from California to remain here and finance internal improvements. 

 Such roads could be built from local timber in backwoods areas 

 for about one third the regular cost, or at an estimated $677 to 

 $1,223 P^^' mile. Again bridges and grading would be cheaper be- 

 cause of center-rail propulsion. 



Sellers recommended that the Pacific Railroad be built on the 

 Pioneer System. Costs and construction time would be reduced by 

 half, he asserted, and California bound to the Union many years 

 before otherwise possible. The practicability of the proposal is 

 questionable; still the country was to wait nearly twenty years for 

 the first transcontinental line to open. Whatever the merits of the 

 Pioneer System, it was not used for the Pacific or any other line. 

 With no one willing to test the System, Sellers did not continue to 

 promote it and thereafter devoted his energy to perfecting the 

 center-rail idea for main line use. 



A British patent for Sellers' grade-climbing locomotive was issued 

 in the name of Alfred V. Newton"" in July 1847. United States 

 patent 5367 was granted on November 13, 1847, and French and 

 Belgian patents were also secured. An association composed of 

 Miles Greenwood, William M. Hubbell, and John P. Foots was then 

 formed in order to promote Sellers' invention. The group held the 

 patent rights with Sellers and financed him for nearly two years, 

 during which time he obtained a second U.S. patent, prepared a 

 pamphlet, and in general devoted all his time and energy to the 

 adoption and establishment of the center-rail locomotive. 



In order to demonstrate the utility of the invention, it was decided 

 that a practical test should be made. Full-size machinery would 

 have cost more than the association was willing to spend, so a large 

 model locomotive was built. It was produced in the shops of the 

 Globe Mill by Sellers, his younger brother Coleman, and a young 

 Cincinnati mechanic, John L. Whetstone, in the spring of 1848 

 It was described in hijprovements as follows: 



The boiler is made of copper; the cylindric part, or body, is 12 inches 

 in diameter, flues 2 1 inches long and 62 in number, 55 being ii-i6thofan 

 inch and 7 being 1-2 inch in diameter; heating surface in fire-box and 



""Alfred V. Newton was probably associated with Newton^ s London Journal of Arts 

 and Sciences. Numerous patents of foreigners were issued to A. \'. and William 

 Newton of this publication. 



58 



