As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and canal, just as it built turnpikes.  No cars, no motive power of any sort, except at the inclined planes, were to be supplied.  Anybody could use it who paid two cents a mile for each passenger, and $4.92 for each car sent over the rails.  At first, therefore, firms and corporations engaged in the transportation business owned their own cars, their own horses, employed their own drivers, and charged such rates as the state tolls and sharp competition would allow.  The result was dire confusion.  The road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in opposite directions to pass each other.  But the drivers were an unruly set, paid no attention to turnouts, and would meet face to face on the track, just as if no turnouts existed.  A fight or a block was sure to follow, and somebody was forced to go back.  To avoid this, the road was double-tracked in 1834, when, for the first time, two locomotives dragging long trains of cars ran over the line from Lancaster to Philadelphia.  As the engine went faster than the horses, it soon became apparent that both could not use the road at the same time; and after 1836 steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotive was furnished by the state, which now charged for hauling the cars.[1]

[Footnote 1:  On the early railroads see Brown’s History of the First Locomotives in America.]

[Illustration:  The first railroad train in New Jersey (1831)]

The puffing little locomotive bore little resemblance to its beautiful and powerful successors.  No cab sheltered the engineer, no brake checked the speed, wood was the only fuel, and the tall smokestack belched forth smoke and red-hot cinders.  But this was nothing to what happened when the train came to a bridge.  Such structures were then protected by roofing them and boarding the sides almost to the eaves.  But the roof was always too low to allow the smokestack to go under.  The stack, therefore, was jointed, and when passing through a bridge the upper half was dropped down and the whole train in consequence was enveloped in a cloud of smoke and burning cinders, while the passengers covered their eyes, mouths, and noses.

%320.  Railroads in 1835.%—­In 1835 there were twenty-two railroads in operation in the United States.  Two were west of the Alleghanies, and not one was 140 miles long.  For a while the cars ran on “strap rails” made of wooden beams or stringers laid on stone blocks and protected on the top surface, where the car wheel rested, by long strips or straps of iron spiked on.  The spikes would often work loose, and, as the car passed over, the strap would curl up and come through the bottom of the car, making what was called a snake head.  It was some time before the all-iron rail came into use, and even then it was a small affair compared with the huge rails that are used at present.