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The Stourbridge Lion was a railroad steam locomotive. It was the first locomotive and the first foreign built locomotive to be operated in the United States, and one of the first locomotives to operate outside Britain. It takes its name from the lion's face painted on the front, and Stourbridge in England, where it was manufactured by the firm Foster, Rastrick and Company in 1829. [2] The locomotive, obtained by the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company (D&H), was shipped to New York in May 1829, where it was tested raised on blocks. It was then taken to Honesdale, Pennsylvania for testing on the company's newly built track. The locomotive performed well in its first test in August 1829, but was found to be too heavy for the track and was never used for its intended purpose of hauling coal wagons. During the next few decades, a number of parts were removed from the abandoned locomotive until only the boiler and a few other components remained. These were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1890 and are currently on display at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.
![]() | This section includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(April 2020) |
One of the first railroads in the United States, the D&H was originally chartered in 1823 to build and operate canals between New York City and the coal fields around Carbondale, Pennsylvania. While the line was originally planned as a canal for the entire route, company engineers began thinking about rail transportation as early as 1825; the initial plan was to build a railroad between the mines and the western end of the canal as a way to get the coal to the canal boats.
John B. Jervis, who later became the designer of the 4-2-0 (the Jervis type) locomotive, was named the D&H's chief engineer in 1827. Jervis planned out a series of inclines connected by level, but themselves disconnected, railroads. The company directors liked Jervis's plan and authorized its construction with some hesitation for the as-yet unproven railroad technology.
In 1828, a former coworker of Jervis, Horatio Allen, went on a railroad research tour of England. Through Allen, Jervis sent specifications for locomotives that could be used on the D&H. Allen wrote back in July that four locomotives had been ordered, three from Foster, Rastrick and Company and one from Robert Stephenson and Company, for the D&H.
Stourbridge Lion was one of these three locomotives built by Rastrick, but Stephenson's shop had completed their locomotive, the Pride of Newcastle, before any of Rastrick's locomotives. The Pride of Newcastle even arrived in America nearly two months before the Stourbridge Lion, but it was the latter that was used for the first railroad trials. The price on delivery of the Stourbridge Lion was $2,914.90, equivalent to $83,403in 2023. [3]
The locomotive was transported from Liverpool aboard the ship John Jay, arriving at New York in mid-May 1829. [3] It was assembled at the West Point Foundry in New York where it was first tested under steam. Here, it was reported that it "became the object of curiosity to thousands who visited the works from day to day to see the 'critter' go through the motions only". [4] Its first official run took place on August 8, 1829 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. According to an eye-witness, "the fire was kindled and steam raised, and, under the management of Horatio Allen, the 'wonderful machine' was found capable of moving, to the great joy of the crowd of excited spectators". [5] Despite having no experience of driving a locomotive, Allen took the Stourbridge Lion out for its first test on his own, driving it about three miles along the track including a raised section over the Lackawaxen Creek. He then reversed the locomotive back to its starting point. [6] The locomotive performed admirably, but the track that was built on which to run it was insufficient for the task (the company had not used all-iron rails but instead iron strips applied to a wooden rail). [7] Jervis had specified that the locomotives should weigh no more than 4 tons; the Stourbridge Lion weighed nearly double that, 7.5 tons.
The two other Foster, Rastrick & Co locomotives that had been ordered by Allen, Delaware and Hudson, arrived separately at New York in August and September 1829 before being shipped on to Rondout. [6]
Rastrick built another engine at about the same time as the Stourbridge Lion intended for use in England. [8] This engine, the Agenoria , was of very similar to the Stourbridge Lion although of a different gauge and with a markedly longer chimney. The Agenoria first ran in June 1829, was operated for more than 30 years and is currently preserved at the National Railway Museum in York, England. [9]
By 1834, documents show that the railroad attempted to sell the Stourbridge Lion and its early sisters to the Pennsylvania Canal Commission, but the deal was not finalized. The locomotives were deemed too unsuitable for the now expanding railroads; American locomotive manufacturers had begun producing their own locomotives of improved designs as early as 1830. The four locomotives were used as sources of English wrought-iron bar stock until the middle of the 1840s.
By 1845, all that was left of the Stourbridge Lion was its boiler. The boiler was still functional, however, and it was used in a foundry in Carbondale for about another five years until the foundry's owner headed west to try his luck as a Forty-niner. The foundry was sold a few years later to new owners who recognized the boiler's value as a piece of history, and in 1874 reportedly tried to sell it for $1,000 (equivalent to $26,929in 2,023). The owners were unable to find a buyer.
In 1883, the D&H borrowed the boiler to display at the Exposition of Railway Appliances in Chicago. Unfortunately, security around the boiler's transportation was lax; souvenir hunters pulled every loose item that they could off the now historic boiler, even resorting to hammers and chisels to remove portions of it.
The boiler was stored again and eventually acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1890. A few other parts that are believed to have been from the Stourbridge Lion are also preserved, but their authenticity is questioned. These other parts may have come from one or more of the locomotive's sister engines. The museum has made a few attempts to rebuild the locomotive with the parts that remain. However, with the parts' origins still in question, and the lack of a few other key parts, the locomotive's reconstruction has never been completed. The boiler and assembled parts are currently on display at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. [10]
The D&H built their own replica of the Stourbridge Lion in 1932 from plans that were made based on the parts remaining in existence. The Wayne County Historical Society Museum contains a full-scale replica of the Stourbridge Lion, and is home to many related photographs and artifacts. This museum is in a small brick building on Main Street, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, which was once the D&H Canal's company office, and is where the Stourbridge Lion began its inaugural run.
The boiler had a simple single flue, with the chimney exiting through the upper part of the boiler drum. This was not a smokebox as such, as there was no smokebox door for access and cleaning.[ citation needed ] A prominent external exhaust pipe ahead of the boiler led to a blastpipe within the chimney. The exhaust pipe is visible in many pictures of the locomotive.
The piston rods connected to a pair of grasshopper beams (one for each cylinder) mounted above the boiler. A connecting rod near the piston end of the walking beams drove the rear axle's wheels, where it also connected to a coupling rod to drive the front wheels.[ citation needed ]
Honesdale is a borough in and the county seat of Wayne County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough's population was 4,458 at the time of the 2020 census.
Stourbridge is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England, situated on the River Stour. Historically in Worcestershire, it was the centre of British glass making during the Industrial Revolution. The 2011 UK census recorded the town's population as 63,298.
John Bull is a historic British-built railroad steam locomotive that operated in the United States. It was operated for the first time on September 15, 1831, and became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution ran it under its own steam in 1981. Built by Robert Stephenson and Company, it was initially purchased by and operated for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the first railroad in New Jersey, which gave it the number 1 and its first name, "Stevens". The C&A used it heavily from 1833 until 1866, when it was removed from active service and placed in storage.
Amblecote is an affluent urban village in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England. It lies immediately north of the historic town of Stourbridge on the southwestern edge of the West Midlands conurbation. Historically, Amblecote was in the parish of Oldswinford, but unlike the rest of the parish it was in Staffordshire, and as such was administered separately.
Foster, Rastrick and Company was one of the pioneering steam locomotive manufacturing companies of England. It was based in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, now West Midlands. James Foster, an ironmaster, and John Urpeth Rastrick, an engineer, became partners in 1816, forming the company in 1819. Rastrick was one of the judges at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. The company was dissolved on 20 June 1831.
The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) is a railroad that operates in the Northeastern United States. In 1991, after more than 150 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC). CPKC operated D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation, which also operates Soo Line Railroad.
John Bloomfield Jervis was an American civil engineer. America's leading consulting engineer of the antebellum era (1820–60), Jervis designed and supervised the construction of five of America's earliest railroads, was chief engineer of three major canal projects, designed the famous, pioneering, DeWitt Clinton steam locomotive in 1831 while with the Mohawk & Hudson RR, designed the first locomotive with a swiveling 4-wheeled front bogie truck in 1832 for the M&H RR, designed and built the 41-mile Croton Aqueduct – New York City's fresh water supply from 1842 to 1891 – and was a consulting engineer for the Boston water system.
John Urpeth Rastrick was one of the first English steam locomotive builders. In partnership with James Foster, he formed Foster, Rastrick and Company, the locomotive construction company that built the Stourbridge Lion in 1829 for export to the Delaware and Hudson Railroad in America. From the 1830s he concentrated on civil engineering with his major project from 1838 being the construction of the London and Brighton Railway.
James Foster was a prominent Worcestershire ironmaster, coalmaster and senior partner in the important iron company of John Bradley & Co, Stourbridge, which was founded by his elder half-brother but greatly enlarged under his direction. As well as the Stourbridge ironworks, the business owned a number of coal and ironstone mines, furnaces, forges and other works in the Black Country and near Ironbridge. The business continued long after James Foster's death, ultimately being incorporated as John Bradley (Stourbridge) Ltd in the early 20th century. In the late 19th century, the company was a member of the Marked Bar Association, whose members were the makers of the highest quality bar iron of the time. Foster was also a partner in other companies including the engineering firm Foster, Rastrick and Company, which built the first steam locomotive to run on rails in the USA. He was also a banker and landowner as well as being elected Member of Parliament and appointed as Improvement Commissioner for Stourbridge, and High Sheriff of Worcestershire.
The Delaware and Hudson Canal was the first venture of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which would later build the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Between 1828 and 1899, the canal's barges carried anthracite coal from the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania to the Hudson River and thence to market in New York City.
Horatio Allen was an American civil engineer and inventor, and President of Erie Railroad in the year 1843–1844.
Wollaston is a village on the outskirts of Stourbridge in the English West Midlands. It is located in the south of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, one mile west of Stourbridge town centre.
The Stourbridge Line is a shortline railroad that operates 25 miles (40 km) of former Erie Lackawanna Railroad trackage between Honesdale and Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, where it connects with Norfolk Southern Railway. The line was previously owned by the Lackawaxen-Honesdale Shippers Association and operated under contract by Robey Railroads. The operation was contracted to the Morristown & Erie Railway in January, 2009; service ended in 2011. Service was resumed by the Delaware, Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad (DL&S) on May 9, 2015.
A predecessor to the Class I Delaware and Hudson Railway, the 1820s-built Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Gravity Railroad('D&H Gravity Railroad') was a historic gravity railroad incorporated and chartered in 1826 with land grant rights in the US state of Pennsylvania as a humble subsidiary of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and it proved to contain the first trackage of the later organized Delaware and Hudson Railroad. It began as the second long U.S. gravity railroad built initially to haul coal to canal boats, was the second railway chartered in the United States after the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road before even, the Baltimore and Ohio. As a long gravity railway, only the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad pre-dated its beginning of operations.
The Leiper Railroad was a 'family business–built' horse drawn railroad of 0.75 miles (1.21 km), constructed in 1810 after the quarry owner, Thomas Leiper, failed to obtain a charter with legal rights-of-way to instead build his desired canal along Crum Creek. The quarry man's 'make-do' railroad was the continent's first chartered railway, first operational non-temporary railway, first well-documented railroad, and first constructed railroad also meant to be permanent.
The credit of constructing the first permanent tramway in America may therefore be rightly given to Thomas Leiper. He was the owner of a fine quarry not far from Philadelphia, and was much concerned to find an easy mode of carrying stone to tide-water. That a railway would accomplish this end he seem to have had no doubt. To test the matter, and at the same time afford a public exhibition of the merits of tramways, he built a temporary track in the yard of the Bull's Head Tavern in Philadelphia. The tramway was some sixty feet long, had a grade of one inch and a half to the yard, and up it, to the amazement of the spectators, one horse used to draw a four-wheeled wagon loaded with a weight of ten thousand pounds. This was the summer of 1809. Before autumn laborers were at work building a railway from the quarry to the nearest landing, a distance of three quarters of a mile. In the spring of 1810 the road began to be used and continued in using during eighteen years.
by John Bach McMaster, page 494, A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War
The Agenoria was an early steam locomotive built by the Foster, Rastrick and Co partnership of Stourbridge, England. It first ran on 2 June 1829 along the Kingswinsford Railway which was a 3-mile long (4.8 km) line linking mines in the Shut End area of the Black Country with a canal basin at Ashwood on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. It was withdrawn from service around 1864 and was donated to the Science Museum (London) in December 1884. It is now on display at the National Railway Museum in York.
John Bradley & Co was a company established in 1800 by John Bradley at Stourbridge in the West Midlands area of England. The company developed into a large industrial concern with furnaces, ironworks and mines. Under James Foster, John Bradley's half brother, it was instrumental in bringing the first commercial steam locomotive into the Midlands area in 1829. The firm stayed under family control until the early years of the 20th century when first the mining (1913) and then the ironworks (1919) were sold off. Part of the business continued to trade under the name John Bradley & Co. (Stourbridge) Ltd until after the Second World War.
The Earl of Dudley’s Railway or Pensnett Railway, was a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge railway that developed from a single 3-mile (4.8 km) line opened in 1829 to, at its maximum extent, a 40-mile (64 km) long network around the Earl of Dudley’s Iron Works at Round Oak near Brierley Hill.
The Flying Dutchman was an American horse-powered locomotive operated by the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company. It was built in New York by engineer Christian Edward Detmold and won an 1830 locomotive competition. Driven by a horse on a treadmill, it could carry 12 passengers at a speed of around 12 miles per hour (19 km/h). The South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company operated the Flying Dutchman on a 6-mile (9.7 km) stretch of track from early 1830. It was replaced by a steam-powered locomotive, the Best Friend of Charleston, by the end of the year.