A Few Words About This Picture

IF ONLY WE COULD STEP BACK IN TIME, A historian’s dream might be fulfilled. As a student of transportation I would be particularly thrilled to stand by as the John Bull is off-loaded at the docks in 1831, or to be in the crowd as the New York and Erie officially opens the Great Broad Gauge to Dunkirk in 1851, or to witness the Golden Spike ceremony in 1869. But I think it would be just as rewarding to drop in on a more everyday scene of railroading a century or more ago. A few minutes at a wood station would be long enough to see a tender refilled with cordwood, an ordinary occurrence but one that is wholly undocumented. We could learn what the men said, how they looked, and just how they worked. I would love to eavesdrop on their swearing, jokes, and gossip. If time were available, I would eagerly take an hour to inspect the enginehouse of the Western Railroad at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, seen above in a photograph from around 1865 that shows the facility in all its glory. The locomotive Saranak demands our first attention, but look at the gallery of ancients nestled mostly inside the stalls. Most are likely graduates of the Boston Locomotive Works, but they might be something as rare as a product of the Springfield Locomotive and Car Works, a firm so obscure we have scant record of its history or its progeny. The names and numbers of all save No. 32 are hidden within the walls of the elegant, Italianate enginehouse.

Nevertheless, the image, captured on an imperial glass-plate negative, provides us with the next best thing to being there: a remarkably clear and detailed picture of American railroading as it stood at the end of the Civil War.

American railroading during most of the nineteenth century was railroading on a small scale. This was particularly true between 1830 and 1860. Everything about it was diminutive. Locomotives weighed less than one-eighth as much as their more modern counterparts. Few engines (less their tenders) weighed more than twenty-five tons before 1880, while two hundred tons was common by the mid-twentieth century. Most Victorian American locomotives had about the bulk of a large motor camper (although the locomotive was surely far more beautiful and sturdy than any aluminum and plastic creation produced today).

Railroad cars, like locomotives, were small versions of their modern counterparts. Passenger cars were actually rather plain and barren, especially before 1860, except for an abundance of ornamental paint. Heating and lighting apparatus were minimal, seats were closely spaced, and running water was visionary. Freight cars were simple wooden boxes rarely capable of a greater burden than ten tons.

Trains were short; a passenger train of more than eight cars was unusual. Speeds were modest as well. Passenger trains waddled along at twenty-five miles per hour, picking their way over light rail, widely spaced ties, and spindly wooden trestles. Freights crept along at an even more snaillike pace. Ten miles per hour was the norm. Sometimes a wag would express the fear that the freights might be overtaken by ox wagons. Steel rail was almost unknown before 1870, and train speeds tended to be reduced further during winter months to lessen damage to frost-hardened wrought-iron tracks.

Single-track lines were standard. Trains spent a great deal of time ducking in and out of sidings to get around one another. Even a minor accident could tie up the railroad for hours because of the single track and a lack of communications along the line. Nothing as costly as signals was even considered by most lines; railroads relied on a time system, with watches, station clocks, and timetables governing the movement of trains. Train No. 1, for example, was scheduled to be at Hancock at precisely 1:04 P.M. It would meet and pass Train No. 16 at Fletcher’s siding at 1:27 P.M. If anything caused a delay, trains backed up all along the system.

For all its failings, pre-1870 railroad transport was faster and far more comfortable than, and surely just as safe as, highway travel at the time. Even so, American railroading was clearly low-tech and old-wave compared with the European industry, which employed express trains on many heavily traveled lines, had great stone viaducts, an absence of grade crossings, elaborate signaling, and magnificent station terminals at big cities. Why were our pioneer railroad managers so miserly and smallthinking? Why were they so timid? America was a big country with a growing population and abundant natural resources. Why didn’t we start out with the full-size railroads that ultimately developed to match the nation’s strength and range?

The answers to all these questions can be found in the financial means available, the traffic, and the income it produced.

Early America was capital-poor. The cash needed to build capital-intensive industries like railroads came largely from European sources. We were, in our beginnings, a debtor nation. We had lumber, iron, copper, and rich farmland, but it was all largely undeveloped, and the population was small for the landmass. Fledgling railroad men could not justify building railways on a grand scale to haul a few loads of flour or sheep. It was understood that as traffic and income developed, the railroad would be rebuilt and improved. But at first everything had to be done provisionally: begin operations, earn money, then push the railroad on to the next terminal. And so we built long but very cheap railways. European engineers were shocked by the shabby construction and temporary nature of American railroads, but most were ready to admit that a large system was ultimately created years earlier than if better standards of construction had been followed. By 1857 we had completed almost half of the world’s railway mileage—24,500 miles out of 51,000. England, the motherland of the railway, had only 6,000.

Once new railroads were completed, settlement and industry began to develop along them. Then track was improved, bridges strengthened, stations built, and rolling stock renewed. An example of this upgrading of the American railroad physical plant is the building of the handsome brick roundhouse shown in our photograph.

The Western Railroad was a fairly prosperous line. It had been created largely with state money in an effort to protect the port of Boston from its great rival, New York, which was being enriched by the New York State-sponsored Erie Canal. The Western was a bridge line between Boston and the Hudson River valley and points west that opened in 1841.

Let us read from right to left across the photograph and see what it reveals. In the foreground is typical track of the day, with widely spaced, untreated wooden ties, a wrought-iron T rail, and an obvious lack of crushed-rock ballast. The track for the first stall appears to be missing, indicating that the space may have been reserved for tool or parts storage or for a machine shop. The big, capped, iron smoke jacks mounted on the roof were positioned over each track to carry away the “products of combustion” from the engines’ smoking stacks. The white-painted panels visible at the corner and at each stall column served as markers to help enginemen see when backing their steeds into the building. The lamps mounted high at each end of the structure offered a feeble light for night crews.

The first engine on the right, like most of the others to its left, is an elderly iron horse dating most likely from the middle or late 1840s. The walkway and handrail gallery surrounding the engine place it squarely in this time period. The A-shaped cowcatcher, which looks like a toy version of the real thing, is an early design employed in the 1840s. The big funnel smokestack, properly called a bonnet stack, cannot be so closely dated; they were in evidence from roughly 1845 to 1880. The headlight on the machine appears more modern than the engine itself and was likely a replacement. It appears to be made on the pattern introduced by James Radley of New York. Rarer is the round-case headlamp on the neighboring locomotive.

Today, headlights are regarded as a necessary part of any vehicle; at the dawn of the railway age, this was not so obvious. Trains rarely ran at night, and when they did, locomotives were garnished with a few lanterns to advise bystanders of their passage rather than to light the way. Soon a few railroads began to adopt large reflective lamps that could throw artificial beams of light some distance down the tracks. Not only could the crew see where they were going, but those not on board were more effectively alerted to a train’s approach. Safety was the justification for the headlight, as it was for the cowcatcher, the bell, and the whistle. Open ranges and unprotected road crossings abounded, not just in the far West but in the Eastern half of the country as well. Fencing was uncommon because it was costly.

Despite the clear need for headlights, they came into general use rather slowly. The first manufactured lamps were introduced in 1838. Most locomotives had them by 1855, but they were not universal for another five years or so. The early lamps used soft, cast-metal reflectors made of tin alloys that would melt if the lamp chimneys broke. Spun copper proved more durable. The reflector, silvered and made in a deep parabolic shape, could throw a beam a thousand feet long with only a small oil burner. A flat U-shaped oil tank was mounted inside the case behind the reflector; the lamp burner protruded through a hole into the reflector.

Notice as we roam through the picture the casual poses of the men—seated, leaning, and even lying down. They were all in one way or another supporting themselves in this giant group portrait, for the exposure would be a long one in that age. Each man took a pose he felt he could keep for several minutes.

Continuing from right to left, the next four engines appear very similar to the first one described. The sixth engine, near the center of the roundhouse, is quite a different machine. It has outside cylinders (see “Locomotives: The Great Debate,” this page), and wheels like those on a modern steam locomotive. Notice that the cylinders have polished cast-iron heads. The pilot, or cowcatcher, is made from iron rods rather than wood and is more conventional in appearance than the old-fashioned A-style pilots. Next to this engine is the No. 32, identified by the round number plate fastened to the smokebox. The 32 was built in 1842 by the Norris brothers of Philadelphia and carried only the name of the city of its origin until the Western Railroad adopted numbers. The 32 was retired in 1869 and replaced by a heavier machine also bearing the number 32.

The economic life of a locomotive was about twenty-five years, after which the boiler was likely to be beyond reasonable repair. Reboilering was sometimes done, but normally the entire engine was scrapped or sold to a short line or a contractor. Most of the locomotives in this photograph would, like the 32, be retired within a few years.

But not the Saranak. It sits in full view on the turntable, probably because it was the newest engine stabled at Pittsfield at the time the photograph was made. Though about ten years old, the Saranak displayed mechanical features found on the most modern locomotives in 1865. The cylinders are level and outside the frame. The leading wheels are spread apart, and the valves are worked by the familiar Stephenson link motion rather than by more primitive drop hooks or gabs, as would surely be the case with ancients like the 32 and its elderly sisters. The Saranak’s creator, William Mason, of Taunton, Massachusetts, built what was understandably considered a beautiful locomotive, but it appears that the Western Railroad’s mechanical department dictated the use of V-spoked driving wheels, not the usual graceful plain spokes favored by Mason.

The Saranak’s tender, nicely heaped with cordwood fuel, rests halfway on a Sellers cast-iron turntable. William Sellers & Company, of Philadelphia, was a well-known machine-tool builder that fabricated turntables as a sideline starting in about 1855. The device was manually turned, usually by several men grappling heavy wooden poles set at an angle at each end of the table. In our photograph one man is holding such a pole at the right end of the turntable.

Behind the Saranak three sets of heavy wooden doors are closed, indicating that no one is at home or that dead engines—not under steam—are being stored there. Either they are not needed or they are undergoing repairs.

At the far left, beyond the group of men (probably company officials) who stand in front of the Saranak, is a square brick building. It contains a water tank meant to replenish the locomotive tenders before they leave the yard for train service. The tank, most likely of wood but possibly of iron, was enclosed to retard decay from the elements and to prevent freezing in winter, surely a problem in the Berkshire Hills.

In general the scene is neat and orderly for an industrial site. Perhaps it was kept that way by a strict roundhouse foreman; maybe it was only picked up for the photograph. If this was a group portrait paid for by employees, they would have wanted it neat. This notion is not farfetched; railroads were a new, glamorous industry, and the men they employed took pride in their jobs. Also, railroading was still relatively clean. Woodburning locomotives gave off a thin, light trail of smoke that at its worst amounted to a dusting of gray ash. There was none of the sticky, sooty grime of the coal burner, so neither the men nor the building are begrimed- in the black glaze associated with later steam railroading.

There is a little more to be said about this scene that is not obvious from the print itself. Susan C. S. Edwards, formerly of the Berkshire County Historical Society, was able to locate the roundhouse’s site on Center Street on the west side of Pittsfield. Jubilee Hill rises above the scene, and some of the large white houses visible in the photograph are still standing. One of the buildings on the hilltop bears a painted-on sign that reads RENNE’S PAIN KILLING MAGIC OIL . Before the age of aspirin, patent medicines like Renne’s promised to cure the minor aches and pains of America.

Finally, it should be noted that Pittsfield is situated about midway between Springfield, Massachusetts, and Albany, New York, in the center of a rich valley created by the Housatonic River. Historians remember the town, settled in 1752, for its namesake William Pitt, the British statesman who championed the American colonists’ rights. Railroad historians like me remember Pittsfield for its beautiful brick roundhouse, which lives on only in memory.