BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Landmark Object: John Bull Locomotive

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Landmark Object: John Bull Locomotive:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIAHJB_160302_17.JPG: John Bull Locomotive, 1831 A marvel of its era John Bull, one of the earliest steam locomotives in the United States, was imported from England in 1831 for use on the first rail link between New York and Philadelphia. The engine tended to derail on uneven American tracks, but a set of guide wheels attached to the front solved the problem. John Bull and its cars were soon carrying passengers and freight between the nation's largest cities, reducing the trip from two days by road to five hours by rail. The Camden & Amboy Rail Road's 1834 annual report reveled in John Bull's quick success and marveled that the steam locomotive was "a power which has almost annihilated time and space." John Bull and its cars as they looked in 1831 before guide wheels were attached to the front of the locomotive.
2. SIAHJB_160302_24.JPG: Railroad Bridge, 1845 An innovative use of iron This is a section of the first iron railroad bridge built in the United States. The bridge, built in 1845, carried coal-hauling trains of the Philadelphia & Reading Rail Road across a small creek near West Manayunk, Pennsylvania. Because the railroad threatened to take business away from the Schuylkill Canal, angry boatmen made futile attempts to sabotage the competition by burning its wooden bridges. Iron was an unusual and expensive choice for a bridge, but it was stronger and longer-lasting than wood, faster to erect than stone, and fire-resistant. It ushered in a new era of engineering.
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AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: John Bull Locomotive, First Floor East
This landmark object -- the John Bull Locomotive -- identifies the transportation and technology wing of the museum.
On view is the steam locomotive John Bull and a section of the first iron railroad bridge in America.
The steam locomotive John Bull was built in 1831 and ran for 35 years, pulling trains of passengers and cargo between the two largest cities of the time, Philadelphia and New York. The locomotive propelled trains at 25 to 30 miles per hour. The John Bull, which was ordered from England by Robert Stevens for his railroad company, was named after the mythical gentleman who symbolized England. It was assembled by Isaac Dripps, a young steamboat mechanic who had never seen a locomotive before.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Landmark Object: John Bull Locomotive) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2012_DC_SIAH_John_Bull: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Landmark Object: John Bull Locomotive (1 photo from 2012)
- 2005_DC_SIAH_John_Bull: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Landmark Object: John Bull Locomotive (1 photo from 2005)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2016 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Seven relatively short trips this year: two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City), my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California), a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral, two additional trips to New York City, and a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing. Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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