Pylimitics

Railroads are older than you think. That’s because when we think of railroads, we naturally envision a locomotive (diesel, electric, or steam powered) and railcars, all rolling on steel tracks. But what are the really essential parts of the system? Tracks, certainly, along with some kind of containers being conveyed along them in some way. 

In 1713, the French established a fishing port in what’s now Nova Scotia. The port grew quickly. Realizing that its location made it strategically important in the rising animosity between all the Europeans intent on stealing North America from its residents and from one another, they started to build a fortress. It was a large project; the bulwarks surrounded the town, and it became one of the biggest fortifications on the continent. The French called the town Louisbourg, after King Louis XIV, and the fortress is still there, partly restored. 

The fortress had a significant design flaw: it presented a good defense against warships, but was pretty vulnerable from the other direction — land. Since it was located on an island, if you wanted to, say, capture the place, you might just sail around to the other side and let your soldiers off so they could march across. That’s exactly what happened in 1745, when British colonists captured the place. I mean, come on, they didn’t even need the regular army.

But we were talking about railroads. During the massive construction project in 1720, the French built one of the first railroads in history. They used it to carry rock from the quarry to the construction site. Not a lot is known about the railroad, but it had rails (wooden), some kind of containers for the rock, and it was pulled by animal power. It was not only the first railroad in North America, it was one of the first ones in the world. As far as anybody knows, that is. 

The land around Niagara Falls — the part below the falls — is pretty steep. The Seneca, who lived there, had a trail leading down to the river that was so steep they called it “crawl on all fours” (it’s still there, in Lewiston, NY). Nevertheless, it was a trail. The Europeans used it too, to carry cargo brought up the river on ships to the settlement much higher up. The French settled the area before the British, and they hired the local Seneca to do the carrying. This was evidently fine with the Seneca, as we’ll see.

Anyway, the British arrived and took over the place around 1762 as part of the French and Indian War (in which, by the way, the British recaptured the Fortress of Louisbourg, which they’d traded back to the French in exchange for part of Belgium, where…oh never mind). There must have been some engineers in the British contingent, because they built a railway up the crawl on all fours trail. It was pretty ingenious; wooden rails went straight up the very steep trail, and sleds carrying up to 14 barrels of goods at a time were pulled up by a cable, using a counterweight: more barrels, filled with water, which the Niagara River provided in abundance. 

The railroad worked quite well, and the Seneca wound up out of work. This apparently annoyed them enough to start what was probably the first labor movement in North America. That is, they attacked and drove the British away. It was a big enough deal to get a name: the Devil’s Hole Massacre. You’d think they would have proceeded to destroy the tracks, but they didn’t; the British eventually returned and the little vertical railway remained in use for another fifty years or so. 

You’ll notice that these early railways — and there were plenty more, particularly as the idea started to spread at about the turn of the 19th Century — all carried cargo for a fairly short distance, from a single point to another single point. One of our modern biases about railroads comes from our expectation that they’re “common carriers” — not built by a business to just move stuff into their warehouse, but built as a business to move anybody’s stuff wherever they want. And that’s where October 7 comes in (you can now breathe a sigh of relief). It was October 7, 1820 that the Granite Railway in Quincy, Massachusetts began operation. It was the first one to evolve into a common carrier, at least in the Western Hemisphere.

The Granite Railway trams were pulled by horses at first, even though steam locomotives had been in use in England since 1804. The industrial infrastructure to build a steam engine at all, let alone one on wheels, didn’t yet exist in North America. But England was much further along in the Industrial Revolution, and Richard Trevithick was the primary innovator in steam locomotives. He invented the first one in 1804 and demonstrated that it could pull wagons full of freight AND people. In his first demonstration, his engine pulled wagons loaded with 10 tons of iron and 70 people nearly ten miles, at a dizzying speed of 5 mph. 

The problem with Trevithick’s early attempts at railroading was the track. His locomotives were too heavy, and the tracks — made of wood — broke. The problem was obvious enough that it was solved pretty quickly, and the iron rails and flanged wheels we’re still familiar with followed. By 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in England — the first one that was, in nearly every respect, a modern railway. It had steam locomotives, metal tracks, went to several different locations, and carried both passengers and freight — anybody could just buy a ticket. It wasn’t entirely modern though — some of the trains were still pulled by horses. Steam locomotives existed in 1825, but were pretty hard to get.  

Nearly a century later, in 1916, railroads had become the most important type of transportation in the US. Many of the spectators who attended the October 7 football game in Atlanta between Georgia Tech and Cumberland College got there on the train. They probably didn’t expect to see something historic, but they did. Georgia Tech won the game. They won by a lot. The final score was 222-0; the most lopsided score in college football history. 

There’s more to it than that, of course. Cumberland’s football program had ended the previous year, and they didn’t even have a real team. The Georgia Tech coach was John Heisman (there’s a trophy named after him), and he insisted Cumberland meet their obligation to play the game, which had been scheduled long in advance. The scheduling agreement stipulated that if a team didn’t show up, the school had to pay $3000 to the other school. Oddly enough, Heisman even paid Cumberland to play — he wrote a letter to the Cumberland athletic department making the offer, and offered to pay the team’s travel expenses as well. 

Heisman also had a grudge against Cumberland, because the previous year the Cumberland baseball team had won a lopsided 22-0 victory over Georgia Tech. At the time, there was even speculation that Heisman ran the score up to exactly 222 because of the score in that baseball game. in the football game, Georgia Tech scored 63 points in the first quarter, and led 126-0 at half time. Reportedly, Heisman delivered a locker room pep talk anyway, warning his players that the Cumberland players might have “something up their sleeves.” But they didn’t — some of them might never have even played the game before. Georgia Tech continued to rack up points. They didn’t throw a single pass the whole game; they just kept using running plays. All their runners made gains — it was like they were on rails.