1876 Centennial

John Bull

Late in August 1831, after a six-week voyage from Liverpool, England, the Allegheny docked at a Philadelphia wharf. Lashed aboard were the parts for "one locomotive steam engine" that had been purchased by New Jersey entrepreneur and engineer Robert Stevens. Stevens was building a railroad, one of the first in the United States; he had hired Isaac Dripps as a skilled mechanic.

A sloop carried the parts upriver to Bordentown, New Jersey. There, on September 4, young Isaac and his assistants received the crates. None of the men had ever seen a locomotive before, and there were no instructions for its assembly. But Dripps had had some experience with steamboats.

Eleven days later, Dripps and his crew had put the engine together on a short length of track. A fire was lit, and steam raised. To everyone's relief, the machine moved, although it would need considerable fine-tuning before it worked properly. In November, Stevens held a party to display the engine to politicians whose support he needed to complete his railroad. Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Napoleon-Lucien-Charles Murat, attended the festivities, and his wife became the first woman in America to ride aboard a steam-pulled train.

After the party, Stevens put his engine in a shed for two years while he worked on his railroad, laying rails between Camden and South Amboy, New Jersey (hence the name Camden and Amboy Railroad). Travelers then took ferries at either end to reach the cities of New York or Philadelphia. The Camden and Amboy became one of the most successful early railroads in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the John Bull that greets visitors to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History today looks quite different than it did when first completed. Back in 1831, Stevens had traveled to the Newcastle, England, factory of Robert Stephenson & Co. to negotiate the engine's specifications. The two Roberts, builder and client, settled on a design for the locomotive based on Stephenson's Samson model, which had four equal-sized wheels that were powered by two steam cylinders. Numerous other details reflected British practice of the day.

In the spring of 1833, the John Bull, named some time later for England's counterpart to Uncle Sam, along with several other engines that Stevens had built, helped finish construction of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. Soon thereafter, the engine got its famous cowcatcher, whose real function was not to deflect livestock: A major alteration to the engine's basic design, the cowcatcher included a new pair of wheels to better keep the locomotive on the track.

Because investment capital at the time was scarce and the distance between major cities often was lone, American track was built on the cheap. In this frontier environment, unless the design of the locomotives could be modified and improved to navigate uneven track, railroads might not pay.

Stevens and Dripps thus combined their ideas with those of American engineer John Jervis. The extra wheels-joined by beams to the large front wheels-were rigged into the engine's suspension. The new front axle acted to steer the locomotive over rough spots without derailing. The cowcatcher, added in front of the new wheels, was more or less an afterthought.

For 35 years, the faithful patriarch locomotive served the country in one capacity or another, retiring in 1866 at the end of the Civil War. It appeared thereafter at several fairs, most notably the 1876 United States Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia. In 1884, the Smithsonian acquired both the locomotive and the Institution's first curator of engineering. J. Elfreth Watkins, from the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had taken over the Camden and Amboy.

John Bull left its home at the Smithsonian a couple of times to run before an admiring public-in 1893, at Chicago, and in 1927, at Baltimore. In the 1970s, curator John White posed a question: Could John Bull run one last time on the 150th anniversary of its first steaming in America?

On September 15,1981, after considerable analysis, a careful examination by a boiler-inspection firm, and a 1980 trial run on a branchline track in Virginia, John Bull displayed its magic before a rapt audience. Belching fire and smoke under the care of White and colleague John Stine, the locomotive ran on the Old Gerogetown Branch rails beside the C&O Canal in Washington.

To the museum staff, John Bull had always appeared a Rube Goldberg-like contraption, an ungainly concatenation of many years' modifications. Surprisingly, however, the little engine proved agile, easy to fire and to operate, even peppy, its pilot wheels providing an uncannily steady ride. All the engines contemporary to John Bull had gone to the boneyard years earlier. The reason for this locomotive's longevity became clear: The John Bull had escaped that fate because it was so useful.

Return to Centennial 1876

		Contacts | FAQ | Press Room | Privacy | Copyright	Top