


Figure 14.—TuHe Tecumseh WAS COMPLETED IN NOVEMBER 1853 aT THE READING SHops. This Pawnee-class 
engine is illustrated by a contemporary watercolor rendering. 
Half of this immense structure was completed within 
a year after the fire. It was fitted with a transfer 
table and stalls for 40 locomotives. A foundry, 120 
by 30 feet, and a blacksmith shop, 163 by 30 feet, 
adjoined the main building. The car-repair, steam- 
hammer, and brass shops were on a separate plot not 
directly adjacent to the locomotive facilities. These 
shops were said to “‘surpass in extent and in con- 
venience of arrangement, any similar works in the 
United States if not in the world.’** A detailed 
diagram of the “grand plan” was published by the 
Railroad Advocate, January 24, 1857. While not all of 
Millholland’s elaborate scheme was adopted, its es- 
sential elements were retained. By 1896, however, 
these shops were considered obsolete, and plans were 
underway to raise the roof of the main building to 
permit installation of a heavy-duty, overhead travel- 
ing crane.** It is uncertain if this remodeling pro- 
ject was undertaken, since new repair shops were 
23 Thid. 
°4 Locomotive Engineering (April 1896), vol. 9, pp. 307-309, 
describes and illustrates the old Reading shops. 
(Photo courtesy of the Atwater Kent Museum.) 
constructed in 1902 on another site in Reading. 
Not until Millholland had recognized the failure of 
his central-combustion-chamber boiler did the Read- 
ing achieve its goal of operating as a coal-burning 
road. Apparently Millholland dropped the patented 
boiler in 1855 or 1856, for the Reading’s fleet of coal 
burners grew rapidly thereafter. In 1852 only 24 of 
the Reading’s 103 locomotives were coal burners; by 
1857 the proportion had increased to 100 coal burners 
in a total of 142 locomotives. A large part of this 
conversion must be credited to the generous purchase 
of Winans’ Camels. Yet these ponderous, eight-wheel 
engines—developed primarily for soft-coal burning— 
were modified by Millholland because they never 
were entirely successful for anthracite. Even so, the 
increasing number of company-built locomotives indi- 
cates that Millholland was perfecting a dependable 
hard-coal burner. Another indication that its own 
shops were at last supplying a successful product came 
in 1855 when the Reading stopped buying from 
Winans. 
The final and most positive proof that the patented 
boiler was at last abandoned is the small engraving of 
a Millholland locomotive boiler published in Douglas 
18 BULLETIN 252: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
