John H. White 
James Millholland 
And 
Early Railroad Engineering 
From the apprentice on the ““Tom Thumb? to the master 
machinist of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, the 
career of James Mullholland spanned nearly a half century in 
the early development of the American railroad. One of the 
great mechanics of the 19th century, he is remembered not only for 
his highly original innovations, the most outstanding of which 
was the conversion of the wood burner to the anthracite burner, 
but also for his locomotives, which were plain, practical machines, 
highly distinctive from the ornate locomotives of the period. 
Tue Autor: John H. White is associate curator of trans- 
portation in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History 
and Technology. 
AMES MILLHOLLAND is remembered today as one of 
J the foremost railway master mechanics of the 19th 
century. He was fortunate in also having been 
esteemed in his lifetime for having perfected numerous 
railway mechanisms and, most particularly, for his 
work on anthracite-coal-burning locomotives. He 
was born on October 6, 1812, in Baltimore, Maryland, 
and there received a private education.' Gifted with 
1 Railroad Gazette (August 28, 1875), vol. 7, p. 362. (Obitu- 
ary notice.) 
PAPER 69: JAMES MILLHOLLAND AND EARLY 
an aptitude for mathematics and influenced by his 
father, who manufactured ship fittings, young Mill- 
holland inclined naturally toward mechanics as a 
life work. In 1829, at age 17, he was apprenticed 
to George W. Johnson, a Baltimore machinist, there 
gaining his first experience in working on a locomotive 
engine, Peter Cooper’s famous Tom Thumb. 
Cooper, in an effort to persuade the new Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad to adopt steam power, had started 
to build this light steam locomotive in 1829. He had 
worked out the general arrangement and assembled a 
RAILROAD ENGINEERING 3 
