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In the 1860s in the years during and after the American Civil War, two railroad companies completed America’s first transcontinental railroad, colloquially called the “Overland Route”. This cut down the travel-time from cities such as Chicago in the East, to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the West, from several weeks or even months by wagon-train…to a few days by steam-powered locomotive. Instead of stocking up on rifles and muskets, provisions and supplies…a person could pack his steamer-trunk or suitcase, buy a ticket and ride the rails in what was then a fast, comfortable and convenient way to travel.

Around the same time that the Americans completed their “overland route”, a hop across the pond called the Atlantic Ocean to England would see the British people’s first…”underland route”…and the birth of the modern subway system.

The London Underground: The World’s First Subway

The London Underground (more commonly called ‘The Underground’ or ‘The Tube’ today), is the world’s oldest and is one of the world’s largest subway systems. It’s famous all over the world for its stations, its red, white and blue logo or ’roundel’ and the similiarly-coloured, tubular railway carriages. It’s famous for being used as air-raid shelters during the Second World War and for appearing in a James Bond movie where an invisible Aston Martin is delivered to Bond on a flatbed railway carriage.

Beneath all this fame and glory and fortune, people tend to forget that the London Underground is the world’s first and oldest underground railroad and is now nearly a hundred and fifty years old and still running. The story of the London Underground is the story of the development of the modern subway system and the story of one is generally entwined with the other.

The Need to go Under

Subway systems are not built for their novelty aspect or because “they can”. In each particular city where a subway exists, there are reasons for their construction. But what was it that led to the whole idea of the “under ground” railroad to begin with?

To understand this, we must flashback to London in the 1850s and 60s. Here, we meet a city which is the center of an empire, which is increasing in population every day due to the vast changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution and which is suffering the consequences of such rapid population-growth…traffic congestion.

By the 1850s, railroads were fast becoming the most popular way to move around. It was quick, comfortable and convenient. While cities had several large railroad stations for big, main train-lines, the problem was that once passengers arrived in town, they clogged up the roads with horse-drawn carriages and taxi-cabs. It was reasoned that if there were trains right in the heart of town, they would be able to move people around more effectively and cut down on congestion. This wasn’t easy in a city as old as London, though. Railroad lines took up a lot of space and with congestion as bad as it was, threading railroad lines all over the road was hardly the best solution. Instead, it was decided that the best method of getting trains into the city was to go underground. It would be relatively easy to follow the roads, stops and stations could be easily planned and it would provide valuable employment to the thousands of unemployed people living in London in the second half of the 19th Century.

The First Subway

The first part of the first subway, the London Underground, was born in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway and stretched from Paddington Station north to Farringdon Station, via King’s Cross. The man responsible for this new, quite literally groundbreaking task of an ‘under ground’ railroad was Charles Pearson, a London lawyer and Member of Parliament. Throughout the 1830s, 40s and 50s, Pearson had campaigned for an ‘underground railroad’ to help ease the increasing traffic congestion in central London during the mid-19th century. After numerous government meetings, debates and discussions, an act of Parliament was passed for the construction of the first stage of what would become the world’s first subway system.

The Metropolitan Railway under construction near King’s Cross Station; February, 1861

To make things easy, the Metropolitan Railway was constructed using the ‘cut-and-cover’ method of tunnel-construction. This involves digging a huge trench in the middle of the street, right down to the level where the railroad lines would go. The rail-lines would be laid and the tunnel walls and roof would be built above it. Once the roof was completed, the excavated rubble and soil was dumped back over the top to reform the original roadway, giving the process its name of ‘cut and cover’. While relatively easy, safe and quick to carry out, Pearson probably won himself a great deal of enemies by building his railroad this way – the Cut and Cover method meant that entire roads and city blocks had to be shut down for construction-purposes. Building the railroad took nearly three years, from February, 1860 – January, 1863. Unfortunately, Pearson wouldn’t live to see his masterpiece open for operation; he would die on the 14th of September, 1862, of dropsy. He was 68 years old.

Underground Trains

Having built the subway, it was now necessary to get trains into it. Obviously, conventional steam-trains were out of the question. They were huge, bulky, noisy digusting things, far too unsuitable for subway tunnels. Instead, an entirely new form of railroad locomotive had to be invented. While still coal-fired, steam-powered engines, these new machines were significantly smaller than their above-ground counterparts.

Metropolitan Railway A-Class subway locomotive. Engine #23 was made in 1864

The steam-engines developed for the London Underground were compact, fat, low-profiled tank-engines. Despite the obvious problems of smoke and steam from these newly designed machines, the London Underground proved popular with Victorians. Nearly 27,000 passengers were using the Metropolitan Railway within the first few months of its opening in January of 1863.

Electrification of Subways

It’s hard to imagine that from the 1860s until the early 1900s, the world’s first, oldest and at the time, biggest subway system, was pulled along using nothing but steam-power. In the crowded, cramped and claustrophobic environment of the London Underground, steam-power was hardly ideal. In fact, it was very uncomfortable riding in the Underground during this period and adequate ventilation had to be installed if the Underground was to maintain a practical, working public service for the people of London. Electrification of the Underground was proposed as early as 1880, but it wasn’t until about 1905 that electrical technology and understanding had progressed far enough to make this a practicality. Starting in the early 20th century, many of the original steam-trains that pulled carriages through the Undergorund were scrapped and replaced by modern, electrically-powered locomotives. Very few of the original Underground steam-locomotives from the 1860s and 70s survive today.

Under and Outwards

With the initial success of the original Metropolitan Railway, other underground railroad companies sprang up, almost overnight. Throughout the second half of the 1800s and the early 1900s, private companies dug and developed their own subway lines throughout London. As the 20th century progressed, the subway became more and more familiar and important to London. By the end of WWI, England had over a hundred big and small railroad companies. In the end, many of these were merged together with the Railways Act of 1921. Nationalisation of the railway system was completed in 1947 with the Transport Act. By the Second World War, the London Underground had grown immensely. By the early 1940s, there were many abandoned stations and stretches of the Underground which were never completed, due to a lack of money or a lack of necessity. Stations that were too close together were considered unnecessary and were closed down. Many of these were converted to air-raid shelters during The Blitz. Many of these stations still exist today and some are set aside specifically for filming-purposes by film-production companies, so that the actual London Underground won’t be disrupted by camera-crews and actors.

The Subway Goes Global

After the success of the London Underground, the subway began to spread around the world. The next subway opened in Glasgow, Scotland in 1891. The first American subway was opened in Boston, Massachusetts in 1897! The New York City Subway system was started in 1904. Previous to this, New York City had been serviced by its famous elevated railroad (commonly called the ‘El’). A horrific blizzard in 1888 dumped several feet of snow all over New York, which brought its above-ground train-service to a screeching halt.

Manhattan’s famous elevated railroad. Started in the 1860s, it lasted until the 1960s when it was gradually destructed. This photo was taken in 1944. The affect of heavy winter snowfalls on the New York elevated railroad was what prompted the construction of the now, world-famous New York City Subway in 1904

To prevent a repeat of this, the New York City Subway was constructed. Subways continue to be popular in countries where snow can affect above-ground railroad traffic, such as in Russia, Germany and Canada. While today subways are seen as modern, bright, fast and wonderful, or at times, a pain in the ass when your train comes late or it’s cramped or overcrowded, remember that they were born in an age of steam and steel, bricks, mortar and feverish industrial revolution.

For centuries, man has wanted to do lots of things. He has wanted to ride in a wheeled vehicle unpowered by a walking manure-factory. He has wanted to sail the open seas…without sails. He has wanted to communicate long distances without having to travel long distances, he has wanted to invent a form of illumination that won’t set the house on fire and he’s wanted to explore under water without ending up under ground. But of all the dreams that mankind has had, none has been stronger than man’s desire…to fly.

Mr. Wile E. Coyote provides a historically-accurate practical demonstration of mankind’s early experiments with flight

For centuries, flight was considered impossible – the dream and fancy of fools, a pipe-dream, a hallucination, an idiotic fantasy. And yet today, we can fly halfway around the world within twenty-four hours. How? And…Why? This article will explore the history of manmade aircraft – anything that didn’t come with a beak, claws and a feathery lining, from the first experimental aircraft to airliners as we know them today.

Flight of Fancy

Since time immemoriam, man has looked at the skies, and has seen birds. Or maybe bats. Probably even flies. On the off-chance, even a mosquito. He puzzled and fumed and fussed over the fact that all these things could do the one thing that he couldn’t – Fly.

Mankind has had dreams of flight for centuries. Even the famous inventor and painter, Leonardo from Vinci, invented a bloody helicopter before the word had even been thought up! But even with wonderful sketches, ideas, dreams and brainstorming, man couldn’t make a successful flying machine. To many, it was considered impossible. Man did not understand what made something fly and, once it was flying, how to keep it flying and, once it was kept flying, how to make it stop flying!

Leonardo’s fantasmagorical flying machine…would it ever have really worked?

The very first flying machines never left the pages that they were drawn on. Leonardo, who created the world’s first helicopter prototype as well as a primative parachute, never actually manufactured his inventions, although modern reconstructions and testing has shown that, with enough persistance, the right materials and a whole heap of chutzbah, it could be done! So…when did man first take to the air?

Full of Hot Air

The first real flying machines that mankind created out of his own hands which really worked were primative hot-air balloons. Hot air balloons had been known for centuries; they were toys and novelties. Cute little fun displays to be seen at garden parties, a toy for the children to marvel at and something for older people to ponder: “What if…?”

The first unmanned hot-air balloons were introduced into the world centuries ago. Early experimenters realised two things about the air which we breathe: Cold air descends. Hot air rises. By this logic, if you put hot air (produced by a continuous heat-source, say, a candle) inside a sealed compartment (like a paper bag), then the hot air would cause the bag to rise, once it had been filled up enough. This proved to be the case, and the hot air balloon was invented.

The idea of travelling by hot air balloon took a while to ehm…get off the ground, though. It wasn’t until the early 18th century that the first experiements by European scientists and inventors were begun. The big problem confronting these early experimenters was weight! For this fancy-schmancy ‘hot air balloon’ gizmo to actually lift anything of value off the ground, it would need a massive envelope (the big ‘balloon’ part) and it would need even more hot air! It was all these scary weight-concerns that kept mankind grounded for so long. For a balloon flight to be successful, weight had to be kept to an absolute minimum!

It wasn’t until November 21, 1783 that the world’s first manned balloon-flight happened. The two lucky fellows in the basket on this historic day were Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes, a physics teacher and a soldier, respectively. The balloon being flown was a creation of the famous Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne. One likely reason why it took so long for man to take to the skies in hot air balloons was because of how long these things took to make! Apart from the exhausting testing that the Montgolfier brothers carried out on their balloons, there is also the physical size of the balloons themselve to consider. The historic balloon which took de Rozier and d’Arlandes into the air on that day in November, 1783 was absolutely massive! Here are the technical specifications of that famous balloon, as translated from the original French document:

Height of Globe: 22.7m (75ft).
Weight of Globe: 780kg (1,700lbs).
Diameter: 14.9m (49ft).
Lifting capacity: Max approx 830kg (1,800lbs).
Volume of Globe: 2,000 cubic meters (73,000 cubic feet).
Gallery (a doughnut-shaped basket attached to the envelope): 1m wide (3ft).

Needless to say, getting such a massive balloon into the air was not easy, but when it happened, history was well and truly written and made. The Montgolfier brothers’ success was so amazing that King Louis XVI elevated the entire Montgolfier family to the French nobility as a reward! If the Montgolfiers had known that the French Revolution was just a few years away, they might have decided to take the second prize of a two-door, 4hp carriage with guilded windowframes instead…

The hot air balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers

The Hot Air Balloon was now here to stay, and from the late 18th century until the early 20th century, it dominated flight around the world. Hot air balloons were popular attractions at public events, they were used as observation-posts during warfare and for the first time in history, man could fly over the land he owned and see everything from a bird’s eye view.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Although the hot air balloon allowed mankind its first proper view down on the world, it did have one major drawback – Hot air balloons were slow, hard to navigate and dangerous to fly. They could only move where the wind blew and could only move as fast as the wind allowed. This was deemed unsatisfactory, by some, and it was decided that what mankind really needed was a flying machine that could be completely controlled by man – A machine that could take flight, stay in the air, go where the pilot wanted it to, and land when and where he wanted it to land.

Like the balloon before it, the aeroplane was slow to take off. As Betty Boop says in one of her cartoons, “It was called insane by ‘most every man!”…and it was! The idea of a heavier-than-air flying machine was proposterous! How could such a thing ever work?

At the turn of the last century, mankind was only just beginning to understand aerodynamics, or how airflow affects moving objects. Chief among this group of people who were studying aerodynamics was a pair of brothers named Wilbur and Orville.

Orville and Wilbur Wright, (born 1871 and 1867, respectively) are the two men credited with inventing the world’s first controllable airplane, and it took some doing, too. And it’s proof that you don’t have to have a college education to be a genius…neither of the Wright Brothers attended university!

The Wright Brothers initially led very different lives. In 1885, Wilbur was hit in the face by accident during a game of hockey. There was no significant damage done (although he did lose a few teeth), but the shock of the blow did make him more introverted than he used to be. He spent most of his time at home, reading and looking after Susan Wright, the Wright Brothers’ mother who was by this time, dying of tuberculosis (she did eventually pass away in 1889).

Orville Wright worked as a printer after dropping out of highschool. Wilbur, getting rather bored with sticking around at home all the time, joined his brother in business, and the two boys worked together as editor and publisher respectively, of various small-town newspapers.

In the 1880s, a new machine was invented. It was light, fast, easy to ride and safer to operate than its predecessors, allowing the rider to balance on its frame more easily and control its speed and movement more comfortably.

The bicycle had been introduced to the world.

Wanting to make as much money as they could, the Wrights packed up their printing press and jumped onto the cycling craze, opening a bicycle repair and manufacture-shop in the 1890s. Throughout the 1890s, flight pioneers were constantly making the headlines, with newer, ‘better’ flying machines. All this talk of flying got the brothers thinking. Wilbur was the one who really got interested in flying, and he set about trying to make a flying machine. Orville joined in later, once Wilbur’s work was showing a sufficient degree of promise.

The Wright brothers started out small, practicing their flying first with kites and then with gliders before attempting anything that we’d recognise today as a conventional airplane. Wilbur studied the movements of birds to try and discover the secret ingredient to Lift, the necessary component of flight to compensate for gravity. The Wrights theorised that it was the gliding motion of birds and the movement of air over their wings that allowed them to fly like they did, rather than the actual flapping motion which some inventors had tried for years to reproduce.

The brothers made a breakthrough when they discovered wing-warping, that is, bending or angling a pair of wings to create the correct kind of airflow to provide lift for the aircraft as well as giving it the ability to turn, rise and fall through the air. It was easy enough to bend a wing – just make it out of something light and flexible. The problem was how to control wing-warping. Left to their own devices, early wings would warp of their own accord, depending on wind-conditions. By attaching ropes and pulleys to the edges of their wings, the Wright brothers were able to pull on the cables and affect wing-warp themselves, giving them for the first time, an aspect of control over their aircraft!

Throughout the early 1900s, the Wright Brothers experimented with gliders to give them an idea of how wings and angling these wings affected flight and lift. To aid them with this, they built one of the world’s first wind-tunnels! With wind on demand, the boys were able to test their flyers more and more often and were able to record data more effectively.

Powered Flight

The dream of mankind was to have powered, controlled flight. By the early 1900s, the Wrights were already working on the “control” part, but they still needed to address the issue of power. They knew from their experiements that any power-source onboard an airplane would have to be as light as possible. Fortunately, their experience working on bicycles meant that the Wright Brothers already had some grounding in light and powerful machines.

The world’s first airplane, Wright Flyer I, took to the air in 1903. Using a custom-made internal-combustion engine created in their own bicycle-shop (after no established engine-manufacturers of the time were able to make one small, light and powerful enough for their needs) and propellers made of wood, tested relentlessly in their wind-tunnel, the Wright brothers were ready to fly.

For obvious reasons, this milestone was fraught with danger. Steering a glider, launching a glider and landing a glider was relatively safe – there were no moving parts. But with their new airplane, the boys had to be careful of the rotating propellers, which were literally revolutionary at the time, since nobody had yet figured out how an airplane’s propeller actually worked!

The historic first flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903.

Actually, more than one flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903, on the beaches near Kittyhawk, South Carolina. Four flights in total were conducted. A number of people came out to witness this historic event: Adam Etheridge, Will Dough, W. C. Brinkley, Johnny Moore, a local lad who was on the scene at the time, and John T. Daniels, a member of a nearby lifesaving station.

Of the four flights taken, the first, third and fourth were photographed. The famous “First Flight” photograph (With Orville at the controls and Wilbur jogging alongside) was taken by John T. Daniels, the lifesaver, and a man who had never operated a camera before (or since!). Daniels had been given instructions by Orville to take the shot when he saw the machine move in front of the camera. Daniels, too excited by what was going on around him, nearly forgot to take the photograph! At the last minute, he tripped the shutter and history was made…

The Airplane Takes Off

If the Wright Brothers thought that their newfangled “flying machine” (Oh what an absurd notion!) was ever going to be a wonderful, amazing, popular, attention-grabbing, imagination-stimulating, sought-after and life-changing machine!…They were wrong.

In fact they were so wrong they probably wondered why the hell they started in the first place. The truth was that very few people were actually interested in their new flying-machine. It didn’t make the headlines that they’d expected it to (probably because so many other flying-machines had done so, and they’d all failed!) and the military was not in the least bit interested. The planes were too light, too flimsy, too dangerous to fly. What possible military application could they have?

The Rise of the Airplane

Just like early anythings, planes were not seen as having much application in the world of the time. Cars were slow, tempermental things, new on the scene, expensive and prone to breakdowns. Similarly, planes were seen as expensive, rich, playboy toys which could never have any practical application in the real world. This changed during the years of the First World War when armies soon discovered the advantages of having an aerial wing which could fly over battlefields, bombing and strafing the enemy, which could take photographs and which could report on enemy troops and movements. By 1918, the airplane had proven itself as a practical and important machine in warfare.

If the 1900s were the experimental stages of airplane-operation, then the 1910s and the 1920s became the era of aircraft endurance-testing. All kinds of famous airplane-related events took place in the 1910s and 1920s, many of which are still fondly remembered today. Here’s a list of them:

1912 – April 16th. Harriet Quimby is the first woman to fly across the English Channel (Dover-Calais, in 59 minutes). Unfortunately, her moment in the sun and her chances of making the front pages were dashed when a little-known watercraft called the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean the night before…

1927 – May 20-21. Charles Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris, France, in the world’s first solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

1928 – 31st May-9th June. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith & Co make the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a three-leg journey from California, USA, to Hawaii, Hawaii to Fiji, Fiji to Brisbane, in Australia.

The 1920s also saw the founding of several famous commercial airline companies. United Airlines is founded in 1926 as Boeing Air Transport. The famous Australian airline company Quantas is founded in 1920. The German airline company Lufthansa is founded in 1926. Pan Am, the American airline is founded as Pan-American Airways in 1927.

Luxury Travel

From the second half of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, luxury long-distance travel was to be had in only one way. That one way was in an amazingly grand and luxurious ocean-liner, which would transport you across vast stretches of water from England to America, America to Australia, Australia to Asia, Asia to Europe and so-on. The largely experimental status of aircraft in the early 20th century meant that the ocean-liner trade was still going strong well into the 1950s, but things were all about to change.

The 1920s showed everyone that airplanes, just like steamships, could safely travel amazing distances, and what’s more, they could do it in significantly more comfort and at faster speeds! This led to the 1930s boom of the airline industry.

Sometimes we like to kid ourselves that airline travel today is really luxurious…little personal TV screens, computer-games, telephone and internet access, luxurious onboard dining and crayons and those cheap, crappy plastic model-airplanes for the kiddies are all the luxury that we need.

In the 1930s, though, there was a whole new kind of luxury…the airship!

The airship was like a hybrid between the airplane and the hot air balloon. Invented in the 1900s, the airship had its golden age from the 1910s-1930s. Less noisy, larger and capable of carrying more passengers than early conventional, fixed-wing airplanes, the airship became the way to travel in style, comfort and most importantly…speed, in the early 1900s. A number of countries operated airship lines, from the United Kingdom, the United States and most notably of all…Germany.

Although large and amazing, airships were dangerous machines. The hydrogen gas which inflated the huge envelopes of many airships was highly explosive and extensive precautions were taken to prevent fires – in Germany, for example, you couldn’t take your camera or your cigarette-lighter onboard an airship – They were confiscated by the crew and locked in a special cargo-area, to be returned by the crew when the ship had reached its destination. The sparking of a cigarette-lighter or the burning flash from early, magnesium flash-bulb cameras was seen as a fire-hazard.

Due to their large size, airships could be difficult to control in bad weather. When the weather was fine, flying in an airship was an exciting and wonderful experience, but when there was a storm, heavy rains or lightning around, the experience could become quite frightening. Winds could rip at the cloth covering of the airship’s enevelope, dangerous static-electric charges could build up on the airship’s frame (although this could also create a spectacular display of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ to dazzle and awe passengers!) and heavy winds and rain could affect handling and manuverablity. The airship USS Akron crashed in April of 1933 due to flying in a storm after spending only 18 months in civilian service. Of the 76 passengers and crew onboard, only three people survived and were picked up by US. Coastguard watercraft after the crash.

The most famous airship crash is, of course, that of the Hindenburg, which spectacularly erupted into flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey in early 1937 and crashed and burned to the ground in a matter of seconds! Of the 97 passengers and crew onboard, roughly one third (36 people) of them died, including one member of the ground-staff. Destroyed after just over a year in service, the Hindenburg’s demise saw the end of grand airship travel, which was written off as just being far too dangerous.

The Hindenburg Crash. The structure on the right is the airship mooring-tower

To understand why the public was so drawn to airships, these flying death-traps, one has to see what they were really like and what they meant to people at the time. Airplanes are faster, but they’re smaller, more cramped, more uncomfortable.

The interiors of German commercial airships that flew through the air during the 1920s and 30s were bright, modern, luxurious, airy and with plenty of space to move around and stretch your legs. Passengers even slept in their own cabins, instead of trying to sleep strapped into their chairs like we have to do these days. Add to this the fact that travelling by airship was so much faster than travelling by…ship-ship. Steaming from England to America took at least five days using the fastest and most modern ocean-liners in the 1930s. Flying from Germany to America by airship in the 1930s took two or at a stretch, three days. For speed and convenience, the airship certainly won out here.

A period airship advertisement from the 1930s boasting a two-day crossing from America to Europe, which was three times faster than a similar crossing by ocean-liner

The risks of airship travel and the spectacular crashes that involved airships soon spelt an end to their aerial dominance, though. They were seen as just being far too risky a thing to use. Why speed up your trip by a few days when you risked crashing, falling from the sky and being killed when you could cross the ocean in a week by ship? And even if the ship was to sink, you could still get into a lifeboat and radio for help! By the late 1930s, the glory days of the airship were over.

Postwar Boom

The 1950s saw many things – the emergence of the Cold War, television, rock and roll and do-wop music. But it also saw the downfall of many things, such as the gradual dying-out of the transatlantic passenger-ship industry and the end of the airship industry. But from the ashes of the airship industry, a new form of transport was to emerge…

…the modern airliner.

Capable of transporting more people to more places with more speed, airliners were the thing of the future. Although the airliner of today probably shares several characteristics with the airliners of the past, early airliners had various perks such as the ability to smoke onboard planes (thank god that’s over with!) and being served meals with real cutlery, chinaware and glassware (something that doesn’t happen today!) and being able to listen to live piano-music! Yes, believe it or not, but early airliners used to have (specially made) pianos onboard them, usually in First Class, where passengers could listen to live music!

An airliner’s piano-bar in the 1960s

Continued safety-concerns and space-restrictions mean that spaces reserved for piano-bars, cocktail lounges, drinks bars and other public-seating areas on airplanes where passengers could mingle and chat, are now a thing of the past, leaving us with nothing but tantilising images of what is, what was, and what might have been…

Today, the car, the automobile, the horseless carriage and that stupid rust-bucket that’s parked in your garage right now, is as much a part of life today as is the television, the internet, the iPod, Phone, Pad and (regrettably) rap ‘music’. But spare a thought for the fact that motoring as we know it today is only a little over a hundred years old. It would be fair to say that the average man on the street wouldn’t know a single thing about the history of the very thing he’s driving around at that very moment: The motor-car. This article will be a brief peek into the history of the greatest thing since the steam-engine…

Before the Car

It’s hard to imagine life before the car, isn’t it? A world of steam-trains, ocean-liners and horses and carriages. A world where horsepower was literally horse-powered. If you didn’t own a horse and carriage of some kind, you were stuck with either walking, or taking a train or streetcar somewhere. While self-powered land-vehicles that could move on the road existed in the 19th century, it wouldn’t be until the early 1900s that they would become seriously practical. And it wouldn’t be for a few more years, that your regular Tommy Ryan could afford to buy one of these new horseless-carriage gizmoes out of his own pocket and drive it around town.

The Birth of the Motor Car

This…is genesis:

This here is the Benz Patent Motorwagen and it is quite literally, the first car ever made. It was powered by a two-stroke, one-horsepower engine and it was introduced into the world in 1885. Queen Victoria was still on the throne. Jack the Ripper was still sharpening his butterknife and Sherlock Holmes was still a blob of ink inside an inkwell. But this contraption, born in an age of the horse and buggy, was about to show everyone that personal, motorised transport was possible.

Although the Benz Motorwagen was hardly ideal as a car: It had no safety-features, it had three wheels, it had a tiller steering-handle and a pathetically small fuel-tank, not to mention a hopeless range of operation, Benz was not about to give up. Over the next few years, he refined and modified his machine to such an extent that in August of 1888, what was possibly the world’s first stolen car report was filed at the local police station (okay that’s a joke, it wasn’t, but you’ll soon see why it might’ve been). For on a day in August in ’88, Mrs. Bertha Benz, Karl Benz’s wife, successfully started her husband’s car and, with her two sons along for the ride, drove them off to visit their grandmother, before driving back home three days later. The length of the trip was 120 miles! Mrs. Benz had successfully shown the world that the car could travel long distances!

The Benz Motorwagen No. 3, made in 1888. This was the car which Karl Benz’s wife started up and drove off in, on that August day, over 120 years ago

Over the years, more and more people started experimenting with these newfangled “internal combustion engines”, in attempts to create their own ‘horseless carriages’ as they were still widely called. The British Government didn’t take kindly to scientific and technological advancement in the world of transport, however, because it slapped a FOUR MILE AN HOUR speed-limit on early motor-cars! The first speed-limit ever imposed for self-powered vehicles was 10mph in 1861. In 1865, the Brits made the law even tighter, saying that self-propelled vehicles could travel at the breakneck speed of four miles an hour in the country but only two miles an hour in town! Finally in the 1890s, though, with the arrival of the motor-car, British lawmakers allowed a speed-limit of 14 and later, 20 miles an hour, starting in 1896.

Car companies sprang up almost overnight as the 20th century approached. Some notable early ones included Renault (1899), Ford (1903), Mercedes (1902) and Stanley (also 1902), which was famous for making steam-powered motor-cars. Slowly, the world took to the road.

Starting Something Totally New…

“…For making the carriage walking at the first speed, take back the drag of the wheel backward crowbar of the right and take completely and progressively back, the crowbar of embriage…”
- Jeremy Clarkson, “TopGear”.

Okay, I kid, I kid…that’s actually French translated into English. But as you can see, early motor-cars were far from easy to drive. These days, we get in, we insert the key, we turn it, we swear for a couple of minutes and then we get moving. Early cars were nowhere near as easy to operate. To start with (literally), you had to crank these cars to get them going.

Early cars did not have ignition keys, they didn’t have electric starter-buttons, starter-motors or anything like that. To get them going, you had to crank them by hand. And while this looks like a lot of fun, it wasn’t exactly easy. You’ve probably seen vintage cars in movies or cartoons being the subject of slapstick comedy where someone tries (hopelessly) to get a car started by cranking it, only to fail miserably. The truth is that some (but not all) early cars were that hard to start. And not only hard to start, but also dangerous! You needed considerable strength to start a car in the old days, because everything inside the car was mechanical and made of metal. If you didn’t have the muscles to turn the crank-handle (which could be particularly tricky in some cars), then the car never started. Usually, you slid the crank-handle into a hole in the front of the car, which sent the crank through the crankshaft inside the engine. Then, you grabbed the crank and with considerable force, turned it clockwise in an attempt to get the pistons moving to start the engine-cycle.

One of the big risks of crank-starting a car was personal injury. By cranking the starting-handle, you moved the crankshaft inside the motor and this got the pistons inside the engine moving. Once the sparking-plugs ignited the fuel and the engine started working by itself, the car could be driven. But when this happened, one of the biggest risks was of the crank-handle being thrown backwards, against the driver’s hand, by the force of the pistons coming to life. The most common injuries included broken wrists and broken arms. Nasty stuff! Several early motor-car companies tried to introduce braces or catches or modified engines where the starting-handle either jammed or was stopped in some way, if the engine backfired, or else disengaged the starting-handle when the engine caught on, so that it wouldn’t kick back and break the driver’s arm.

A 1909 Model T Ford with prerequisite antique car crank-handle at the front. Apparently this one disproved that a motorist could have his car any colour so long as it was black

Early motorists were instructed to grasp the crank-handle in a certain way, with all fingers on ONE side of the crank, instead of four fingers on one side, and the thumb on the other (as you might do with other crank-handled appliances). The reason for this, was so that if the engine kicked back, the handle would swing away from your hand and nothing went wrong. Grasping the handle the traditional way meant that at the very least, you suffered a broken thumb when the engine came to life. The increasing power and size of car-engines as the 1900s progressed, meant that it began to take more and more strength to crank start a car and eventually, electric starter-motors were introduced.

Of course, not everything was this easy. Headlamps on the earliest cars were gas-powered. These had to be lit either manually, or with pilot-lights or sparkers. And starting a steam-powered car, such as those manufactured by the Stanley company up until 1925, was almost like trying to get a steam locomotive going from a cold start. First you had to fill up the boiler with water, and then you had to make sure that there was enough kerosene in the tank, you had make sure that the pilot-light was on and that the water was being boiled sufficiently. With the water boiled, you had to wait for the steam-pressure to build up before you could actually drive the car away. Considering how tricky it was to get a steam car started, it’s rather surprising how long they survived. The reasons for building steam cars, however, was rather obvious when you consider that the steam-engine had been around for about a hundred years longer, starting in 1900, than the internal-combustion engine, the bit of machinery that drives almost every car in existence today.

Driving Along in my Automobile

Early motoring was a thrill. It really was. These days, we use a car for everything. Going to school, going to work, going to the shops, going to visit friends and family…but things were very different a hundred years ago when you were probably the only person on the block who owned his own motor-car! Having got the car started, you didn’t want to just waste all that petrol and water and oil driving somewhere for a PURPOSE, did you?

No! Once you got that thing going, you wanted to muck around with it, yeah? Which is exactly what many people did. Having a family car in the 1900s or the 1910s was considered a real luxury, and many of the times that the car drove off down the road would have been with the entire family onboard for a roadtrip or an excursion. Barrelling along at twenty or thirty miles an hour was a thrilling experience when you consider that the other way to move around was by horse and cart.

However, taking the family out for a spin in your new automobile wasn’t always safe. Most early roads were almost lethal to drive on. They were mostly dirt roads or cobblestone or flagstone roads, which gave no joys to the passengers in your shiny new ride when suspension hadn’t really been thought of yet. And even if you found a nice road to drive on, when you parked your car, you had to make sure that nobody tried to pinch it! Henry Ford used to have to chain his car to a lamppost everytime he parked it and secure it there with a padlock, otherwise, the moment he stepped away, some inquisitive bystander would try and crank up his new toy and drive off with it!

However, getting to treat the family to a ride in the automobile was something that was nothing but a dream, and for many men, remained a dream until 1908.

Model T Fords and Mass-Production

One of the biggest problems of early motor-cars was the fact that they were dizzyingly expensive. A car in the 1900s could cost upwards of $1,000. While this doesn’t sound too bad today, remember that in 1900, a good pocket watch cost $50, a fountain pen cost $2, a film-ticket was five cents and it was cheaper to send a telegram than to use the telephone! Groceries for a family of four for a week could be bought for less than $20!

Because of the dazzling cars and the equally dazzling price-tags, it’s not surprising that for many people, motor-cars were something to be seen driving by, but never to be seen driving in. Cars were handmade with expensive coachworks which were made up of leather and brass and chrome and other fancy-schmancy things that cost a fortune. Only the richest of the rich could afford cars. Millionaires, businessmen, royalty, heads of state and so-on. For everyone else, the only rubber that was going to hit the road for them was the soles of their shoes.

That was until Henry Ford put two and two together and made Ford. Or the Ford Model T, to be precise.

Henry Ford didn’t invent the car. He didn’t even invent mass-production. But what he did invent was a way to put the two things together. By working on a moving production-line, Ford realised that, with work coming to his men, instead of his men going to their work, a lot of time could be saved in manufacturing a car. One reason why cars were so damned expensive was because they took literally days, weeks, in some cases, even MONTHS to make. Not just a line of cars, I mean literally ONE car. If Henry Ford could cut down how long it took to make cars, then he could make more cars in a shorter amount of time. More cars meant that the prices went down and if the prices went down, then ordinary people could buy them.

The Model T was introduced in 1908, when Ford started mass-producing cars. The chassis, the wheels, the seats, the engine and everything else was built at one part of the factory and progressively joined together. At the end of the line, the body of the car was dumped on top. The final touches were added, the car was gassed up, cranked up and then driven off into the world. It was amazingly simple.

One reason that Ford managed to make his car plants so efficient was that he kept breaking down jobs. If making an entire door was too hard for one workman to do by himself, then Ford broke the door down into component parts. One man made the hinges, one man painted the panels, one man screwed on the doorhandles and one man put in the window. It meant that the Ford car plants had to employ hundreds, thousands of people, but it also meant that they could work for longer hours. Ford workers worked eight-hour shifts and earnt $5 a day. $5 a day when Cocoa Cola cost 5c, was a lot of money. And by having eight-hour shifts, the factories could operate literally around the clock.

This Ford Model T four-door tourer was typical of the millions of Model Ts produced by Ford: Simple, tough, reliable and understated

When Ford Model Ts were being sold, they originally started out at $850-950 (in 1908 dollars). If this sounds steep, then you can try and find something else for $900. Not easy when the next least expensive car skyrocketed upwards to $3,000!! As Fords continued to be made, however, the price did (thankfully) drop, to about $280 in the 1920s, which which time literally half the cars in the world were Model T Fords.

The Model T wasn’t a great car. It wasn’t fast (45mph top speed), it wasn’t classy (“a customer can have a car painted any color he wants, as long as it’s black”, Henry Ford), it wasn’t easy to operate (“…it’s more complicated than doing eye-surgery!…”, thank you Jeremy Clarkson) and it certainly wasn’t big (one of its nicknames was the ‘Tin Lizzie’! and you can be sure that doesn’t sound very chunky!), but what it was, was a car that allowed everyone from Dr. Jones right down to Mr. Bentley at the corner shop, to drive around town.

Changing the World, One Car at a Time

Everyone generally assumes that a car built before a certain time is either “classic”, “vintage”, “veteran”, “crap” or some other delightful categorical name. But what is what?

“Veteran” cars signify any cars made between the 1880s up to 1919. These include the very first cars ever made by most companies, and the earliest Model T Fords.

“Brass-Era” cars are cars manufactured in the period between Veteran and Vintage, generally accepted as been between 1905-1914/15. So named because of the heavy use of brass on these cars (headlamps, grilles, dashboards, side-mirrors, etc).

“Vintage” cars were cars manufactured from after the end of WWI to the Wall Street Crash, so, from 1919-1929. It was during this period that cars stopped looking like ghost-carriages without horses at the front, and started representing what we would sort of recognise as a car today, with a passenger area, the engine out the front with a bonnet or hood, four wheels and a roof and windows! It was during this time that cars also started being widely manufactured with self-starters; everything from electric starter-buttons to…*gasp*…car-keys!! Yes! No more broken wrists!

A 1929 Model A Ford, a typical vintage car of the 1920s and 30s, with curved mudguards and a less angular body, but boxy in appearance nonetheless

1916 Cadillac Type 53. Yes, that’s James May and Jeremy Clarkson from TopGear in the front, with Clarkson at the wheel. I think I’ll walk

According to the automotive TV show “TopGear”, it was the Cadillac Type 53 that gave us one of the greatest pieces of metal in the world. The car-key! With that, cars became safer, easier to start and more fun to drive. This template for the modern car was introduced to the rest of the world thanks to Herbert Austin, founder of the Austin Motor Company. The first car other than the Caddy Type 53 to have car-keys and all the gears and pedals in the configuration that we know today was the famous and miniscule Austin 7…

1922 Austin 7 “Chummy” Tourer

As you can see, the Austin 7, while ‘modern’ in the sense that it had all the controls in the right order, was hardly luxurious or any of that rot. It was basically an updated, more modern and British version of the Model T Ford. In fact the Austin 7 was so incredibly small, it was popularly nicknamed the “Baby Austin”. If you think you recognise the Austin 7 ‘Chummy’ Tourer, it’s because a 1/2-scale fully-functional model of the car (in bright yellow!) is used in the popular British TV series “Brum”.

Last but not least, we have “Classic” cars. For a car to be a ‘Classic’ car, it has to have been built between 1930-1960. Such ‘Classics’ might have included several cars manufactured by the famous “Deusenberg” company, the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Auburn Boattail Speedster and countless other wonderful machines.

As cars became more and more popular and companies started producing luxury as well as cheap models, the car began to take over the world, but the world wasn’t quite ready for it. Many roads were still unpaved and hideously dangerous to drive on. Ironically, when we think of early motor-cars, we think of them as delicate little sardine cans held together with chicken-wire which fell apart if you farted too loud, but actually, some of them were rather tough. The Model T Ford was able to start in almost any weather, it could drive through water, through snow, through mud, through dirt roads, up and down hills, it could literally drive off-road without breaking down and it did all this with a top speed of just forty five miles an hour and wooden-spoked wheels! It might’ve looked flimsy, but on the other hand, it might also have given the Jeep a run for its money.

And yet, the horse and cart still hung around. The last horse-drawn taxi-license was issued in London in the late 1920s. Police-forces did not start using regular patrol-cars until the 1920s and in some places, horse-drawn tram-services continued well into the 30s and 40s (although in all fairness, horse-tram services returned to some countries in the 40s because they needed the petrol to fight the Axis. You can’t use horse-poop for anything in warfare).

By the 1920s and 30s, the era of motoring had really taken off. The road-trip became a popular kind of holiday as families and their friends packed up their Packards, Studebakers, Austins, Fords and Maxwells (Hello, Jack Benny!) and took to the road. Petrol-stations, diners, roadside inns and caravans popped up almost overnight as cars started driving around the world. Cars gradually became safer as shatterproof glass began to replace the brittle glass that was previously used in windscreens and windows. In 1903, French chemist Edouard Benedictus dropped a glass flask which had the leftovers of cellulous nitrate plastic inside it. His happy accident led to his development of what we now know today as laminated or shatterproof glass. Not originally used in motor-cars, it would be another thirty years before this newer, stronger, safer type of glass replaced the dangerous and brittle glass then used in car-manufacturing.

The birth and development of the car was going along nicely until a small hiccup called the Second World War came along in 1939. Because of the strain of total war, car-production ceased the world-over, starting in 1940 in the UK and in 1942 in the USA, with no new cars being produced by either of those two countries (or indeed, several other countries) until 1945 at the very earliest.

Postwar cars were just as fascinating as their prewar parents and the boom years of the 1950s saw larger, chunkier cars being produced, such as one of the most iconic cars of the 1950s, the Chevrolet Bel Air:

The Chevy Bel Air symbolised cars of the 50s: Large, bold, excessive bodywork with more fins than a seafood restaurant and so much chrome that the car was basically a massive mirror on wheels. To its credit, though, the chrome-plating did have a practical use: It prevented the car from rusting from exposure to moisture.

From its humble beginnings as the crazy invention of a German engineering and metalworks student to one of the most important modes of transport in the modern world, the car changed everything around it, everyone in it, and everything that it drove past, forever.

Before the car came along in the 1880s and spoilt everything, land-based transport was always centered around the horse and the various things that it pulled along behind it. Everyone will probably now take a long, tired yawn…go on…it’ll energise your brain for the task ahead: Four pages about the horse and cart.

Horse-drawn transport was a lot more varied than most people would think. Horse-drawn vehicles came in as many varieties as our cars do today. They performed different functions, they could travel at different speeds and they were painted different colours, as well.

So, what were some of the more common types of horse-drawn vehicles that existed during the 18th and 19th centuries?

The Horse and Cart

Duuuuuh!! Yes, the humble horse and cart. A two or four-wheeled wooden vehicle pulled by a single horse: Handy, unluxurious and as interesting as a clump of dirt. Let’s skip this, shall we?

The Dog Cart

The dog-cart was one of the simplest vehicles you could ever find. They could transport two to four people, and a small amount of luggage and were typically pulled by one to two horses. They recieved their name because they were originally used to transport hunting-dogs when the masters of sprawling country estates went out hunting.

The Trap

A trap was a simple, two-seater cart (say, for a husband and wife) which was pulled by one horse. Some traps were so small, they could even be pulled by ponies! Depending on their size, a trap may or may not have had space to carry luggage at the back.

The Barouche or the Caleche

A barouche, a carriage of German origin which was introduced into England in the 1760s, was a light, fast vehicle with only a small leather folding top at the back. Barouches were high off the ground and pulled by two horses. Barouches generally carried between two to four persons (dependent on the size and design of the carriage’s interior), not including the driver. The Caleche was an earlier version of the barouche, which also seated two to four passengers.

The Brougham

When most people think of horses and carriages, they probably think of something along the lines of a brougham, an enclosed carriage for four people with doors on the sides, comfortable seats and glass windows. Broughams were named after Baron Henry Brougham, an English nobleman who died in the 1860s. Broughams were four-wheeled vehicles with room for luggage on the roof. They were designed to be comfortable, discreet, private and fast. The driver sat on the driver’s box up the front and the carriage was pulled by two horses.

The Coach

A royal coach with Queen Elizabeth II & Prince Phillip inside

The coach is probably the ultimate horse-drawn vehicle. They of course, varied in size, style and luxury, but they were commonly seen as the limosuines of their day. They were meant to be large, bold, spacious, luxurious and a show of the owner’s wealth and power. Coaches were lavishly furnished and decorated and very comfortable, often pulled by two or even four horses and transporting anywhere from four to six passengers, not including the footmen (usually two of them) and the driver, more commonly in this context called the coachman. Coachmen had to be particularly skilled with driving and handling horses since the four horses that pulled a coach along meant more reins for the driver to hold onto. The necktie knot known as the “four-in-hand” is believed to be adapted from the four-in-hand knot which coachmen tied with their reins so that all the reins for all four horses could be easily held and controlled with one hand.

Coaches often had carriage lamps on the front of the coach to light the way in the dark, since coaches were often used for long, long journeys, since they were one of the few vehicles capable of carrying large amounts of luggage. In the days before license-plates, the coaches of royalty or the aristocracy often had coats of arms colourfully painted on the carriage doors. Wealthy people who were unable to own coats of arms (they had to be specially issued and granted), had monograms painted on their carriage doors. These monograms and coats of arms identified the coach and its occupants and who its owners were.

Horse Drawn Service-Vehicles

Apart from the various kinds of private vehicles, before the motor car came along, there were also horse-drawn versions of emergency vehicles such as fire trucks, police-vans and ambulances…

A horse-drawn ambulance from 1908

A horse-drawn fire-engine from 1915. Many horse-drawn fire-engines of this era had steam-powered water-pumps onboard, which is what that big metal thing at the back is. Earlier fire-engines had manual pumps. You can’t see it in the photo, but then, just as now, fire-engines were painted bright red so that they could be easily recognised

Horse-drawn ambulances and fire-engines often had various markers on them, indicating that they were emergency vehicles: Red lanterns, crosses, bells and sirens, to name just a few.

Horse-Drawn Public Transport

The Hansom Safety Cab

Often just called a “Hansom”, the Hansom Safety Cab was introduced into the streets of London in the mid 1830s, where it was the main form of taxicab for the next roughly 100 years, until they were finally phased out in the 1920s and 30s with the widespread replacement by motorised taxicabs. The Hansom cab had space for two passengers (three, if you crammed them in good) and the driver. As you can see from the photo above, the driver sat at the back of the cab, instead of the front. His higher vantage point at the back of the cab gave the driver a clearer view of the road and better control of his vehicle; something that was very important in the congested and traffic-jammed streets of Victorian London.

The Hansom was called the “safety cab” because it could go fast, but it could take corners quickly but without fear of being involved in a rollover accident, due to its low center of gravity. Its high wheels kept the cab off the ground and allowed it to travel very fast. It was light enough that it could be pulled by one horse.

The Hackney Carriage

The Hackney carriage, coach or cab, also called the Four-Wheeler or more rudely, a “Growler”, was the larger of the two horse-drawn taxicabs that operated in the 19th century. The Hackney carriage could carry more passengers than the Hansom due to the larger size of its cabin and number of wheels. As the names suggest, the Hackney coach made a hell of a racket when it moved through the cobbled streets of Europe, earning itself the derrogatory title of the “Growler” due to the sound of the wheels bumping, scraping and grindng along the road.

The Omnibus

“Omnibus” is a Latin word meaning “For all”. These buses (yes, that’s what they are, horse-drawn buses!) were popular from the early 19th century until the early 20th century, when the first motorised buses took their place. Horse-drawn omnibuses were either one or two-decker buses pulled by a pair of horses along fixed omnibus lines within crowded cities, and they were an effective way to move large numbers of people quickly around a city along a predetermined and fixed route.

Arm-wrestling, thumb-wars, Naughts and Crosses, Snakes and Ladders, Chess and Monopoly, all games of competition, skill, cunning and perseverence. But the ultimate game to mankind is racing. Racing bicycles, horses, snails, huskies, cars, boats and in the world of The Simpsons…Fruit. But in today’s world of racing, where we have the Tour de France, the television show The Amazing Race, the Sydney to Hobart yacht-race and the Melbourne Cup, how many remember a true grandfather of racing, which, by now, took place over a hundred years ago?

Real car nuts, historians or racing-enthusiasts may be aware of this event, but the likelihood of someone else knowing that it ever took place, is rather slim. I’m talking about the granddaddy of motor-racing, the original automotive endurance-test. Forget race-tracks and timers, flags, cheering crowds and the best of the best cars on the road. When this race took place, the car barely existed!…Until then.

Built in 1885, when the black cab of London was still a horse-drawn Hansom on two wheels, the Benz Motorwagen, created by Karl Benz (of ‘Mercedes-Benz’ fame), became the world’s first motor-car. It had seats, it had wheels, it had an internal combustion engine and it had a steering wheel. Or rather, a steering-tiller. Back then, nobody thought the car was anything more than a stupid toy. A giant version of idiotic, clockwork, wind-up tinpot pieces of junk that kids played with. But over the next twenty years, leading into the 20th century, the automobile began to drive a wedge into the world of transport, to proclaim to everyone that it was here to stay.

By the early 1900s, motor-cars were gradually becoming more common, but they were still expensive showpieces, affordable only to the wealthy. Car-manufacturers were few and far-between, but the public were amazed by these new machines and began to wonder if this was…the future? Had something come along that could finally replace the horse and cart? To find out, people decided to take this new toy and see what it could really do.

Le Matin newspaper

Le Matin was a French newspaper, which ran from 1883 to 1944. When it was still being printed, it was a popular, daily newspaper, rising up to 100,000 copies a day in 1900, increasing that sevenfold by 1910. In 1907, it ran the following challenge to anyone who would read it and accept it (translated into English):

“What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?”

French newspaper ‘Le Matin’; Thursday, 31st January, 1907. Note the title of the article on the top right of the front page

The challenge to drive from Peking, China (modern day Beijing) to Paris, France in 1907, using totally untested automobiles, was taken up by five men:

- Prince Scipione Borghese, accompanied by his mechanic Ettore Guizzardi. They were further accompanied by Italian journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.
- Charles Goddard, accompanied by journalist Jean du Taillis.
- Auguste Pons and Octave Foucault, his mechanic.
- Georges Cormier.
- Victor Collignon.

Officially, eleven men in five cars started the race, however I wasn’t able to track down the names of everyone who participated. Each car had a driver (the actual contestant) and a journalist to ride as a passenger and media correspondent. The race was to start in Peking and go northwest and later southwest, through the Asian and European interiors. By following an established telegraph-cable route, the accompanying journalists would be able to send back telegraphed reports of the race to keep newspapers in Europe and elsewhere, informed of the race’s progress across Asia and Europe.

The Cars

Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah…five cars going across some dirt to some city somewhere…meh. What’s so special about that? Some endurance-test! Pfft!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen. Before you click that tantilising ‘Back’ button on your browser-window, hear me out here. While today something like this might not sound that amazing, five cars driving from China to France, one has to remember the context in which this race was run.

In 1907, cars were only just becoming common on our roads. They were flimsy, delicate machines, with frames made of metal and wood, wire-spoked wheels and delicate glass windscreens. They were started up by grabbing a crank-handle and winding it up until the engine caught on. They weren’t our modern racers that we have today. Half the time you were lucky that the car started at all! It was these, experiemental, new, fantastic horseless carriages that these brave pioneers of racing and consumer-confidence, that the eleven men in the race were attempting to use to cross a distance of…wait for it…9317 miles!…That’s just shy of 15,000km, folks. No mean feat for a machine that had only been invented a few years before and which was famous for breaking down every few miles. The point of the race was to show people that cars could, and would…do amazing things for society, and that if they could conquer this torturous trial by fire, they would have proved themselves worthy to replace the horse and carriage…plus, everyone would want a car! Now that they had proven themselves to be reliable machines.

But what cars were used in the race? Mercedes? Porsche? BMW? You wish.

The five cars used in the race were as follows:

A 1907 Itala. 7L engine with 40HP. That’s Ettore Guizzardi, Prince Scipione’s mechanic, sitting in the driver’s seat, just before the start in Peking. The car was stripped down to bare essentials to keep it light and fast. The weird-looking mudflaps are actually floorboards!

The very same Itala, 103 years later! Now in a museum in Italy

A 1907 Spyker. Actually, THE 1907 Spyker. This very car was used by Charles Goddard in the original race. It was used again in 2007, when a commemorative 100th anniversary rally of the race was held, along the same route

A Contal three-wheeler cyclecar, driven by Auguste Pons and his mechanic. This car was so unique and so obscure that a reproduction of it had to be manufactured from scratch for the 2007 anniversary race. Here it is:

This car was just hell on wheels. The power comes entirely from the back wheel. If the Contal went too fast, the entire thing could flip over backwards, if the front passenger area was not sufficiently weighed down. This caused all kinds of problems for the 2007 reenactors, and probably just as many problems for Pons and his companion, Foucault.

A pair of identical, 10HP, 1907 De Dions, donated by two French car-dealers, were also entered in the race. Here is a photograph of one of them

The Starting Line

The race’s start-date was June 10th, 1907. The contestants were warned beforehand that this race was not going to be a family drive in the countryside. Where the cars would be going, there would be no roads. At best, there were country lanes, furrowed dirt tracks and slippery, fine sand. The cars would have to drive across two deserts and several mountain ranges on their way to Paris, but the contestants were undeterred.

And so, with all this in mind, the race began! On the morning of the 10th of June, 1907…History would be made!…or not. Eleven men in five cars drove off from Paris, excited, eager, anxious and thinking of that big, fat, delicious prize at the end of the run…a magnum (that’s a 1.5 litre bottle, folks) of delicious French champagne! A band played music and Peking locals set off strings of loud, red Chinese firecrackers which exploded everywhere! Crowds cheered the men off on their epic and historic journey.

Peking, 1907. This photograph shows the five cars that participated in the race, driving off into history

The Original ‘Amazing Race’

If ‘Le Matin’s intention was to show the durability of the car and how it could be driven anywhere and do anything, its editors would have been biting off their fingernails like beavers when they saw the dreadful state the race was in, after just a few hours! Everything was going great for the competitors, if you discount the fact that once they got out of the Chinese capital, there was nothing but dirt roads…and the fact that it started raining…and the fact that there was a huge mountain range between China and Mongolia.

The route taken by the race’s competitors, from Peking, China, in the East, to Paris, France, in the West

This first mountain range was the death of almost everyone. The cars primative engines were too weak to power them up the steep and narrow mountain roads and men often had to push the cars up by hand, or get mules to pull on the cars with ropes. Going downhill was no fun either! Cars like these weren’t Humvees or Jeeps, they weren’t designed for cross-country, off-road driving! Their brakes, while sufficient on adequately paved roads, were unable to stop the automobiles on their harrowing downhill slides on the narrow and treacherous mountain passes! Prince Scipione’s Itala went sliding off down the mountain roads with his mechanic at the wheel, struggling to apply the brakes and keep the car on the road! An inch too far to the left or right and the car would go crashing down the side of the mountain!

After the mountains came the Gobi Desert. Here, Auguste Pons and his companion barely made it out alive. Their rickety and unpredictable automobile, which was little more than a tricycle with a gas-tank on it, ran out of go-juice! There were no Shell or Mobil gas-stations around and Pons hadn’t brought spare cans of petrol with him! Deciding that it was too dangerous to continue, Pons and his mechanic/co-driver left the race and headed back to China. On foot. Mind you, this was in the middle of a desert. If not for some wandering Mongolian gypsies, they would’ve died from dehydration! But what about their Contal? It was left to rust in the desert and was never recovered.

The other four racers kept right on truckin’. They knew where they were going because they were able to follow telegraph-wires through the desert, which was their plan, so that they wouldn’t get lost. At one of the checkpoints, a tiny village called Hong Pong in nothern Mongolia, Luigi Barzini, the Italian journalist, headed into the town’s only telegraph office to send his report back to Europe. He picked up the telegraph-form to fill out his message and noticed the number ’1′ on the top of the sheet. He mistakenly assumed that he was the first person to send a telegram that day, from Hong Pong. In a way, he was correct. He was the very first person to send a telegram…FROM Hong Pong! This was the first time the telegraph had been used in the village since it had been introduced back in 1901!

The race was not all smooth sailing, as this photograph graphically illustrates:

That’s Prince Scipione’s Itala, which broke through the deck of a bridge while driving through Mongolia! Fortunately, the car’s well-inflated tyres prevented any serious damage. It took three hours to get the car out of the hole it made for itself, but once on four wheels again, the prince’s mechanic gave the crank a few turns and the car started right up again!

The race certainly took its toll on the cars. And not just by having them crash through bridges! There were flat tyres, engines overheating and a myriad of other problems. To prevent their cars from boiling over in the searing Gobi Desert heat, the contestants fed their cars their own drinking-water! Prince Scipione’s Itala lost a wheel in the race and had to have it remade by a Russian blacksmith halfway through the race! Using only a hatchet to shape the wood, the highly-skilled village wheelwright managed to build a new wheel from scratch for a machine he most likely, had never seen before in his life! Michelin, Dunlop and Pirelli, famous tyre-manufacturers, sponsered various race-competitors to use their tyres to prove their longevity.

But of course, cars can only drive so far before they run out of fuel. Fortunately, the race-planners had thought of this in advance. At each checkpoint along the race-track, apart from food, drink and a telegraph-key to send journalistic reports to Europe, there were also fuel-dumps so that the cars could top up on gas during the race.

So far, the cars had gone through everything imaginable. Rivers, blistering heat, flat tyres, overheating engines and now, freezing sub-artic temperatures as the race entered the unforgiving terrain of Siberia. Driving through the frigid air was tricky at best. Charles Goddard was lucky to know how to drive! He’d never been behind the wheel of one of these newfangled…motor-cars…before the race! He had to have lessons on how to drive before he entered!

On the 20th of July, well in the lead, Prince Scipione, his mechanic and their journalist travelling-companion arrived in Europe. They were winning and nothing could stop them! NOTHING!!…ahem…apart from a stubborn Belgian policeman. While passing through Belgium, a police-officer ordered Prince Scipione to pull over! He had stopped the prince for exceeding the speed-limit. The prince gave the officer a good talking-to, explaining that he was in the middle of a race! The officer, on learning that this car with all kinds of weird damage on it, had just driven from nothern China halfway around the world to Belgium, had to consult his superiors before allowing the prince to drive on in the race; he simply did not believe the prince, first time around. Fact is truly stranger than fiction!

On the 10th of August, 1907, the race was over. Triumphant and exhausted, Prince Scipione, Luigi the journalist and Ettore, their mechanic, drove into Paris, the winners! In his final article on the race, Luigi Barzini penned the following lines:

“It all seems absurd and impossible; I cannot convince myself that we have come to the end, that we have really arrived!”

On the 30th of August, twenty days later, the Spyker, followed by the two De Dions, arrived in Paris. Charles Goddard wasn’t behind the wheel of the Spyker; due to money-troubles, he wasn’t able to finish the race! But his car won second place and that was probably good enough for him! Georges Cromier came third and in last place, Victor Collignon. As Monsieur Pons had never finished the race, he was disqualified and wasn’t offered an official place in the race’s end.

Of all the cars used in the race, the Spyker and the Itala still survive, restored and currently preserved in motoring museums. An interesting little story: Prince Scipione’s Itala, painted bright red for the race, fell into the harbour when it was being unloaded for the big event! To prevent rust, the car was repainted battleship grey…the only paint the harbour-workers had on hand at the time. If you’ve ever wondered why Italian race-cars are red today, it’s because after the Prince won the race aaaaall the way back in 1907, Italy adopted red as its official racing-colour and red remains that colour to this day.

The winning 1907 Itala, as it appears today

As a finishing point, this article was a fascinating bit of history to read, research and write about. Anyone wanting to know a bit more about this historic race can read about it below:

http://www.pekingparis.com/index.html

http://www.unmuseum.org/autorace.htm

These two links were my main sources for this article and they provided invaluable little titbits and pieces of information while I was reading up on it.

If you travel around Southeast Asia, in countries such as Singapore, Japan, China, Malaysia and Vietnam, you might be priveliged to see a small group of men who now constitute a small portion of what was once Asia’s main form of public transport. From the mid-19th century until the 1970s, the rickshaw and the trishaw were two forms of manpowered vehicles which were to be found in abundance in Asia, immortalised in such novels as “The Quiet American”, which takes place in 1950s Vietnam.

These days, stumbling across a trishaw-cyclist or a even more rarely, a rickshaw-puller, is like stumbling across a bakery that still makes bread by hand. You know they’re still out there, and yet when you see one, you’re still amazed that such a thing has survived in our modern, fast-paced, 21st century world, which surely has no place for an old, wrinkled trishaw-cyclist providing a public-transport service which is now more used by tourists than by locals.

During a recent trip to Singapore (If you’re wondering why there’s a sudden lack of articles, that’s why!), I began wondering what it was like back in the “good old days”, when trishaws and rickshaws were more plentiful, or at least, as plentiful, as modern taxicabs, and what it was like to ride in one, operate one and what it was like to live with them heading up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night.

The Birth of the Rickshaw

A rickshaw as most people imagine it, is a two-wheeled, human-powered vehicle. It has a seat for two (three at a stretch) people across the axle of the rickshaw, and two long poles which the rickshaw-puller grips with his hands. As the rickshaw-puller walks or jogs, he pulls the rickshaw along behind him. This mode of transport was invented in Japan where it was called the jinrikisha, or literally, a “human-powered vehicle”.

Rickshaws were common in several Asian countries throughout the 19th century; they were a cheap and fairly efficient form of public transport, they provided ready employment for the unemployed and they were easy to look after. The fact that they also had no fossil-fuels emmissions had not dawned on the average 19th century Asian as another possible asset to the rickshaw’s practicality and fame. It’s generally believed that rickshaws came into the public consciousness around 1868. It was at ths time, during the Meji Period in Japanese history, when Japan was rapidly modernising, that there was a surplus of labour but a shortage of transport. Combining one with the other saw the birth of the rickshaw.

Rickshaws in Japan, ca. 1897

Rickshaws soon became incredibly popular. Before the century was out, there were upwards of 40,000 of them in Tokyo alone. The Japanese government began regulating the construction and operation of rickshaws when it recognised that these would soon become a popular and widespread form of public transport, in need of official regulation.

Rickshaws spread rapidly throughout Asia in the late 19th century, arriving in places such as India, Singapore, British Malaya, Siam (Thailand) and French Indochina (Vietnam) from the 1880s through to the turn of the century.

The coming of the Trishaw

Necessity is the mother of Invention, they say. Right now, Necessity was mothering something new in Asia. The rise of the ‘safety-bicycle’ (the modern, chain-driven, pedal-powered bicycle) in the 1880s saw either very bored or very creative individuals fashion a new form of transport out of their rickshaws. Soon, rickshaw-pullers were cutting up bicycles and adding them onto their rickshaws, either at the front, sides or back, creating three-wheeled vehicles instead of two-wheeled. And with a chain-drive, too! These new vehicles were called ‘trishaws’ and they would be a mainstay in Asian street-traffic from the 1900s until almost the 1980s, when their numbers seriously began to dwindle.

Starting in the mid 1880s, however, trishaw usage began to rise, especially in countries such as Indochina, Singapore and British Malaya. Trishaws were faster, stronger, able to carry heavier loads and for once, people could get somewhere faster than someone could walk them there. There was a tradeoff, however, in that trishaws were sometimes seen as bulky and unmanuverable. Their larger, heavier frames and added mechanics of the pedals, handlebars and chain-drive meant that they could be harder to turn, stop and start than their lighter cousins, the rickshaws. Despite this, trishaws grew in popularity, spreading throughout Southeast Asia.

Trishaws such as this, often made out of modified bicycles, were very common in several East-Asian countries from the 1900s until the 1970s

The 1920s-1950s saw a rise in the number of trishaws. The Second World War saw the need for fast transport throughout Asian jungles, which was best supplied by the humble bicycle. Before, during and after WWII, bicycles were purchased and modified by rickshaw-pullers to create their own trishaws, along with some purposely-built trishaws.

Two British nurses enjoying a trishaw-ride through Singapore, ca. 1946

Operating a Trishaw

Due to the cheapness of their construction and the considerable stamina and bodily strength required to operate one for several hours each day, trishaws were often owned or rented by the poorer members of society. The person who pedalled you around Singapore or Kuala Lumpur or Saigon might not be the person who actually owned the trishaw, in most cases, the trishaw might be owned by someone else, who got a cut of the trishaw cyclist’s takings in turn for renting this fellow his vehicle. There were occasions, however, where the trishaw was owned and operated by the person who you met on the driver’s seat, who shouted his prices out at you as you shuffled by in the equatorial heat, promising to get you from point A to point B for “just fi’ dollah, sah!”.

Fares for a trishaw-ride were sometimes fixed within a certain area-of-operation. For example, any trips within the limits of the city center would cost $2, whereas any trips beyond that area were negotiable between the driver and the passenger/s.

Due to their predictably low fares, trishaw cyclists had to work whenever they could, to make ends meet. If this meant working at night or working in pouring tropical monsoons, they did it. Anything to earn a few more dollars, cents, ringgit or baht. Historically (and maybe even still today), being a rickshaw-cyclist was one of the lowest occupations you could have, although considering the kinds of jobs that unskilled workers could end up with, the trishaw offered a certain level of freedom and financial security.

The Trishaw Today

Once restricted solely to Southeast Asia, the trishaw or the ‘cycle-rickshaw’ as some people now call it, also called ‘pedicabs’ or ‘cyclos’ in some places, is now spreading further afield. They can now be found in cities in the United States (most notably New York City), in Europe and even in Australia. The flat landscapes of the cities where trishaws are found means that they can be used there efficiently. The fact that trishaws are quiet, light, relatively fast and non-polluting are making them an increasingly attractive form of transport in recent years, for those who have the planet’s health at heart. Who knows? With increasing pressure to find “Green” ways to power our vehicles, the trishaw might one day replace the taxicab on the streets again…

Steam wafts out and smoke blasts from the smokestack. A bell swings back and forth, dinging and clanging and a powerful steam-whistle lets out a deafening, farewell blast! Metal creaks and rattles and an enormous and majestic locomotive powers its way out of the station and off into history. On the platform, wellwishers, friends and relatives wave goodbye to the passengers lucky enough to ride on one of mankind’s most amazing inventions ever…the original ‘choo-choo’ train…the steam-powered locomotive.

For over 100 years, steam-trains have been objects of mystery, romance, amazement and awe. From the first quarter of the 1800s until the 1950s, these giant, fire-eating, smoke-belching, steam-pumping monsters have transported billions of people billions of miles across the countries of the world. Even though they’ve long since been made obsolete by the rise of diesel and electrical-powered trains, steam locomotives continue to capture the imaginations of millions of history-buffs, train enthusiasts and mechanical maniacs around the world. This article will look into the history, evolution and workings of the boyhood dream of thousands of fully-grown men: the operation and the working lives of the railroads and the original, classic…choo-choo train.

Before the Steam Locomotive

It’s hard to imagine the world without trains these days, isn’t it? Imagine going from Sydney to Melbourne, from London to Edinbrugh, from Chicago to Los Angeles…by car! A trip that would take a few hours or a couple of days by train, would take days or even weeks by car. But before even cars came along, you would have to make those same arduous, dangerous journeys with a horse and cart, which would take even longer. In the western United States, going from San Francisco to Chicago meant a long, dangerous and sometimes even deadly journey by covered wagons rumbling in convoy-formation over dusty, bumpy roads through the middle of nowhere. You were susceptable to breakdowns, starvation and Indian attacks. In both the US and the UK, travelling long distances was a matter of loading up a stage-coach and rumbling off down the road. Stage-coaches were so-called, because they completed their journeys in stages. You rode from point A to point B, but on the way, you had to stop at Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 on the road, to change or rest the horses, to buy food or to repair damage to your coach or carriage. It was dangerous and long going…and you can bet it wasn’t very comfortable.

The Birth of Steam

Before steam locomotives came along, there were just steam ‘engines’. A steam ‘engine’ is simply a device, powered by steam, that performs a task, and which doesn’t necessarily move a train across a set of tracks.

The idea that the vapour from boiled water, pressurised and released at regulated intervals, could move machined parts to create a working contraption practical enough to have an application in the manufacturing or production industries, is an old one. People had been toying with steam-power for centuries. The first steam-powered machines were stationary ones: These steam-engines powered pumps which pumped water. Other steam-engines might provide power to looms or mills to make textiles or to crush grains to make flour. But sooner or later, someone was bound to ask: “Why can’t these engines move themselves instead of moving something else? Why can’t they move…people instead?”

The idea of using steam-power as a form of transport, which naturally led to the creation of the steam locomotive, was born.

Experimental Steam-Trains

If you want to be really finicky about terminology, a ‘train’ is a line of cars or carriages or trucks, shackled together. Like a wagon-train, or a semi-trailer train. The machine that pulls the train and which provides the power, is the locomotive. These days, a ‘train’ and a ‘locomotive’ are generally seen as synonymous, and for the sakes of convenience and understanding, they’ll be just that, for this article.

The first steam-trains arrived on the rails in the very early 1800s. An Englishman named Richard Trevithick was able to construct a steam-engine small enough to be seated on a wheeled platform. Using additional wheels and pistons, he was able to show that steam-power could move a wheeled vehicle and that this technology might one day be used to transport people. Previous to this, steam-engines were huge, stationery objects, much too large to power a moving vehicle. The metallurgy to create strong and compact-enough steam-engines simply didn’t exist back then. But Trevithick was certain that he had something going here. And over the next few decades, other inventors and innovators would examine his designs and add or improve on them, to develop the steam-train we know and love today.

The first steam locomotives were treated much like the first cars were, about a hundred years later. They were seen as novelties. Silly little machines for the wealthy, which would never gain a prominent place in society. Early steam-trains were little more than amusement-park rides, such as the ‘Catch Me If You Can’ miniature-railroad which existed as a fairground attraction in England in the early 1800s. This train ran around an enclosed, circular track, and Britons could marvel at this whimsical little machine which they never imagined, might one day transport them hundreds of miles in a day!

The first practical developments in steam-locomotive technology started in the 1820s and 1830s. Men such as Robert Stevenson, began to see potential in steam-power. The potential to transport people and goods long distances. But in order to transport things, steam first had to be harnessed in a way so as to move a vehicle reliably. A big problem with early steam-locomotives was that the steam-pressure was unreliable and the power-output was so variable that nobody thought it would ever work. Pioneers like Stevenson changed this by inventing steam-locomotives such as the Rocket:

Stevenson’s ‘Rocket’ locomotive

While today this kooky little tin can on wheels hardly travels at ‘rocket’ speed (its max was a mere 29 miles an hour!), Stevenson’s design and his improvements on Trevithick’s early, experimental steam-trains, showed the public what a steam-locomotive could really do, if people were willing to have a bit of belief and were willing to do a bit of experiementation and development. The era of the steam-powered locomotive had arrived.

The First Practical Steam-Locomotives

Daring designers and inventors such as Stevenson had proved to the world that steam-trains were a practical means of transport. When people began to see how useful trains would be in transporting them greater distances, they began to get really interested in this new technology, and by the late 1820s, regular steam-train lines were operating in England, followed closely by the United States.

The USA was the natural place for steam trains to develop and grow into powerful machines. This wide, flat country needed a quick, dependable and safe way of crossing its vast stretches of land which would take a wagon train weeks to cross, when a steam-locomotive could take just days.

The first steam-trains in the US arrived in the early 1830s. They were imports from England, since America did not have the facilities to produce its own trains at the time. The trains which the English gave to the Americans were called ‘John Bulls’, presumably named after John Bull, what was seen as the national personification of the United Kingdom (much like how Uncle Sam is the personification of the USA).

A painting of a typical ‘John Bull’ locomotive, the kind of steam-train that existed in the USA in the 1830s

By the 1840s, the permanence of steam-locomotives had been established. Although still clunky, noisy and of questionable practicality and even though they transported people in uncomfortable, wooden carriages which were generally open to the elements, even though they rattled and shook like castanets, they were here to stay. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, railroad lines spread across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, taking telegraph poles with them and linking up the states and counties of the countries which they were built in.

The Rise of the Railroads

Developments throughout the 19th century continued to improve and refine steam-trains until they more or less fitted into the idealised image that we have of them today. While everyone thinks that steam-trains burnt coal, the truth is that most early steam-trains actually burnt wood! Coal had to be mined and broken up. Wood just had to be chopped down and split into logs…something that people were doing all the time, anyway, so it was easier to get.

Locomotives started pulling longer and longer trains and passengers were beginning to enjoy the comforts and joys of train-travel. Journeys that took days by wagon now took a few hours by rail. You could leave one city in the morning, and arrive in your destination city by the evening. New communities and towns sprang up alongside railroads and people began to move around. Goods which previously were unavailable in one part of a country could now be transported cheaply and efficiently by trains, and commerce began to grow.

The American Civil War in the 1860s showed just how important trains had become. Steam-power allowed troops, ammunition, food and materials to be transported quickly to the battlefronts, and trains needed to become faster and more powerful.

The Transcontinental Railroad

Up until 1863, it had been a dream of American president Abraham Lincoln, to have a railroad that would lead from one end of the USA to the other. A big, strong, thread of steel that would sew the country up and bring it closer together. In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, this dream was finally realised.

In a joint venture, two companies, starting at opposite ends, would build a single railroad line which would link Chicago and San Francisco. The Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad were those two companies, one starting in San Francisco, the other in Chicago, working east and westwards, respectively.

Building the transcontinental railroad, or the ‘Overland Route’ as it was also called, was a major engineering feat. To the Chicago-based Union Pacific Co., the going was pretty easy, most of the land they covered was flat and easy to work on. But the Central Pacific Co. had to hack its way through the millions of tons of rock that made up the famous Rocky Mountains. To do this, they employed thousands of Chinese labourers. The Chinese had come to California about a decade before, looking for gold, but now, they were going to be used to aid in the cause of mechanical progress.

The railroad was finished in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, where the Chinese and American workers of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, in a ceremonial show of unified work, laid the last set of tracks together, and where the ceremonial golden rail-spikes were nailed into the ground, to signify the successful completion of Lincoln’s dream.

A photograph taken at the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad

The Golden Age of Railroading

With entire countries and continents now linked up by threads of steel, the Golden Age of the Railroad had begun, and it was being powered by nothing more than flames and boiling water. It is this period in history which many people dream about, lust after and drool over, when they think about steam-trains. But what was it like back in the 1870s, until steam-trains finally became obsolete in the 1950s?

Driving a Steam-Train

Every little boy has probably grown up, wanting to drive a steam-train. They want to pull the levers, yank on the whistle-cord, shovel the coal and ring the bells. They want to hear the “Whoooo!” of the train-whistle as it clatters along at breakneck speeds! Like the boy in the ‘Polar Express’ movie, they want to yank on the whistle-cord and yell out over the clanking of the machinery, “I’ve wanted to do that my whole life!”

But what is it actually like, having to drive one of these great big, clanking metal beasts?

Everyone has a pretty rudimentary understanding of how a steam-train works, and really, that’s all you need, because they were very simple machines…in theory, anyway. They relied on steam-pressure, heat, fuel and water. This is how they worked:

First, the boiler was filled with water. A steam-train’s boiler could take hundreds of gallons of water. Once the boiler was filled, the fire in the firebox in the cab was lit.

Early steam-trains used wood to fire their boilers, but this was eventually replaced by coal, which remained as the mainstay of steam-powered locomotives until their demise in the mid 20th century. Coal was easier to toss into the firebox and it burned much hotter than wood, which made it more efficient. Once the fire was lit inside the firebox, it was the job of the fireman to shovel as much coal as he could into the firebox to build up the blaze to a blistering, white hot heat. This heat boiled the water inside the boiler and inside the fire and steam-tubes which surrounded the firebox.

Once the boiler was full and the fire was burning white hot, the fireman and engineer had to sit back and wait for things to happen. While they tapped their feet and checked their watches, the fire continued to burn. As it burned, it boiled the water which turned to steam. When the train wasn’t moving, the excess steam was vented through special safety-valves in the train. Failure to vent the steam could result in pressure building up too much and the entire boiler exploding!

When the train was ready to go, the engineer pulled on a lever which opened the valve in the ‘steam-dome’, one of the two humps on the top of the boiler. By opening the valve in the steam-dome, he released steam from the boiler down a set of pipes towards the pistons. As the steam-pressure built up, it forced the pistons forward, and this forced the driving-rods to move forward. The driving-rods were connected to the wheels, so when the rods moved, the wheels moved as well. At the end of this half-revolution, the steam switched positions in the piston-cylinder, thanks to a set of alternating valves, which forced the steam into the main pistons in the opposite end, forcing the piston back the other way, completing the rotation of the wheel, and forcing the spent steam out of the train through the smokestack at the front. When you see smoke coming out of a steam-train, half of that smoke is probably steam as well, spent steam coming from the pistons at the end of each revolution of the wheels. The distinctive ‘chuff-chuff’ sound that is synonymous with steam-trains, is the sound produced by the pistons with each revolution of the wheels and the exhaust of the spent steam.

Getting the train going was the easy part. What wasn’t so easy was maintaining speed and safety. Steam-locomotives required constant attention. There was no cruise control, no auto-pilot, no snooze-button. You had to keep an eye on everything. It was the job of the fireman to continually shovel coal into the firebox to keep it roasting hot so that the water would never stop being superheated and ready to produce steam. It was the job of the eingeer to do almost everything else.

Being an engineer was not exactly a cushy job. You had to keep your hand on the throttle, regulating steam-pressure all the time. Not enough steam-pressure and the train would stop. Too much, and the train either sped up, or it just blew up! You had to keep an eye out for obstructions on the tracks such as other trains, cows, people, fallen trees or landslides. You had to know when to speed up and when to slow down. Speeding up was pretty easy, stopping wasn’t. Most steam-trains did not have pneumatic breaks in the 19th century. These days, brakes are worked by air or oil-pressure. Back in the 1880s, they were worked by muscle and brawn.

If a train had to stop, the fireman and the engineer would have to stop the train by hand. Literally. They grabbed the brake-lever and they pulled for all they were worth! The lever operated simple wooden or metal brakes that stopped the wheels by friction.

The basics of steam-train mechanics changed very little from the late 1800s until the end of the era in the 1950s. There were improvements on steam-pressure efficiency, locomotive-design and speed, but how an engine got moving and how it stopped remained unchanged for over 100 years.

The famous and enormous ‘Challenger’-class steam-locomotive

The photo above, is of the famous ‘Challenger’-class steam-locomotive, which was built in the 1930s and 40s. You’ll notice that it has two sets of pistons. This was to make better use of the steam provided to the pistons from the boiler. The steam entered the rear pair of pistons first, moved those, and then the exhaust steam from there was fed into the front piston-cylinders which then turned the front wheels, providing more power for the same amount of steam. It was then ejected out of the engine through the smokestack. Double sets of pistons such as these, were just one innovation that designers introduced to steam-trains to make more efficient use of the steam produced by the boiler.

The Golden Age of Steam Trains led to all kinds of companies springing up. Nearly all of them had the word ‘Pacific’ in their names. Let’s look at them, shall we?

Central Pacific Railroad.
Canadian Pacific Railroad.
Union Pacific Railroad.
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.
California Pacific Railroad
Missouri Pacific Railroad.

The list goes on and on and on.

But there were a few lines which didn’t have the hallowed word ‘Pacific’ in them, which made it big. One of them was the 20th Century Limited, also simply called the ‘Century Limited’, which ran from New York to Chicago on a daily express service between the two cities. The 20th Century Limited was designed to provide people with speedy, efficient service between two of America’s greatest cities, and it did just that, for over half a century, from 1902 to 1967. It is said that the term ‘Red Carpet Treatment’ came from the Century Limited, from its habit of rolling out the red carpet (literally) to their carriages on the platform, so that its passengers would know where to go!

This swanky, 1930s Art-Deco, streamlined steam locomotive was one of several which had the great honour of pulling the train known to thousands as the legendary 20th Century Limited

The Pennsylvania Railroad gave its name to the famous Pennsylvania Station and the even more famous Hotel Pennsylvania (that’s PE6-5000!) in New York City.

But few other railroad companies captured the grandeur and mystery and luxury and romance of steam-powered locomotive travel, than the famous and legendary…

Orient Express.

The Orient Express

The Orient Express. The very words conjour up thoughts of mystery, romance, escapism, the ultimate European holiday, espionage and horror! For over 100 years, since the service first started in 1883, an express train, belching steam and smoke, has always thundered across the railways of Europe, whisking people from Calais in nothern France, to Istanbul in Turkey in the east.

Over the years, there have been several lines which have called themselves the Orient Express. There have been five in total, running from 1883 to the present day. Although they were interrupted by the World Wars, which ripped Europe apart from 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, they have continued to provide romantic and stunning service to passengers who wish to recapture the glamour of riding the rails as so many of our grandparents did, back in the 20s and 30s.

Railroad Time

One aspect of steam-train travel which many of us are probably familiar with, through film and television, is the iconic scene of a blue-suited conductor standing on a platform with a gold pocket watch in his hands, calling out the words: “All aboard!”.

Railroad pocket-watches had to be incredibly accurate. Here, a conductor and an engineer synchronise their watches before their next journey

Keeping trains running on time during the golden age of railroad travel in the USA and Canada was literally a matter of life and death. Failure to keep trains running on time could result in devastating train-wrecks which could (and did) cost men their lives. To combat this, the top American watch-companies of the day produced pocket watches called railroad chronometers to keep all the trains on the track and on time. There’s no fun in having a steam-train crash into another one and sending boiling water and flaming coal all over the place! You can read more about railroad chronometer or railroad-standard pocket watches here.

Here’s my own railroad-standard pocket watch:

it’s a 1960 Swiss-made Ball railroad chronometer with a 10kt gold-filled case. Specs are:

21 jewels.
16 size.
6 Adjustments + temperature & isochronism.
Micrometric regulator.
Large, Arabic numerals.
Every minute and second clearly marked.
Lever-set, crown-wind.
Screw-on caseback & bezel.
24-hour dial (this last specification was mandatory only for Canadian railroads, on which this watch was used. It wasn’t mandatory in the USA).