A timely Accession.
A most recent addition to our Society's collection is a centenary medal (in bronze) just issued by the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, a memorial of its hundredth year.
Its obverse depicts a
National Limited train drawn by one of the largest modern passenger locomotives, with the spirit of transportation guiding its flight.
The sculptor shows the spirit, not with angelic wings and filmy drapery, but as a rugged human, flying with outstretched right hand reaching over and beyond and pointing the way ahead.
The bordering legend is ‘One Hundred Years—Safety, Strength, Speed.’
The reverse border is ‘Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, 1827-1927,’ and in marked contrast shows
Peter Cooper's ‘Tom Thumb,’ the first steam locomotive built in
America.
The ‘Tom Thumb’ presents no greater contrast than did the first used on the
Boston and
Lowell, which made its initial journey to
Boston on June 24, 1835.
Our frontispiece presents the models of the engine imported from
England, a passenger car, a ‘burthen car,’ construction and hand-car, also a snow-plow.
Waterman Brown of
Woburn, an earlier employee on the road, made this most instructive exhibit, which is now in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society in
Boston.
Mr. Brown lost an arm by accident on the road at West Medford, and was ever after kept in the company's service.
He was fireman on one of the early locomotives, which was trying to beat an earlier record of nearly a mile a minute, when it overtook a stalled freight train in the cut above Grove street.
[p. 48]
To see the steel monsters of today, go up to the
High and
Canal street grade crossings,—‘
stop, look, listen,’ when the
Canadian Pacific and Pullmans speed by. Stand safely away, and remember that when the road was chartered it was expected that people might operate their own vehicles on it by horse power.
