boy two locomotives of this description ("large for that time") 

 in the \Vest Philadelphia yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad about 

 1856 or 1857. One was called the John C. Traufwine (later renamed 

 the Champioji) and the other, he thought, the Defiance J''^ The 

 machines were sold at a sheriff's sale and, according to J. C. 

 Trautwine: 



... at very low prices to other coal companies. As none of the officers 

 of these companies understood the principle or mode of action of the 

 engines, they did not even make a trial of their capabilities, although 

 it might have been done, and the grand problem satisfactorily demon- 

 strated to all, for a few hundred dollars. As the worthy president of 

 one of the companies himself complacently informed me. We are all 

 practical men on this road, and don't believe in thy gimcracks. The 

 center-rail machinery was accordingly taken off and melted up for 

 castings . . . .'^^ 



Either the coal companies referred to in the foregoing quotations 

 were subsidiaries of the Beaver Meadow Railroad or they sold 

 these locomotives to the Beaver Meadow before 1864. The Lehigh 

 Valley Railroad, when it absorbed the Beaver Meadow in 1864, 

 acquired the Defiance and the Champion. They were numbered 

 19 and 20 and reportedly did good service as switchers until about 

 1878. "3 Sellers, in a letter to C. K. Lord, recalls hearing reports 

 that they were regarded as ready steamers. 



Sellers' interest in the center-rail locomotive came to an end with 

 the collapse of the Coal Run Railroad scheme and, with it, any 

 likelihood of a demonstration. After spending nearly eight years 

 in its promotion, building five full-size locomotives, and enduring 

 the numerous travails previously mentioned, it is small wonder that 

 in his memoirs he dismissed the entire subject of the grade-climbing 



^^^J. C. Trautwine, Jr., typewritten note, January 28, 1924, Peale-Sellers papers. 

 Trautwine recalled these facts from a conversation with and an earlier letter from 

 Bell, who had related that the machines were built for the Panama Railroad, which 

 we know to be untrue. 



132 J. C. Trautwine to Henry Morton, December 6, 1867, in Journal of the Franklin 

 Institute (January 1868), vol. 55, p. 15. 



13^ W. E. Lehr to the author, November 4, i960; data supplied by Clinton T. 

 Andrews. 



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