Figure 4. — Latta's mammoth lathe of 1848. Note the 

 locomotive driving wheel being turned. (From Farmer and 

 Mechanic, August 31, 1848.) 



notice found was in the report of the Little Miami issued in Decem- 

 ber 1845, w^hich noted that Harkness was building a 13-ton, 8-wheel, 

 passenger engine. Construction of the first locomotive was thus 

 begun sometime before December 1845. Eight months later the 

 Cincinnati Daily Gazette of August 22, 1846, reported that Harkness 

 had two locomotives under construction for the Little Miami Rail- 

 road. The Cincinnati, the first to be finished, was not placed on the 

 road until November 15, 1846. Since one engine was started some- 

 time before December 1845, the time spent in its construction must 

 have been at least a year, although Price stated that the first engine 

 built by Harkness and Latta was completed in nine months. Could 

 it be, then, that there was an earlier engine, built before the Cincin- 

 nati, which proved a total failure? And, assuming the existence of 

 an earlier, unsuccessful inachine, inight it have been rebuilt into the 

 Cincinnati? Some support is given to this speculation by a statement 

 in Charles Greves' Centennial History of Cincinnati, which says that the 

 first locomotive built by Harkness for the Little Miami was called 

 the Bull of the Woods .-'^ Furthermore, Richard A. Thomas, a 

 machinist at the Little Miami Railroad's Pendleton Shops from the 

 1840's on, recalled an engine of that name.-i There is, however, no 

 mention of an engine so named in the annual reports of the Little 

 Miami Railroad during the period, nor could any be found in 



-° Vol. I, p. 661. 



-' Watkins, History of the Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. 2, pt. 2. p. 40. 



13 



