Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 by Various
page 49 of 147 (33%)
page 49 of 147 (33%)
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the rolls twisted and as crooked as snakes," and he was greatly
discouraged. At last, however, the mill men acquired the art of straightening the rail while it cooled. The first shipment,[3] consisting of five hundred and fifty bars eighteen feet long, thirty-six pounds to the yard, arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Charlemagne, May 16, 1831. Over thirty miles of this rail was laid before the summer of 1832. A few years after, on much of the Stevens rail laid on the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the rivets at the joints were discarded, and the bolt with the screw thread and nut, similar to that now used, was adopted as the standard. The rail was first designed to weigh thirty-six pounds per yard, but it was almost immediately increased in weight to between forty and forty-two pounds, and rolled in lengths of sixteen feet. It was then three and a half inches high, two and one-eighth inches wide on the head and three and a half inches wide at the base, the price paid in England being £8 per ton. The import duty was $1.85. The first shipment of rail, having arrived in America, was transported to Bordentown, and here, upon the ground on which we stand, and which this monument is erected to mark forever, was laid the first piece of track (about five-sixths of a mile long) in August, 1831. The Camden and Amboy Company, following the example of the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad, laid their first track upon stone blocks two feet square and ten to thirteen inches deep. These blocks were purchased from the prison authorities at Sing Sing, N.Y. Some of these stone |
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