road building in other parts of the country in the years
immediately following. The experiences of a participant in this trial
trip are described about forty years later in a letter written by Judge
J.L. Gillis of Philadelphia:

"In the early part of the month of August of that year [1831], I
left Philadelphia for Canandaigua, New York, traveling by stages and
steamboats to Albany and stopping at the latter place. I learned that a
locomotive had arrived there and that it would make its first trip
over the road to Schenectady the next day. I concluded to lie over and
gratify my curiosity with a first ride after a locomotive.

"That locomotive, the train of cars, together with the incidents of the
day, made a very vivid impression on my mind. I can now look back from
one of Pullman's Palace cars, over a period of forty years, and see that
train together with all the improvements that have been made in
railroad travel since that time.... I am not machinist enough to give a
description of the locomotive that drew us over the road that day, but
I recollect distinctly the general make-up of the train. The train
was composed of coach bodies, mostly from Thorpe and Sprague's stage
coaches, placed upon trucks. The trucks were coupled together with
chains, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive
started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk
the passengers who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from
under their hats, and in stopping, came together with such force as to
send them flying from the seats.

"They used dry pitch for fuel, and there being no smoke or spark
catcher to the chimney or smoke-stack, a volume of black smoke, strongly
impregnated with sparks, coals, and cinders, came pouring back the whole
length of the train. Each of the tossed passengers who had an umbrella
raised it as a protection against the smoke and fire. They were found
to be but a momentary protection, for I think in the first mile the
last umbrella went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the
frames, when a general melee took place among the deck passengers, each
whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. They presented a very motley
appearance on arriving at the first station. Then rails were secured and
lashed between the trucks, taking the slack out of the coupling chains,
thereby affording us a more steady run to the top of the inclined plane
at Schenectady.

"The inciden