Little Blacknose, the Story of a Pioneer

Front matter

by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift

Illustrated by Lynd Ward

Little Blacknose was the first steam engine built for the New York Central Railroad and was a pioneer in transportation. His real name was DeWitt Clinton, and he huffed and puffed his way from Albany to Schenectady for many years, scaring horses and people and enjoying every minute of it. You may have seen the little engine at one of the big fairs or in Grand Central, not at all like the diesel monsters of today.

Chapter 1

LITTLE BLACKNOSE

THE TRUE AND HONEST STORY

OF THE DEWITT CLINTON ENGINE,

AND OF ALL THAT HE SAW AND DID

CHAPTER I: WHAT AM I?

Clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang! Up and over and down, up and over and down, great hammers went swinging, falling with a ringing noise on long bars of iron stretched out on huge anvils. ah—swish shusssh! With a noise like the hiss of a thousand snakes a furnace door opened, and out came a running stream of fire. It ran down into grooves in the sand; it stayed in the sand; the fire faded out of it; it changed into bars of iron.

heat, heat, heat—heat from the anvils, heat from the furnaces, heat everywhere! Men were running around in the heat. Their faces and hands were black and their bare backs were dripping with sweat.

He was new, brand spick and span new, just freshly dressed in a shining coat of black, and he had a long black nose that stuck straight up in front of him, like an upside-down elephant’s trunk. He didn’t mind the heat, for he had been born from it—born from the furnaces, shaped on the anvils, put together by the labor of men. To be sure, when they had hammered the rivets into his side, he had shrieked with pain, but he was finished now—that was all over. He was finished and ready. Ready for what? Who was he? What was he? Where was he going? Oh, he did wish he could find out!

clang-clang, clang-clang!

Ah, some men were coming toward him at this very moment! They often came to look at him. Joe was with them, Joe who had helped to make him—Joe, the cleverest worker in the foundry. Joe was all black and grimy, but the six men who were with him were dressed-up men, silk-hatted, striped-trousered, as were most men in those days, for that was the queer way men dressed!

They walked all around him, climbed up on him, opened his fire-box door, tried the lever of his safety-valve.

“Well, he’s a wonder!”

“Quite a new invention!”

“Yes, sir, rightly something of a curiosity, sir!”

“But will he work, Joe?”

“Oh, yes, sir, we’ve made two before this. They worked, sir! Quite popular they be in England, they tell me, sir. The last one we shipped south. ‘The Best Friend of Charleston’ they called it. This fellow—he’ll make thirty miles an hour, or more, sir.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“I shouldn’t like to ride behind him.”

“He’ll burst his boiler before he’s gone a mile.”

“Oh, no, sir!”

The men drifted away to poke and stare and crane at something else.

“Stupid things,” thought Blacknose sadly. “How can they get around on those long, thin stalks? I’m glad I have wheels—four good, round, sensible wheels! Go? Of course I can go. Joe is right. Why won’t they let me go, instead of keeping me shut up here in this …”

Ah, Joe was coming back now, a great load of fresh wood in his arms.

“Well, old fire-eater, I’ll just get up a little steam in your boiler, and we’ll see again whether you work or not. Poor old iron horse, just rearin’ to get away, I’ll bet! But you’ll have to wait till David Mathew comes. David’s the boy to fetch you.”

Iron horse—iron horse? So that’s what he was—a horse! But from where he stood in his corner, Blacknose could look out of one of the foundry windows and see the horses going up and down Beach Street, outside. This was New York City, in the Spring of 1831, and horses were everywhere. Horses went on thin stalks like men; they didn’t go on wheels. How could he be a horse when he went on wheels? Well, anyway, he was a “wonder” and Joe was giving him some wood to eat, at last, and soon David would come to take him away. Away, away—he didn’t care where, he didn’t care where!

Phew! The fire in his fire-box was getting very hot! Was he really getting up steam?

“Sh, sh, sh, sh—ankshush to go! Ankshushshsh to go!” He tried saying it over and over to himself. Oh, how excited he was getting! Who was that standing down there, looking at him now? It was another man in a tall hat, but some way he looked different from the ones who had come before—nicer, perhaps. He looked like a visitor; yet he seemed at home in the foundry. Joe had shut the fire-box door with a bang the minute he caught sight of him and had jumped right down to speak to the newcomer.

“Why, Mr. Mathew, we’ve been expecting you for days. What do you think of your locomotive?”

“Mr. Mathew”—his man? “Locomotive”—so that was his name. L-O-C-O-M-O-T-I-V-E. He was a locomotive and David Mathew had come for him, at last!

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II: ALBANY! ALBANY!

When the little locomotive, or the little iron horse, or whatever he was, finally poked his long, black smoke-stack out into the light of day and left forever the clang-clang of his foundry birthplace, it was a lovely day in June. The birds were singing and the sun was shining down on bright, green grass. Children were rollicking under tall, shady elm trees, playing and running over the grass. Old New York was a jolly village in those days. When the children rolled their balls into the streets, they ran quickly to fetch them. No monster cars came rushing by to make it dangerous. No skyscrapers shut out the light. No roar of traffic hurt the ears.

At first little Blacknose was very happy.

“Free! Free! Free!” he thought to himself. “I shall run, as the children do. I shall roll my wheels round and round. I shall go like the wind. ‘Thirty miles an hour,’ Joe said. What does that mean? Never mind! I shall go thirty miles an hour.”

But what was this? Why were they fast- ening chains to his front? Why were they pushing and pulling him up a big plane of wood on to a great cart, to which four of the thin-stalked horse-creatures were tied? Now the horse-creatures were pulling him along the street, and crowds of people were running after him and shouting. The wheels of the cart were turning round and round, but his own wheels were stiff and still.

“It’s an insult,” he thought to himself, “an insult! Shall I never go by myself, shall I never be really free?”

They took him down to the end of a wharf and here was another wide plane of wood, built specially for his use. They pushed and pulled and jollied him up this plane of wood and over the end of it into one of the big Hudson River Steamers. It was hard work getting him up on to the boat, for he weighed as much as forty fat men or one big elephant, but soon he was safely on board.

“Well, what now?” he thought.

“Hooray,” cried the men from the foundry who had helped to haul him.

“Good-by!” called David Mathew.

“Good-by! Good luck, good luck!” called the foundry men.

Blacknose heard the great boat-engine start to throb. He saw two big wheels, one on each side of the boat, begin to turn, at first slowly, slowly, then faster and faster. The water came spraying up over them, silver and shining in the sunlight. The wharf where they had just been grew smaller and smaller. They were off and away.

Now a first boat ride is always a very exciting event. Of course a locomotive couldn’t run up into the very tiniest point of the bow to feel the wind in its face, or back to the stern to watch the great widening, splashy wake the boat makes, or dash down to the engine room to watch the engine work and talk to the firemen, or back to eat a delightful though strange kind of a lunch out of a paper box. A locomotive couldn’t do that, but Blacknose had only been on board a very few minutes before he had a much more interesting experience than any child could have had.

He was listening and looking around, trying to ignore the crowds of curious people that were always staring at him, when he suddenly realized that the boat engine was talking to him.

“Well, how do you do, Brother of the Steam! I am proud to be carrying you up the Hudson. I hear my firemen talking about you. They say you, too, will run on great wheels as I do, but that you will run over the land as I run over the water. They say you will change the land as I have changed the water. They say you are wonderful and will soon be very great and famous, as I am. They tell me you were born in the West Point Foundry where I was made. So you are really my brother. Were we not born in the same house? Welcome, Brother of the Steam, and good fortune attend you!”

When Blacknose made this out from the throbbing of the boat’s engine, he was greatly pleased and excited. He longed to answer and express his thanks, but he couldn’t. He had been built without any bell or whistle, and as his steam wasn’t up, he couldn’t speak at all. He tried to creak a little, but this wouldn’t work in the least, for he was too well built; so he had to content himself with silence.

By this time they had gone a long way up the Hudson, and left New York City far behind. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—that was as far as New York could count in those days! Now it counts its streets way up into the hundreds, and it adds and multiplies streets very fast too. Then there was only a barn where the tallest skyscraper now stands, and almost all of great, famous, busy Broadway, with its theaters and gay signs and dazzling lights, was a thin, muddy, crooked country road!

At West Point Blacknose noticed something which interested him. It was a stone wall with long round things, something like his own smoke-stack, sticking out of it. The ship’s engine politely explained that they were guns, placed there to guard the river against enemy ships.

“Oh, yes,” thought the locomotive, “I do believe they used to make those things in the foundry where I was born, but no one ever told me what they were before.”

When the boat’s engine began to talk about enemy ships, Blacknose grew a little nervous.

“Will any of them attack us?” was a question he would have liked to ask, but of course he couldn’t. However, he looked with great care at all the boats they passed and studied the different flags.

There were very few steamboats like the one he was on, but the river was full of ships—schooners and sloops and clipper ships and all kinds of sailing and fishing vessels, little and big.

Just as he was wondering and worrying, he noticed another great steamboat that seemed to be trying to draw up alongside theirs. It was going very fast and was plainly trying to overtake them. The people on board were shouting and waving and seemed greatly excited.

At first he was awfully afraid, but there were no long, black, round things sticking out of the new boat’s side. So it couldn’t be coming to attack them! What did it want?

Two boys who were standing near the little locomotive began to jump up and down and shriek with excitement.

“A race, a race! Hurrah! Hurrah! I bet on us!”

A race—so that was what it was. Well, just what was a race?

“Toot! toot! toot! I’m coming to catch you,” shrieked the new boat’s whistle.

Then, did he dream it, or was his own boat going faster and faster through the water? Yes, it was leaping ahead; the water rushed by, a streak of white on either side. Now he heard the engine gasping.

“Oh, dear, Oh, dear-they-shan’t-catch-me. I’m-the-fastest-boat-on-the-river; never-been-passed. Oh, dear-I-can’t-keep-this-up. I-shall-burst-my-boiler! Oh-oh-oh!”

The boat leapt forward. The whistle shrilled a shriek of triumph—“wooo! woooo! woo! You can’t catch us now.”

Yes, the other boat was far behind. Blacknose was very excited and happy. He wanted to tell the boat’s engine how proud he was of him; he longed to call out, “Hurrah for the West Point Foundry!” But of course he couldn’t. His steam wasn’t up.

After the race, things seemed to grow rather dull. Blacknose was tired. It took fifteen whole hours to go up the Hudson to Albany in those days, and that was a long trip for a little locomotive.

“This is just as bad as the foundry, after all,” he cried to himself. “I can’t use my wheels here, any more than I could there. Oh, I’m tired of staying still all the time. Will they never let me go free?”

And just then he heard the ship’s engine saying, “Now we’re coming to Albany, Albany, Albany!”

It seemed to be true, for soon there was a great hurry and bustle on board ship—people rushing and children shouting, and other people on shore came rushing and shouting to meet them. They took Blacknose off the boat, down a tilted plane of wood like the one up which he had been moved before, and they carried him through the streets of Albany on a truck.

Albany in those days was rather like a jolly village, too, just as New York was. Only a few thousand people lived there then, all told. But it seemed to the poor little locomotive that at least a million had come out of their homes and were chasing at his wheels. For everywhere he went a crowd gathered and dashed after him and shrieked and shouted all kinds of things about and at him.

There was so much confusion and noise that he understood very little of what was said, which was a good thing, because it wasn’t all nice and pleasant by any means. They carried him to the end of a lane called Lydius Street, and here he saw, for the first time in his life, two shining rails running up a hill on what looked like a road of wood.

When he saw the place he had a funny feeling all through his pipes and boiler, for he knew, though he didn’t know how he knew, that this was the track which would fit his wheels, the very track, in fact, for which his wheels had been made, and that here he would win success and glory—or failure and the scrap-heap. Oh, he did hope so hard with all his pipes that it would be glory!

He was feeling glad and thrilled, excited and a bit frightened, when, just then, he had one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life. An old roan horse, a horrible, hardened, insolent sort of horse, not an iron horse but a common cart-pulling kind of a horse, walked right up and insulted him.

“You!” said the haughty horse. Yes, he walked right up to little Blacknose and snorted at him, and then, perhaps because Blacknose was so quiet or perhaps because his long, black smoke-stack and big wheels looked rather terrible, the horse suddenly whisked around on his hind hoofs and galloped away. But at a distance of ten yards or so he turned round and looked at the locomotive and snorted again.

Then he came walking slowly back. He walked all round Blacknose, making a horrid, sneering whistle through his nostrils. When he had gone all the way around he stopped in front of him and stuck his long, ugly, reddish-yellow nose right out at the little engine’s smoke-stack, flicking his upper lip back over his teeth as he did so, which is a way mean horses have when they are about to be ve-ry unpleasant!

“You horrid brute!” said the horse.

Blacknose didn’t answer (of course we know he couldn’t yet) but his boiler began to grow warm, even though there was no fire in his fire-box.

“You great, ugly, useless beast!” said the horse.

And now Blacknose was angry—really angry. All the more so because the people who were standing near him began to laugh and seemed to be enjoying the horse’s rudeness.

“If ever I have a chance to get even with you, horrid old horse …” the poor little engine thought.

“I’ve heard enough about you,” continued the horse with all the rudest kinds of snorts and sniffles and whinnies, “to upset a dozen grocery-carts—and I’ve heard nothing good. They say you’re an iron horse. A horse, indeed! You look more like a circus camel, with that great, ugly hump in the middle of you. Go back to the circus! That’s where you belong! You’re a horror! They say you will take the work away from us. Will you eat our oats for us, too?”

“You call me homely—you hideous, red, thin-stalked thing!” the angry little engine cried to himself.

“For years and years, rain or shine, we’ve pulled the coaches over this railroad,” the old horse raved on. “Yes, and gone fast too. How fast can you go? Do you think you could ever catch up with us? Not you! Iron can’t beat horse-flesh. Why don’t you answer me, you ugly hulk—can’t you even hear?”

“I’ll answer you when my steam is up!” thought the locomotive in a rage. “So I can’t run as fast as you can—we’ll just see about that. When my steam is up I’ll put the fear of death into you back-woods horses!”

But all this the little engine could only think, as yet. He seemed to stand silent and cold and make no sound. So of course the old horse thought that he had got the best of the argument. With indescribable haughtiness he turned on his back legs and made off to tell all his brothers in harness how he had visited the iron stranger and promptly put him in his place. And as he went he snorted lightly back over his shoulder at little Blacknose:

“Humph! I guess that settles you, you great black camel-thing?”

“You just wait and see!” thought little Blacknose.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III: THE SHINING RAILS

Perhaps it was just as well for Blacknose that the roan horse did walk up and insult him the very first day of his coming to Albany. For the strange crowds and the mysterious, shining track had made him feel very shy and uncertain of himself. He wasn’t at all sure that his wheels would turn. He wasn’t at all sure that his boiler wouldn’t burst. He wasn’t at all sure of anything—until the ugly horse had talked to him. But somehow that unpleasant conversation gave him strength and courage. His back was up now, and it was an iron back, at that!

“I’ll just show every one,” he thought. “I’m a wonder, a wonder, a wonder!” And he said it to himself fiercely and firmly over and over again. The more he said it, the more sure he was it was true.

But he had need of all his courage the very next day when a big gang of men came and fastened chains to the front of him.

“What in the world are these chains for?” he wondered. He knew that something strange and exciting was about to happen, but he didn’t know just what the something was—and that is pretty hard for any one, even for a little iron horse.

The chains stretched up the hill ahead of him along the shining track—up, up, up. At the top of the hill, though this he couldn’t see as yet, was a funny kind of engine that went by steam, and yet had to stay all the time in the same place. A great big spool was a part of it. The steam made the spool turn round and round and wind the chains up tighter and tighter, just as a little boy winds a string around a top to spin it. Up, up, up, the chains were pulling Blacknose. Slowly, slowly, his wheels began to turn. Slowly, slowly, he was being dragged up the hill.

“Oh, dear—oh, dear,” he cried to himself, “are they always going to lead me around by the nose this way? I don’t like it!”

But now the top of the hill was reached, and away in the distance ahead of him, first side by side, then changing into one thin little ribbon of silver, stretched the shining rails. And now the gang of men rushed at Blacknose again. They unfastened the chains from his front.

“Thank Goodness!” he thought.

They brought up a tender filled with wood (people call them coal-cars now, but this was a wood-car!) and they fastened it tightly on behind him.

“Wood! Now I shall have something to eat,” hoped the poor hungry little engine.

Then David Mathew appeared. He climbed upon the back part of Blacknose. He opened the fire-box door. He threw chunk after chunk of wood deep into the engine’s hungry, yawning mouth. It was a wide mouth, a useful mouth, even though it was back of his nose and not just under it, like most people’s!

“Come, old fellow, we’ll see what you can do,” David said as he built the fire in the fire-box. “No more puttering around with chains for you. Either I’ll take you to Schenectady this very day, or you’ll blow up and take me to Gallyhooscka—one or t’other, sure as fate!”

Then the men put two big barrels of water on the tender, and they gave Blacknose a great, long drink till his boiler was full of cool, refreshing water. But it didn’t stay cool long; it grew warmer and warmer and warmer.

“Sh! sh! sh!” the steam was coming—creeping, creeping. Now it was rushing through all his pipes and veins.

“Choo! Choo! Choo! Oh, hurrah! Hurrah!” He could talk. He could talk. He had found his steam at last!

Now when Blacknose had first come up over the edge of the hill—so slowly, so slowly—he had been very much surprised to see the engine that was pulling him. It looked much like himself, of course, though it hadn’t any wheels. And now that he had found his steam he at once politely thanked the engine that couldn’t move from its place for pulling him. (He hadn’t liked it at all, really, but he thought it better to be polite.)

“Saved me a lot of trouble,” he said, pretending that he could have done it all by himself.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” the quiet engine answered.

“Were you born at the West Point Foundry, too?” Blacknose asked a bit wistfully, hoping to find another friend.

“Oh, deah, no, I came from England!” the other engine answered, which, somehow, seemed to end the conversation.

Meanwhile the water in the little locomotive’s boiler had been getting hotter and hotter. Oh, how the steam came rushing!

“Choo, choo, choo!”

He snorted and puffed. He looked at the shining rails. He trembled with eagerness. He was wild to go. But would he go? Could he go? Could he run along the shining rails all by himself?

“Choo, choo, choo! Let me go, let me go, let me go!” he gasped. And as if in answer, he felt his levers move, felt his four wheels begin to turn, heard the crowd of people behind him shout and cheer, and knew that he was off at last.

“Choo, choo, choo! Free, free, free!” he cried, but his joyful puffing soon turned to fear. He was getting horribly hot. Was he going to blow up? Was he going to, just as those horrid men had said?

Faster, faster, faster! Now the trees and fields were rushing by—so fast they seemed only a blur to poor little Blacknose. He was horribly dizzy as well as horribly hot. Could he hold the track? Could he stand the heat?

But the shining rails stretched serenely ahead; wherever they led, his wheels seemed to follow. Pretty soon he grew used to the heat and the motion; nothing dreadful happened, and his fear was gone. And then he began to sing to himself:

“Te-dick, te-dack, Get off the track, T-double-Yditty, T-double-Yditty—”

And he tried “Sche-nec-tady—Sche-nec-tady—Sche-nec-tady” over and over, quite happily, liking its sound very much.

They had run on in this way for ever and ever so long when all at once, Blacknose saw in the distance the roofs of a city shining in the sunlight.

“Sche-nec-tady, Sche-nec-tady!” he sang, “Can this be Sche-nec-tady?”

Just at this moment he heard David Mathew give a great shout behind him.

“One more mile, old boy, one more mile! We’ve made it—we’ve made our run! One hour and forty-five minutes! Hurrah!”

“Glory, glory, glory!” Blacknose sang—and just then he saw the very end of the track, and slipped, proudly puffing, into the midst of a cheering, shouting crowd. The people rushed around him on all sides; they fairly yelled with excitement. When they saw David Mathew they put him up on their shoulders and carried him around.

“What’s he done to get carried?” Blacknose thought. “Haven’t I carried him all the way?” But he had no reason to be jealous, for every one was very nice to him, too, and he heard himself called a wonder many, many times.

They gave him another delicious drink of water and a long rest. Probably he slipped off to sleep, worn out with all the excitement, for he suddenly came to himself with a jerk and found they were feeding him chunks of wood again.

Oh, dear—oh, dear—he would much rather sleep than eat. Couldn’t a poor little engine even have his rest out, when he had come so far and done so well? And where in the world did they want him to go? Hadn’t he come to the end of the track? Did they expect him to climb trees, or jump over house-tops? What were they going to do with him? A great fear seized poor Blacknose, which quickly changed to terror when he suddenly felt that his wheels were moving. What! It couldn’t be true, but, yes, it was—he was beginning to go the wrong way!

Horror, horror, horror! He was going backward. He couldn’t see the track. He was sure he wouldn’t know how to follow it. It was awful! Something dreadful was sure to happen. Oh, if only he had blown up and burst at once, and not waited for a strange death that might jump on him from behind.

For mile after mile little Blacknose slid backward, gasping and coughing and trembling, with great hot drops of fear standing out all over his black boiler. But nothing dreadful happened, after all, just as nothing dreadful had happened when he was first afraid, and pretty soon he began to feel a little happier. Faster and faster he went (it was all downhill back to Albany), but with every turn of the wheels, now, new courage came to him. He began to think things over.

“I suppose they wanted to get me back to Albany where I came from and at Schenectady there wasn’t any way to turn me round —and of course I can go either way just as well.”

Now he was feeling very much pleased with himself and not afraid one bit. He drew great deep puffs of pride as he slid along.

“Why, I can go backward even better than forward,” he gloated. Of course he could, since it was all downhill. “I’d just like to see that old red horse try this!”

When he finally slipped, back-end first, into the middle of the cheering crowd that came to meet him at Albany, he was a very happy little engine. Oh, how the people shouted! Oh, how they called him big and wonderful names! Yes, even the engine-that-couldn’t-go spoke up and said:

“How do you do? I congratulate you.”

Blacknose hadn’t the faintest idea what that meant, but it gave him a very nice feeling inside.

He was a wonder; there was no doubt of that. His secret, trial trip had gone well, and he had come home from Schenectady in only thirty-five minutes! What was this they were talking about? Every one was to come to see him? They were calling it an excursion. Well, let them bring on their excursion, he didn’t care. He was to have a name given him? Well, he hoped it would be a nice one.

Every one would want to ride behind him—this, too, he overheard.

“I don’t care,” Blacknose thought. “Let every one in the world come. It will be the treat of their lives to see me. I shall never be afraid of a single thing again. I’m a wonder! I just hope all those silly old red horses will come too.”

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV: EXCURSION

“Excursion! excurshshion! excurshshshion! excurshshshion!”

Little Blacknose stood puffing and gasping and coughing and blowing off steam at the Albany end of his track. It was a hot day in August. It was August 9, 1831. The sun was pouring down, and, besides that, his steam had been up for hours. He was terribly, desperately hot. Great crowds of people were rushing and pushing and laughing and shrieking and milling around him; they were all looking at him; they were all talking about him; they all wanted to ride on him. It was terrible!