Part 2 of 4. Improvised parts, uncertain dimensions, broken wheels, missing copper, and repeated trial runs reveal what the Tom Thumb really was .. a working locomotive prototype built in iron and steam.

Project Backgrounder The Remarkable 95-Year Life of America’s Founding-Era Entrepreneur When Charles Carroll of Carrollton died in 1832 at the age of 95, the United States was almost unrecognizable from the British colony into which he had been born. He had lived under three British kings. He had watched the colonies rebel, helped create an independent nation, served in its first governments, invested in its growing economy, supported canals and other transportation improveme

On July 1, 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act. The law authorized the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, a project that would link the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean and reshape the future of the United States.

How one Maryland founder connected the Declaration of Independence to the dawn of the American railroad age.

Before there was a county, there was a railroad The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) was created in 1827 as Baltimore’s strategic answer to the new transportation economy forming around The National Road, canals, and western trade. The idea was simple but bold: build an all-weather, high-capacity railroad from the port of Baltimore to the Ohio Valley and the interior markets beyond. Decades before Garrett County existed as a political unit, the B&O was already building the phy