Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

Do you want to run a railway, but can't afford a steam engine? Do you have 4 horses? Well, have we got a solution for you! The Impulsoria was a locomotive constructed in 1850 that was powered by horses on a treadmill following a design by Clemente Masserano . The locomotive came at a time when steam engines had been state-of-the-art technology for at least two decades, but when some railways still used horse power, and there was at least some debate as to whether the technology of steam was worth the cost. Thus, the locomotive was sort of a hybrid design that could satisfy these customers, at least that was the idea behind the patent. An excerpt from The Engineer and the Machinist  describes the Impulsoria in depth, " An ingenious way to use animal power for railway transport—so as to avoid the high costs of locomotives—has recently been invented in Italy and demonstrated on the South Western Railway. It involves placing animals inside a type of coach called an impulsoria. In...

The New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Railroad Company (NC&F) was a pioneer in the history of American railroads. It was opened in 1831, making it the first railroad in Delaware and one of the first in the US. It ran for about 16 miles from New Castle, Delaware, on the Delaware River, to Old Frenchtown Wharf , Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay.  It was intended to provide a faster and cheaper alternative to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, which opened in 1829 and connected the same two bodies of water. However, the NC&F faced competition from other railroads and canals in the region, and eventually became obsolete and abandoned. ( Right of Way ) Some sources, myself included at times, have labeled this as the first railroad abandonment in the United States, being abandoned in 1859. However, it is not even the first right of way to be abandoned in the State of Delaware, as that distinction belongs to the Dulaney Railroad . One could argue that this was the first comm...

Guest blogger Alain Bernier returns to us to discuss another forgotten part of Quebec's railroad heritage, the St Lawrence & Industry Village Railroad ! Once again, i f you'd be interested in doing a guest blog yourself, feel free to reach out, we always appreciate those willing to help add relevant content to our site!  The St. Lawrence and Industry Village Railroad, 1847-1881 © Alain Bernier, 2023 In Canada, as in many other countries, up until the second half of the 19th century, rivers and canals provided the main routes for long distance travel for goods and people.  Yet, the course of rivers did not always provide the shortest or most practical route between two destinations.  For example, to ship goods from Montreal, QC to upstate New York in the early 19 th century, ships and barges had to navigate down the St. Lawrence River to Sorel, QC where they would enter the Richelieu River, going upstream to Lake Champlain.  The first part of the journey up the r...

The Kansas City Clinton & Springfield Railway connected Olathe, KS with Ash Grove, MO along a 155 mile right of way .  KCC&S Steam Engine , c.1924. Springfield-Greene County Library. Built in 1885, it long paralleled the Kansas City and Southern Railway, which ran a quite similar route in spots. Eventually both lines became part of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway (" The Frisco "), who would purchase the railroad in 1928, incorporating parts of the line into it's Kansas City-Springfield route, while abandoning most stretches by the mid-1930's. This section was deemed inferior and redundant to the better constructed right of way, leading to its abandonment. The 1894 USGS Clinton Map shows the routes running in parallel to each other, and offers a hint at how close these rights of way were, in some spots running beside each other. Interestingly, much of these parts of the route are underwater today as a result of the construction of the  Truman Reserv...

The Oil Belt Railway was a very obscure, and very short lived, short line railroad that ran from Oblong to Bridgeport, Illinois, beginning service in 1913. The track was slightly less than 25 miles long between the two towns in southeastern Illinois. A branch line to Lawrenceville was proposed from Bridgeport, but was never constructed. ( Right of way ) It interchanged with the Illinois Central Railroad at Oblong and the B&O Southwestern Railroad in Bridgeport. Despite not running until 1913, construction actually began along this road four years prior in 1909. The fact that it took four years to get this line running should be a good indicator of the line's typical operations throughout its life.  Right of way on the 1930 Crawford County Plat Map , over a decade post-abandonment. (Historic Map Works) A narrow-gauge operation, one of the very few that were never converted to standard gauge in the state, the line hauled grain and hay to local farmers in the area, as well as ...