Certainly Sellers desired a test of his locomotive, yet his willingness 

 to build these machines at such a low price is not altogether under- 

 standable, since a conventional 8-wheel engine cost about $8,000 

 or $9,000. Several motives are possible: other builders may have 

 quoted a high price to build the complex engines because they were 

 not in want of other profitable work ; Sellers may have feared that 

 the high price of engines built by another firm would cause the 

 Panama to drop his plan or that the engines might be poorly built 

 and fail mechanically. Therefore, he was willing to build the 

 machines at little or no profit to insure a successful demonstration 

 of the invention. He may also have speculated that any losses 

 would be made up by income from the $10,000 in stock. (As it 

 turned out, the Panama, once it opened in 1855, paid 12 to 20 per- 

 cent dividends for many years.) 



Since Sellers had withdrawn earlier from the Globe Rolling Mill 

 to devote full time to the grade-climbing engine, he had no place 

 to build the locomotives in Cincinnati. Not troubled by this, he 

 began to purchase machine tools in the East. He directed his 

 brother to secure a small stationary engine and to prepare their 

 small shop and residence, located on Sixth Street between Cutter 

 and Linn Streets in Cincinnati's West End. The small work could 

 be done there ; the heavy pieces he would farm out to other shops 

 in the city. He wrote to Coleman with enthusiasm regarding 

 these preparations — "I have all the arrangements matured in my 

 own mind" 1°^ — and requested that the shop and drafting room be 

 in good order so that upon his return work could begin at once on 

 the working drawings and patterns. 



Before leaving for Cincinnati he ordered the flues and the driving 

 wheels. From Lepech & W. Manns of Philadelphia he ordered 

 420 iron flues 8 feet long and of i%-inch outside diameter; they 

 were to be shipped as soon as possible via New Orleans. He decided 

 to use iron rather than copper tubes, claiming that they would save 

 about $300 per boiler and had been found to be better than copper 

 or brass tubes by tests held on the Erie and Reading Railroads. i"^'^ 



108 November 22, 1850, Peale-Sellers papers. 



109 Ibid. 



78 



