Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: In 1828, Horatio Allen, an American engineer, became fascinated with the new means of transportation known as the railroad. He paid a visit to England to study the few railroads then in existence. He was very impressed. So much so that he bought four locomotives and had them shipped back across the Atlantic.

By that time, interest had become so great that two railroads were already under construction. One of them was the Baltimore and Ohio. This would eventually link the Middle Atlantic States with the growing and vigorous Midwest. However, a Southern State was to have the honor of America's first commercial railroad. Planned and built under Horatio Allen's direction, the railroad ran due west from Charleston, South Carolina to the river port of Hamburg on the Savannah River near present day Augusta. Goods could be shipped by river to Hamburg and transshipped on the railroad to Charleston thus avoiding the rival port of Savannah.

In addition to the work on the roadbed, Allen also designed and constructed America's first locomotive, "The Best Friend of Charleston." In June 1831, with South Carolina threatening secession from the Union during the Nullification Crisis, the Best Friend of Charleston's boiler exploded, killing the fireman and blowing iron around the landscape like an exploding artillery shell. Rebuilt and aptly renamed "Phoenix," it remained part of the Company's rolling stock for more than a decade.

At the end of 1830 there were 23 miles of working track in the United States, most of them across the low country of South Carolina. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. The Producer of A Moment in Time is Steve Clark.

Resources

Brown, D. Alexander. Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West. New York: Holt, Rienhart and Winston, 1977.

Silver, John F. Iron Road to the West: American Railroads in the 1850s. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Williams, John Hoyt. A Great and Shining Road, the Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Times Books, 1988.

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