Century of Progress Exposition
Century of Progress Exposition

The Chicago World's Fair Century of Progress Exposition took place in 1933 and 1934. American railroads were among the major exhibitors, celebrating the technological progress of railroad equipment with examples of both historic locomotives and those considered state-of-the-art in the depth of the Great Depression.

Visitors to the Century of Progress included Cecil A. Wickham, a high school general science teacher from Michigan City, Indiana, his wife Agnes, and Mr. Wickham's parents, Dr. Archibald and Nellie Wickham of Detroit. The locomotive photos on this page were taken by members of the Wickham family. At the time the younger Wickhams were expecting their first child — my friend the late Don Wickham of Clermont, Florida, who kindly loaned me these photos. Cecil Wickham's untimely death occurred in 1944.

Stourbridge Lion ReplicaIn this photo we see the young Cecil Wickham examining a replica of the famous Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to run on a commercial railroad in the United States. Built by Foster, Rastrick and Company of Stourbridge, England, the locomotive (later dubbed the Lion) was purchased by The Delaware & Hudson Canal Company to run on its new railway line between Honesdale and Seely's Mills, Pennsylvania. Strangely, it made only one brief round trip on August 8, 1829, hauling a coal wagon as a tender, with young engineer Horatio Allen at the throttle. It was then immediately withdrawn from service. The locomotive had been ordered at three tons but was delivered at almost seven tons, too heavy for the strap-iron track that had been laid on the line, more suitable for lighter horse-drawn cars.

The abortive maiden run of the Stourbridge Lion was nevertheless considered a triumph, for it proved that steam power was a feasible means of transporting goods and presaged the greater success of later locomotives. At the time, however, no one realized the locomotive's historic significance. Its boiler was reused as a stationary power source and the locomotive was gradually stripped of its parts. What remains of it is now in the Smithsonian Institution.

In preparation for the Century of Progress Exposition, The Delaware & Hudson Railroad built a replica of the Stourbridge Lion in its Colonie, New York, shops. After research to determine the most authentic reproduction, all iron parts were hand-forged and the same care was applied to the rest of the locomotive. The replica was an anthracite-fueled operating model. The Delaware & Hudson produced a brochure describing the locomotive that can be viewed on George Elwood's Fallen Flags site.

The YorkAmong the pioneer locomotives the Wickhams encountered at the Century of Progress Exposition was the York, built in 1831-32. In 1830, inventor Peter Cooper demonstrated his locomotive "Tom Thumb" on the new Baltimore & Ohio railroad. Convinced of the practicability of steam power for the movement of loaded cars on iron rails, the railroad's directors offered a prize of $4,000 for the most successful coal-burning engine. In response, Phineas Davis built the York at his foundry in York, Pennsylvania. The locomotive was hauled to Baltimore by wagon since no railroad yet existed between the two cities. Placed in service by the Baltimore & Ohio, the York weighed three and one-half tons and could haul up to fifteen tons at the then amazing speed of fifteen miles per hour.

The locomotive pictured here is a replica of the York built at the Baltimore & Ohio's Mount Clare Shops for the 1927 Fair of the Iron Horse centenary celebration. Today this replica is housed in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum on the site of the Mount Clare Shops. Another full size model, constructed in 1892, is found in the Agricultural and Industrial Museum of York, Pennsylvania. The white coach behind the locomotive came from the Albion Mines Railway at Stellarton, Nova Scotia. It was not originally white but was perhaps painted that color because of a legend that later arose. It was said that any unmarried lady who could ride in the coach for twenty minutes without uttering a word would be a bride within the year; hence it came to be known as the "Bride's Coach." However, according to Jay Underwood and Herb MacDonald of Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, who supplied this information, there is no trace of such a legend ever having currency in the part of Nova Scotia where the coach was originally used.

A historic locomotive replica displayed at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933-34 was the Baltimore & Ohio's Lafayette. Built by William Norris & Company of Philadelphia in 1837, she was the first B&O locomotive to employ a horizontal boiler. Other innovations were the positioning of cylinders ahead of the smokebox and the four-wheel swiveling pilot truck. The Lafayette established the configuration steam locomotives would follow until the end of the steam era. The replica was first exhibited in 1927 at the B&O's centenary exposition, "The Fair of the Iron Horse."

The Lafayette

The Lafayette, along with the two locomotives above and below, is described in a booklet issued by the B&O Transportation Museum around 1950. With cylinder dimensions of 9x18 inches, a 90-pound boiler pressure and 48-inch drivers, she produced 2,323 pounds of tractive effort. Locomotive and tender together were 29 feet long and weighed 41,120 pounds. At the time the booklet was printed the Lafayette replica had appeared in several motion pictures about railroading in the early West, and was still operative.

Camelback No. 217Camelback No. 217, an original locomotive built by the Baltimore & Ohio's Mount Clare Shops in 1873, was displayed at the Century of Progress when the Wickham family visited. Designed by J. C. Davis, the "camelback" owes its humped design to the need to place the engineer's cab over the boiler because of the large firebox. The fireman had to do his work from the unsheltered rear of the locomotive. Camelbacks were used principally, though not exclusively, by some eastern railroads, and a few locomotives of this type operated almost to the end of the steam era in commuter service on the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

No. 217, of the 4-6-0 wheel arrangement, is preserved at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. She weighs 129,100 pounds, and her 65-pound-per-square-inch boiler pressure, combined with 19x22-inch cylinders and 50-inch drivers, produces 8,775 pounds of tractive force. At the time of the Century of Progress, at least, she was in operating condition, but was damaged when the roof of the unique roundhouse-museum collapsed under the weight of snow on February 17, 2003. No. 217 bears the name of Ross Winans, a Baltimore inventor who patented railroad wheel bearings and experimented with early railroad equipment. Winans became the B&O's Assistant Engineer of Machinery at the Mount Clare Shops.

NYC Century of Progress BrochureAnother visitor to the Century of Progress, a year after the Wickhams' visit, was my father, Richard D. Leonard, then a Methodist pastor in Grand Isle, Vermont. He and a friend made a motor trip to Nebraska in September, 1934, during which he visited the Exposition. In a post card to my grandmother, Julia Day Leonard of Newtonville, Massachusetts, he wrote, "Did the Fair in two days, and it came up to expectations. It is certainly very interesting and instructive." While touring the Century of Progress, he picked up several leaflets describing locomotives that were on exhibit. Thus my father's small collection of railroadiana included this Century of Progress brochure issued by the New York Central Lines, touting the proud Water Level Route's progress in rail technology over the preceding century. The cover image, featuring two enginemen servicing one of the Central's famous Class J-1 4-6-4 passenger steeds, is presented in dramatic art deco styling to camouflage the locomotive's non-streamlined profile. The railroad's notable Commodore Vanderbilt, Empire State Express and Twentieth Century Limited streamlined Hudson type locomotives — and the Mercury, which was a Pacific type — were to come during the next few years.

Giant Class H Leaflet Among the other leaflets in my father's collection were two handouts produced by the Chicago & North Western Railroad describing its newest locomotives, the giant Class H 4-8-4s built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1929. "Zeppelins of the Rails" was the unlikely epithet the C&NW attempted to pin on these behemoths. Weighing in at 498,000 pounds minus tender, they were the heaviest non-compound locomotives in service in North America. In one leaflet, pictured at right, the railroad stated, "There are 35 of these mammoth locomotives now in service . . ., each representing a cost of $120,000. They perform a dual service, being used either as passenger or freight locomotives . . . and the transition from one to the other is simply a matter of pulling a lever!" When used in passenger service, the railroad stated, the power of these engines "eliminates jerky stops and starts" and allows the train to maintain an even speed both uphill and down. These engines were also fitted with Automatic Train Control, a safety feature which would stop the train if the track ahead was not clear. (George Elwood's "Fallen Flags" site includes a copy of the leaflet from the collection of V. G Aylward. To read it, click here or click the image.)

No. 3024 was the Class H's representative when the Wickham family toured the Century of Progress. Boasting cylinder dimensions of 27x32 inches, with a working boiler pressure of 275 pounds and 76-inch drivers, these engines produced 71,000 pounds of tractive force augmented by a booster which raised the total to 84,200 pounds. The first five (3001-3005) had Baker valve gears but the rest, including No. 3024, had Walschaerts motion. The locomotive's main frame, including the cylinders, was a single steel casting 58 feet 3 inches long and weighing 73,000 pounds. Like other North American locomotives which were among the first to be erected with a four-wheel trailing truck, the Class H locomotives had a "banjo frame" in which the rear portion split to the sides of the locomotive to allow for the deeper firebox and larger truck casting. In the photograph this portion of the frame is visible as the horizontal bar over the rear wheel journals. This type of frame was subject to cracking and required frequent maintenance; in the 1940s the C&NW rebuilt a number of these locomotives into class H-1 with internal frames, disc drivers and other improvements.

C&NW No. 3024

My father, Rev. Richard D. Leonard, moved from Vermont to Chicago in 1935 to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. While there he occasionally traveled by rail to preaching assignments in outlying communities. A record of his activities is preserved in correspondence to my grandmother. On Sunday, April 5, 1936 — less than six weeks before his marriage to my mother Kay Campbell of Chicago — he wrote to my grandmother: ". . . I got a call from Mr. Alderton [a church official] to go out west of Chicago on the C.& N.W. about 44 miles to a town called Elburn and that is where I am now. . . . It is on the main line of the C.& N.W. (Chicago-Omaha) which runs right by the house, and furthermore, where I slept I could look out and see the trains with hardly a move. There were trains thick and fast all night long — a lot of traffic, almost as close as the signal system would permit and all rushing along at great speed. Once there were three freights right together, then two heavy passenger, then two more freights, all with the same type of locomotive, the famous 3000 class with 76-inch drivers, the largest simple locomotives in the world. Evidently the road operates on this basis of one type of engine and one speed schedule for both freight and passenger."

One of the most fascinating rail exhibits photographed by the Wickhams at the Century of Progress was the Delaware & Hudson's No. 1403, named the L. F. Loree. This experimental locomotive, built in the railroad's Colonie Shops, had been placed in service in April, 1933. No. 1403 was the fourth and last in a series of high-pressure locomotives that were the brainchild of the railroad's president, Leonor F. Loree, whose name the locomotive bore. While the earlier engines were 2-8-0s, the Loree was of the rare 4-8-0 configuration found only on a few railroads such as the Norfolk & Western. (It was known as the "Twelve-Wheeler" type.)

L. F. Loree

The D&H claimed that the Loree was "the first four outside cylinder, triple expansion, non-articulated locomotive." Both the front and rear cylinders connected to the main pair of driving wheels. The rear cylinders, however, were not paired but cross-compounded. As the railroad stated in a leaflet from my father's collection, "Steam is expanded in three stages, being used first in a high pressure cylinder under right side of cab [20x32], then in an intermediate cylinder under left side of cab [27½x32] and finally in two low pressure cylinders at front of locomotive [33x32], from which it exhausts through the stack." To produce the steam necessary for this triple expansion, the Loree maintained a 500-pound pressure in a combination water-tube and fire-tube boiler.

Other features of No. 1403 unusual for North American locomotives were the overfire jets on the firebox, supplying extra air for more complete fuel combustion; the auxiliary engine on the six-wheel rear tender truck; and rotary cam poppet valves, driven from a gear suspended at the center of the main driver. Overfire jets appeared on some more conventional post-World War II locomotives such as the Chesapeake & Ohio's "Allegheny" 2-6-6-6 articulateds erected by Lima Locomotive Works, and the 2-8-4s supplied to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie in 1948 by the American Locomotive Company. Poppet valves, of European origin, were thought to be more efficient than standard valve motion such as the Baker or Walschaerts types, but they incurred higher maintenance costs. Oscillating-cam poppet valves were used on the Pennsylvania Railroad's T1 duplex 4-4-4-4s, the C&O's streamlined L-1 4-6-4s and a few other locomotives, but rotary-cam valves appeared only experimentally.

The L. F. Loree was an idea that appeared too late. With its 63-inch drivers and its high tractive effort — a total of 108,000 pounds maximum with all cylinders using fresh steam and the tender booster cut in — it was essentially a low-speed freight engine. By 1933 the cutting edge of steam locomotive design was moving in another direction, toward "superpower" high-horsepower locomotives capable of both freight and passenger service. The Delaware & Hudson itself soon abandoned Mr. Loree's penchant for experimentation and embraced the new era with its dual-service 4-8-4s and 4-6-6-4 Challengers, locomotives whose only distinctive D&H features were their recessed headlights and flanged stacks.

D&H No. 653

A more successful poppet-valve D&H locomotive was the class P-1 Pacific. Two of these 4-6-2s were so equipped. Originally built in 1929 by the Colonie Shops, they weighed 300,000 pounds and exerted 41,027 pounds of tractive effort. They had 73-inch drivers, a boiler pressure of 260 pounds, and 22x28-inch cylinders. No. 653's boiler pressure was raised to 325 pounds per square inch when rebuilt with the Caprotti poppet valve gear, and she boasted 3200 square feet of evaporative heating surface and 1500 square feet of superheater surface. So equipped, she was displayed at the Century of Progress in 1934 as shown above from a post card I found in an antique shop. In addition to her wide anthracite-burning firebox with its 87-square-foot grate area, she displays the clean lines and uncluttered appearance favored by Mr. Loree, who admired the British "look" in steam engines.

AutotramAn oddity that Cecil Wickham committed to film during the Century of Progress Exposition was the Autotram. This self-propelled passenger vehicle was made by the Clark Equipment Company of Battle Creek, Michigan. The body was of aluminum and the power was supplied by a 16-cylinder gasoline engine with a hydraulic clutch. On the post card, distributed at the Century of Progress but acquired by me only recently, the builders claimed the Autotram was capable of 100-mile-per-hour speeds. This model carried 40 passengers, and the Clark firm advertised a larger model seating 72.

Autotram Post CardThe manufacturer must have been promoting the Autotram to railroads hoping to stem the loss of passenger revenue on lightly patronized lines. I have no knowledge of how many were ever built, nor have I ever read of its being used in actual revenue service. If any viewers have further information about this rarity, I would be glad to hear from you. Just e-mail rlsteam@aol.com.

 
Century of Progress