Figure 76. — Arabian, as displayed at the Chicago Exposition of Rail- 

 way Appliances, 1883. Photo courtesy of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. 



and was followed by two attempts by Reeder, of 

 Baltimore, neither of which was successful; then came 

 Davis's little engine that took the place of horses, 

 but was found too light for the increasing traffic 

 even for the short distance to the Relay House and 

 Ellicott's Mills, and Davis, who had become foreman 

 of the shops or master mechanic of the road, designed 

 the "Arabian," taking a bold leap for the time from 

 a 2%-ton engine to one of 13 tons, 238 and that for a 

 strap-bar rail on wooden stringers. 



When George King, of York, Pa., a paper maker, 

 would come to us for paper moulds (it was the time 

 of hand-made paper), he always had something to 

 say about Phineas Davis, a young man of York, 

 whom he considered a prodigy in mechanics; he 

 could turn his hand to anything; he could reface paper 

 moulds with wire cloth, form the letters and devices 

 in wire for water marks and sew them on the moulds 

 as well as the most experienced hand; he told us of a 

 patent lever watch that Davis had made, and so small 



The Early Motive Power oj the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (New 

 York, 191 2), pp. 5-8. 



238 Th c Arabian was the third locomotive to be built by Davis 

 after the York. The weight of the Arabian was given in an 

 annual report as 7'j tons. See Bell (cited in preceding foot- 

 note), pp. 1 7~i9. 



that he could cover it with a levy, the old Spanish 

 coin, the % of a dollar, in Philadelphia called eleven 

 penny-bit or levy for short, and in New York a 

 shilling. The next time Mr. King came to the city 

 he brought the watch to show us: as I recollect it, it 

 was about the size of our 20-cent piece. It was a 

 beautiful piece of workmanship considering the tools 

 Davis had at his command. Mr. King represented 

 that he [Davis] had never had an opportunity of 

 seeing how work was done outside of the watch 

 repairers, blacksmith and gunsmith shops of York, 

 that he was very anxious to see how work was done 

 on a larger scale. 



My father sent an invitation to him to pay us a 

 visit, saying that my brother and myself would show 

 him what we could among the shops. The little 

 watch was left with me, and remained in my possession 

 for some weeks until Phineas made his appearance. 

 His stay was only a few days, but no time was lost, 

 for a more eager one to see all that was to be seen I 

 never met. 



I cannot, with certainty, fix the date of this visit. 

 It was either 1828 or 1829. Mason & Baldwin had 

 just put in operation a small novel and ingeniously 

 constructed vertical steam-engine in their works for 

 manufacturing bookbinders' tools and calico-printing 



181 



