One of the most significant items in the Billups Garth Archives at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library is the court papers from an early 1840s lawsuit involving the “Tuscumbia, Courtland & Decatur Rail Road Company.”

That company was chartered in 1830 and began constructing a railroad around the Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River in 1832. The road between Tuscumbia and Decatur was completed on Dec. 15, 1834, and a locomotive and cars traveled the entire line.

The court file contains 40 documents about the railroad, some detailing the railroad’s construction and operations. The documents are historically significant as it was the first railroad built west of the Appalachian Mountains. Space does not allow a full review of all the fascinating information in the file so I have delved into the railroad’s locomotives, one of which has a Columbus connection.

The “Third and Fourth Annual Reports of the Officers of the Tuscumbia, Courtland & Decatur Rail Road Company” was published in 1836 at the office of The North Alabamian in Tuscumbia. It provided descriptions of the four locomotives owned by the railroad in 1835-36. They were the “Fulton,” “Pennsylvania,” “Comet” and “Triumph.”

“The ‘Fulton,’ made by Edw’d Bury, of Liverpool, stands charged at $4,915.04. She was first put upon the road about the 1st of June 1834 and has been a useful engine for her class. She is small. weighing only about 5 tons; 8 inch cylinders, and 16 inch stroke, driving wheels 4 1/2 feet diameter.

The ‘Pennsylvania,’ is the engine (before spoken of) which was brought from Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Rail-Road Company, and stands charged at $5,880.37. This engine has been of no service on the road; weighs about 9 or 10 tons, and about 3/4 of her weight on the driving wheels, which renders it altogether too heavy for the good of the road; her boiler is also deficient in fire-surface, so that she in not capable of generating a sufficiency of steam. Her cylinders 10 inches diameter, 18 inches stroke, driving wheels 4 1/2 feet in diameter. After a trial on the road with this engine, she was taken off and placed along side of the machine shop, where she had been used to this day, to drive the machinery about the works. A common engine is being put up to answer this purpose, and as soon as this is effected, we design taking her to pieces, enlarging the boiler, and putting her on eight wheels, carrying the front part on four small wheels, (two and 1/2 feet diameter,) and using four adhesion or driving wheels, by means of outside cranks and connexion; when this is accomplished, she will without doubt, answer a good purpose, and will be easy on the road.

The ‘Comet,’ from the West Point Foundry Association, New York, stands charged at $7,959.32; weighs about seven and 1/2 or eight tons; 10 inch cylinder, and 20 inches stroke; driving wheels four and 1/2 feet diameter. This engine has been of very little use to the Company, until about the first February last, in consequence of the bursting of one of her cylinders, as before described, (in the beginning of this report). When she was first put on the road she had four wheels of equal diameter, (four and 1/2 feet,) but as she had no connexion between the hind and fore wheels, the large wheels forward proved to be a disadvantage, and we dispensed with them, and put the forward part of the engine on a truck car with four wheels, 2 feet 6 inches diameter, which caused her to take the curves much better, and is found to answer an excellent purpose. This engine is used as a freight engine and performs well.

The ‘Triumph,’ made by M.W. Baldwin, of Philadelphia, cost $7,091.56. She was put on the road about the first of June last, and performs well. This engine is on six wheels; weighs six and 1/2 tons (without water;) 10 1/2 inches cylinder, 16 inch stroke, driving wheels 4 1/2 feet in diameter. She is remarkable for the great simplicity of her gearing, and at the same time, for the strength of all her parts. She has been in active service ever since her arrival, and the cost of repairs charged to her, to this date, only amount to $11.16. Being placed on six wheels, (and the weight nearly equally divided,) she is very easy on the road, but the want of sufficient adhesion, (in slippy weather,) through her driving wheels is frequently felt, although no apparatus is attached by means of which part of the weight of the tender is brought to bear on the driving wheels. Indeed, the want of adhesion between the driving wheels and the rails, in certain states of the weather, is a deficiency common to all engines, and a plan to obviate this has occupied our attention for some time, and a simple apparatus, which we have in contemplation, is confidently believed, will in a great degree, of not wholly remove this difficulty. The plan proposed is this: – Let a sort of hopper, (to hold a gallon or so,) be arranged just forward of the driving wheels, and above the frame of the engine, from which a tube will be projected downwards to within a small distance of the face of the rail. The hopper being filled with dry sand, will feed through the tube upon the rail. A cock, or regulator will be constructed in the tube to allow the sand to run is such quantities as may be desirable, or shut off entirely; for want of sand, water may be used – as it is a fact well-known, that the adhesion is quite as good with a perfectly wet rail as when perfectly dry.”

This story comes full circle in front of the Columbus and Greenville Railroad yard on 19th Street North, in Columbus. There sits “Baldwin No. 601,” a locomotive made by the same Baldwin Locomotive Works in Pennsylvania that had built the “Triumph,” which was put in service by the Tuscumbia, Courtland & Decatur Rail Road Company in 1835. “Baldwin No. 601” had been purchased by the C & G in 1926. The Baldwin firm was in business from 1825 to 1951.

Thanks to Carolyn Kaye for helping with this column.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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