670 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



The Stevens rail did not come into general use for several years, the 

 next road to adopt it being the Boston and Providence, about 1840. 



On the Boston and Lowell Railroad, Massachusetts, the fish-bellied 

 rail was laid in chairs on stone blocks. As late as 1847 the Hudson 

 River road used the Stevens rail, supported by chairs, but these were 

 soon afterwards discarded. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRACK. 



Mr. Francis B. Stevens also informs me that in 1835 he was employed 

 by the Camden and Amboy company to make a profile of the road bed 

 from South Amboy to Bordentown. At that time there were many 

 places (the longest being a piece 2 miles long, from the wharf at Amboy 

 to Deep Cut) where the Stevens rail was spiked to the cross-tie accord- 

 ing to the present practice. This method was at first resorted to as a 

 temporary expedient, on account of the delay in getting stone blocks 

 from Sing Sing. In the meantime it was found that the wood ties were 

 more satisfactory, and in a year or two all the stone blocks were re- 

 placed by wood ties. Without doubt the Camden and Amboy was the 

 first railroad in the world to be laid according to the present American 

 practice. 



On other roads the wooden tie was afterwards laid on account of the 

 high price of stone blocks and stone stringers, the use of which was 

 originally contemplated. 



Speaking of the engineering practice in this era, the late Ashbel 

 Welch said in his presidential address to the American Society of Civil 

 Engineers: 



American engineers have often shown that pocerty is the mother of invention. 

 For example, they used wooden cross-ties as a temporary substitute, being too poor 

 to buy stone blocks, and so made good roads because they were not rich enough lo 

 make bad ones. 



CAST-IRON RAILS MADE IN AMERICA. 



In Johnson's u Notes on the Use of Anthracite," he described tests of 

 cast-iron rails made during 1841 at Lyman's foundry, near Pottsville, 

 Pennsylvania. These rails were designed for colliery railways. They 

 were only 6 feet long. For 3 or 4 inches at each end the rail had a sec- 

 tion similar to the Stevens rail; for the remaining 5^ feet the rail was 

 somewhat similar to the English bull-headed rail. 



Previous to the year 1842, when Congress passed the celebrated high 

 tariff law, all imported iron rails were admitted to the country almost 

 free of duty. The tariff on manufactured iron, agreed upon by that 

 Congress, increased the cost of English rails so much that the railways 

 were forced to seriously advocate the erection of American rolling mills 

 for the special purpose of making rails. 



