Existing comment:
Horsepower: Hoofs Between the Rails:
Passenger coaches were first drawn by horses on the railroads.
Got a horse? You, too, could have hauled cars on the rail roads of the "Main Line." In fact, anyone with a horse, a car that fit on the tracks, and the money to pay the tolls could haul along the level stretches of the APRR.
Three relays of horses were required for a one-way passenger trip between Johnstown and Holidaysburg, but one team usually made a three day round-trip with freight. Some companies and individual forwarders owned their own horses, others hired them at $1.25 for each ton they pulled.
Each driver was free to set his own schedule in the first year of operation on the APRR -- when he started, how fast he traveled, where and when he stopped to feed his horses -- chaos resulted! In the second year, the State set regulations and began to eliminate the problem by running government-owned locomotives in the place of horses.
It came as no surprise in 1850, when horses had almost vanished from the roads and their teamsters were singing:
"Oh, it's once I made money, by driving my team,
But now all is hauled on the railroad by steam,
May the devil catch the man that invented the plan,
For it ruined us wagoners and every other man." |