mparatively no effort
made to ballast the road. . . . No special precautions were taken to
insulate the rails from the earth or from each other."

The road started about fifty feet away from the generating station,
which in this case was the machine shop. Two of the "Z" type dynamos
were used for generating the current, which was conveyed to the two
rails of the road by underground conductors.

On Thursday, May 13, 1880, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, this historic
locomotive made its first trip, packed with as many of the "boys" as
could possibly find a place to hang on. "Everything worked to a charm,
until, in starting up at one end of the road, the friction gearing
was brought into action too suddenly and it was wrecked. This accident
demonstrated that some other method of connecting the armature with the
driven axle should be arranged.

"As thus originally operated, the motor had its field circuit in
permanent connection as a shunt across the rails, and this field circuit
was protected by a safety-catch made by turning up two bare ends of the
wire in its circuit and winding a piece of fine copper wire across from
one bare end to the other. The armature circuit had a switch in it which
permitted the locomotive to be reversed by reversing the direction of
current flow through the armature.

"After some consideration of the gearing question, it was decided to
employ belts instead of the friction-pulleys." Accordingly, Edison
installed on the locomotive a system of belting, including an
idler-pulley which was used by means of a lever to tighten the main
driving-belt, and thus power was applied to the driven axle. This
involved some slipping and consequent burning of belts; also, if the
belt were prematurely tightened, the burning-out of the armature.
This latter event happened a number of times, "and proved to be such
a serious annoyance that resistance-boxes were brought out from the
laboratory and placed upon the locomotive in series with the armature.
This solved the difficulty. The locomotive would be started with these
resistance-boxes in circuit, and after reaching full speed the operator
could plug the various boxes out of circuit, and in that way increase
the speed." To stop, the armature circuit was opened by the main switch
and the brake applied.

This arrangement was generally satisfactory, but the resistance-boxes
scattered about the platform and foot-rests being in the way, Edison
directed that some N