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Engraving of Ashbel Welch.

Descriptive

Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = other); (type = text)
Rutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections)
Extension
DescriptiveEvent
Type
Digital exhibition
Label
All aboard! Railroads and New Jersey, 1812-1930.
AssociatedEntity
Role
curator
Name
Fowler, David J. (David Joseph)
AssociatedEntity
Role
curator
Name
Perrone, Fernanda.
AssociatedEntity
Role
curator
Name
Radick, Caryn.
AssociatedEntity
Role
project manager
Name
De Fino, Melissa.
AssociatedObject
Type
Exhibition case
Relationship
Forms part of
Name
The T-Rail
Detail
In 1830, Robert L. Stevens (1787–1856), “President & Engineer” of the newly chartered Camden and Amboy Railroad, travelled to England to order rails and a locomotive for the company. He had gained valuable experience in steamboat design and construction from working with his father, John Stevens. While on the voyage, he whittled from a piece of wood the T-rail which, with little variation, eventually became the standard in the United States. Formerly, early railroads in America had used an iron strap laid out on wooden rails. Stevens had difficulty finding an American rolling mill to produce the rails, so the earliest ones were manufactured in Britain. The first T-rails made in America were rolled in 1846 by the Cooper and Hewitt firm in Trenton. Over the next decade they came into common use. Stevens also developed the “hook-headed spike” and the “fish plate” for fastening the rails, and he replaced the stone blocks that rails were originally fastened to with logs that were shored up with crushed rocks. Thus he presaged the wooden “sleepers” still in use on today’s roadbeds. In 1882, an engineer quipped that in America “poverty is the mother on invention” because engineers such as Stevens “used cross-ties as a temporary substitute because too poor to buy stone blocks, and so made good roads because they were not rich enough to make bad ones.” Another Stevens invention was the pilot, or “cowcatcher” attached to the front of locomotives. He never patented any of his railroad inventions. The miles of rail crisscrossing the countryside are Robert L. Stevens’s “imperishable monument.”
AssociatedObject
Type
Exhibition caption
Detail
Engraving of Ashbel Welch (1809–1882). Welch was a noted engineer who lived in Lambertville. He was an official of the Camden and Amboy Railroad who successfully agitated for the adoption of a standardized track gauge. From: Biographical Encyclopaedia of New Jersey of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1877).
TitleInfo
Title
Engraving of Ashbel Welch.
Subject
Name (authority = LC-NAF)
NamePart (type = personal)
Welch, Ashbel, 1809-1882.
OriginInfo
DateIssued (encoding = w3cdtf); (keyDate = yes); (qualifier = exact)
1877
RelatedItem (type = is part of)
TitleInfo
Title
The biographical encyclopaedia of New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1877).
Identifier (type = url)
http://www.archive.org/details/biographicalency01gala
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
All aboard! Railroads and New Jersey, 1812-1930.
Identifier (type = local)
rucore00000002143
TypeOfResource
StillImage
Identifier (type = hdl)
http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore00000002143.Document.000063124
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T3959GNB
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Rights

RightsDeclaration (AUTHORITY = RU_Archives); (ID = RU_Archives_v1)
Rutgers University owns the copyright in this work. You may make use of this resource, with proper attribution, for educational and other non-commercial uses only. Contact the Special Collections and University Archives of the Rutgers University Libraries to obtain permission for reproduction, publication, and commercial use.
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Source

Shelving
Locator (TYPE = Call number)
F133.B56 1877
Note
SNCLNJ
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Technical

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Document
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image/tiff
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application/x-tar
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119418880
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