Frankie Smoot, age 8, of Florence, S.C.,for his question:
WHO INVENTED THE FIRST TRAIN ENGINE?
For many years prior to 1970, the railroads in the United States were losing millions of dollars each year on their intercity passenger trains. The loss was chiefly due to competition with the airlines and automobile travel. Then Congress established a semipublic corporation called Amtrak that now operates almost all intercity trains.
As early as the mid 1500s a number of European countries had primitive railroads that were used primarily to bring wagon loads of coal or ore from mines. Wagons with flanged wheels were pulled along wooden rails.
Inventors developed the steam engine in the late 1700s. In 1804, an English inventor named Richard Trevithick built the first engine capable of using high pressure steam and mounted it on a four wheeled undercarriage designed to roll along a track.
Trevithick became the builder of the world's first successful railroad locomotive when his engine hauled a wagon load of coal weighing 10 tons along a nine and a half mile track.
An English locomotive builder named George Stephenson built the world's first public railroad, the Stockton and Darlington, which opened in 1825 and ran for a distance of 20 miles. In 1830 his second railroad ran 30 miles between Liverpool and Manchester.
It was Stephenson who also originated the idea that all railroads should have a standard gauge. He selected four feet eight and a half inches for his equipment and the system was adopted by most European railroads as well as those in Canada and the United States. This was the length of the axles on many horse drawn wagons of the mid 1800s.
The first full sized locomotive to run on a track in North America went into operation in 1829. It was called the Sourbridge Lion and was owned by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company of Pennsylvania.
The first United States railroad to provide regular steam powered passenger and freight service was the Best Friend of Charleston. It made regular six mile runs between Charleston and Hamburg, S.C., starting in 1831 .
Canada's first steam powered railway, the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, was started in the province of Quebec in 1836.
Congress made the first federal land grants for the development of United States railroads in 1850. This opened the way for tremendous expansion.
In 1869 The world's first transcontinental rail line was completed across the United States. Officials of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads on May 10 drove the last spike at Promontory, Utah, to complete the coast to coast track.