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or forty tons, with steel tires and steel fire-boxes, burning anthracite 
coal, and rushing along over varying grades with a speed and a power 
which continue to impress the imagination even of those whose daily 
duty it is to direct their course, had then no existence. 
The Catawissa Railroad has a summit-tunnel about 1,200 feet long, ex- 
cavated through rock. The rise from the Susquehanna at Catawissa to 
the tunnel on the head-waters of the Little Schuylkill, is very nearly 
1,000 feet in about thirty miles. Mr. Miller fitted his line to the ground 
with very great care, and in such a way that the road has no grade ex- 
ceeding thirty-three feet in a mile, so as to economize locomotive power 
to the greatest possible extent. This necessitated the building of several 
very high bridges to carry the grade across lateral ravines entering the 
main valley. This road continues to be in successful use. The location 
was a very bold one, nothing like it having been attempted in the country 
before, and it showed a very considerable degree of originalty and self- 
reliance on the part of the young engineer who made it. 
In June, 1886, while living at Catawissa, Mr. Miller was happily mar- 
ried to Miss Jessie Patterson Imbrie, of Philadelphia. His wife survives 
him with a large family of children, and their eldest son, Mr. James 
Imbrie Miller, now holds a high position in British India, as Chief En- 
gineer of the Government Railways in Rajpootana, a large district of 
Central India, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers. 
Soon after his marriage, Edward Miller was, for some time, the Chief 
Engineer of the Morris Canal of New Jersey. 
Before the completion of the Catawissa Railroad, he left it to become 
Chief Engineer of the Sunbury and Erie Railroad Company, of which 
Nicholas Biddle was then the President. He proceeded to explore the 
country between Sunbury and Erie, much of which was a wilderness. It 
was said at the time, that in the wildest part of it there was but one 
house near the line for sixty miles. A considerable time was occupied in 
preliminary surveys, but the construction of the work did not go on until 
long after, on account of the failure of the United States Bank and the 
temporary collapse of credit that ensued. 
The people residing in the southern tier of counties in the State of 
New York, were resolutely bent on having a railroad from the Hudson 
River to Lake Erie, to rival the Erie Canal. <A charter was obtained and 
the work undertaken. Thus arose the New York and Erie Railroad 
Company, which has had such an extraordinary history since, a history 
which, to one familiar with it, seems like a romance. 
By its charter the company was prohibited from locating any part of 
its road outside of the territorial limits of the State of New York. The 
long line was cut up into several parts, with independent Engineers upon 
each, and confusion followed as a matter of course. Edward Miller was 
employed as a Consulting Engineer to write areport upon what was going 
on. This he did so much to the satisfaction of the Board of Directors, 
that he was soon after appointed Chief Engineer of the whole line from 
