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Jim Rader's Web site www.rader.org |
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RAILROADS.No railroads were built in lower Virginia before the time we left there to come to East Tennessee (about 1838), but several short lines of road had been built in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, and were in operation then. I never saw these railroads, but well remember the descriptions given me of them, by persons who had seen them. The track consisted of pieces of timber with strap iron spiked down on top of them. These spikes would soon come loose, and the ends of the straps would turn up, and were called "snake-heads." These snake-heads were sometimes forced up through the cars, and did great damage. Snake-heads were as common in early railroading as snags were in early steamboating. Scarcely was a trip ever made that some serious accident of some kind did not occur. Few of these mishaps were fatal to life, but they generally resulted in crippling the machinery so that horses or oxen, often both, had to be impressed in order to drag the clumsy locomotive and its load to the nearest station for repairs. The brakes were very poor and would not stop the train. When they came to a station, the engineer opened the safety valve and allowed the steam to escape, two big negroes would seize the end of the train, and hold it, while timbers would be placed across the track in front of the wheels. Both the engineer and the conductor favored a curved track in order that they might look back and see that everything was all right. |