powered mule could replace old Jenny the mule.

So, a road trip was arranged to visit the Garscubbe Mine. After meeting and talking to Leathan Garscubbe, they had a guided tour. They inspected the carts, the rails, the wheels on the carts, and the fasteners for the rails.

They noticed there was an incline where coal was dumped. Carts ascended a short hill and dumped their loads into larger coal wagons below. That incline garnered a lot of mumbling by his engineers.

They also examined the steam engine and boiler and its connection to the pump. The engineers were ecstatic. The boiler is not a vertical variety but a horizontal one.

One engineer quickly sketched a new engine cart after they returned to their shop. It uses a horizontal boiler and engine. They added gears to transfer the motion to the wheels. The game was on. Drawings of the engine parts were made and sent off to be manufactured.

The company hired several mine workers who were knowledgeable about the small rail systems. Justice had them build a small oval-shaped test system behind his factory. They used the existing mine rails that were already commonly available. They put the rails further apart for the test rail system.

A physical rail switch was added, allowing the engine to move outside onto the oval rail system.

It was easy to back the engine up at night into the building. Numerous patents were quickly applied for. Protecting this invention was vital to the whole enterprise.

Other peoples’ patents already covered 90% of the engines, pistons, and other related items. Justice decided he would not make the hardcore steam machinery, rails, or wheels. Even then, this looked to be too costly an undertaking.

Perfecting the first steam mule engine. Then, creating the first commercial rail system would be more than enough. He envisioned owning a very lucrative transportation system in the future. He was interested primarily in building the system. The actual mechanical parts took second place. He had a vision of more than one or two sets of rails. Barge canals were common. A rail system took up a lot less space and less labor.

They built their first steam mule with a horizontal boiler and worked for months to get it usable.

As it turned out, there was much more involved with evolving the concept. After they created a working steam engine, they decided to add a cart. A long cart would follow behind the steam engine. The first cart design had two outward-facing benches where people could sit looking out. They ran into an issue almost right away.

The test steam engine had been mounted on a cart less than ten feet long. It had easily moved around the short, oval-shaped test course without a problem.

However, when they created a more useful cart to carry people. That cart was 25 feet long. At first use, it made a horrible screeching noise. The lengthier passenger cart needed help making its way around the two sharp curves of the oval. It pushed one of the rails away from the wooden ties and caused the passenger cart to come off the rail.