The Antebellum Era: A Time of Inferior Materials
As the American railroad network was first being laid in the first half of the 19th century, it posed safety risks symptomatic of any new technology. U.S. President Franklin Pierce’s personal tragedy on January 6, 1853, epitomizes the dangerous nature of the era’s train travel. Just months after his election to the presidency, while traveling from Massachusetts back home to Concord, NH, the iron axle on his family’s rail car broke when it hit some rocks which had fallen on the tracks, causing it to derail and dive into an embankment. The Pierces suffered the catastrophic loss of their only surviving son, 11 years old at the time, after having lost two other sons to childhood illnesses in preceding years. The couple believed they were being punished by God for pursuing politics.
At the time of the Pierce accident, railroad tracks were generally built on untreated ties and railroad cars used pliable iron parts. As locomotives grew in size and weight, and the mileage of railroad tracks grew exponentially across the country, railroad companies like those of railroad magnates Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie sought to strengthen their tracks and rail cars so they could be safer and last longer. The need for more durable ties drove growth in the number of creosote-treatment plants, and demand for stronger iron parts—such as the axel which broke on Pierce’s car—drove innovation in iron-working. Not to mention, the country’s growing number of steam-engine rail cars appeared to be outstripping its wood supply, so it would need to find new sources of energy.
Railroads and the Rise of Coal: Bringing a New Fuel to Market
Just like America’s first railroads burned timber to power their steam engines, the average American household in the early 1800s also burned firewood to heat their homes and cook with stoves. But burning timber was inefficient and dangerous; a majority of the heat escaped out of the fireplace chimney, created dangerous byproducts in the form of wood-tar creosote, and caused house fires. Wood-tar distillates, better known as soot, are toxic and fireplaces did not contain them; these byproducts circulate throughout living spaces and build up in chimneys.
At the time, coal—the bituminous variety—was only ever used by niche industries like blacksmithing, which required high temperatures. It was hard to source; only one mining operation in Richmond, VA, supplied coal, so it was often imported from England. In the late 1700s, loads of anthracite coal had been discovered in eastern Pennsylvania, but it was not until forests were dwindling and access to bituminous coal was disrupted by the War of 1812 that Americans really considered using it. Jacob Cist from Wilkes-Barre, PA, is largely credited with putting anthracite coal—derisively referred to as “stone coal” because it was so hard—on the map. Cist took samples to Philadelphia and explained to merchants how it could be used as an alternative to bituminous coal for both industry and household purposes.
It was not an easy sell, given that anthracite coal was more difficult to light and Americans were used to experiencing the visual beauty of a roaring fire. Coal, which smokes inside a closed stove, was considered an inferior experience. However, a combination of market forces and marketing forces helped Americans adapt. Targeted campaigns from investors and nonprofits, such as Philadelphia’s American Philosophical Society and Franklin Institute, popularized the new form of fuel as a desirable, sophisticated option. Stylish new stoves—such as an updated version of the Franklin Stove, which had been invented by Benjamin Franklin himself in the late 1700s—were designed to be easier to operate as well as an attractive piece of décor in a home’s parlor.
Pennsylvania’s anthracite mining companies tried to seize the opportunity to eclipse bituminous coal and improved their logistical operations to better deliver coal to Philadelphia and other major markets like Wilmington, DE, and Trenton, NJ. During the 1820s and 30s, they formed transportation arms, such as the Lehigh Navigation Company and the Schuylkill Navigation Company, which established private canals to more effectively ship coal throughout the region. By the 1850s, anthracite coal was heralded as the “workingman’s fuel” and overtook bituminous coal production and sales, for both industry and home uses. As an issue of The Scientific American put it in April of 1858:
“Early perceiving the great expenses which were incurred, and which would keep increasing, by the use of wood for locomotive fuel, we long ago (when no other kind was used) repeatedly directed attention to the substitution of coal for wood on our railroads Stubborn at one period in resisting innovations, most of our railroad directors are now encouraging the use of coal-burning locomotives; they are rapidly increasing in numbers, and at some future day no other kind will be employed The Illinois Central Railroad Company have now twenty-one of this kind of engines in use, as stated in the late report of the directors, and they save thirty per cent in fuel as compared with wood burners.”
In the lead-up to the Civil War, railroads opened up new mining markets in Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, and Missouri, and the cost of anthracite coal dropped from around $11 per ton in 1830 to $5.50 per ton by 1860. And how did they bring their product to market? On the railroads, which themselves were now burning coal rather than wood.
Coal – and Coal-Tar Creosote – Set the Stage for the Industrial Revolution
Unfortunately for Franklin Pierce and his family, their accident took place just before the widespread adoption of coal would revolutionize not just the strength and safety of train travel itself, but also the average American’s quality of life. After the Civil War, railroads exclusively burned coal in their steam engines and transported it across the country to fuel growing industries. Iron-working underwent many innovations which all relied on coal’s widespread availability, eventually leading to the emergence of steel manufacturing in 1865, when Alexander Holley adopted British inventor Henry Bessemer’s steel plant technology. The growth of coal mining also meant that coke, a cleaner and higher-temperature version of coal, could be produced at scale, later becoming the preferred fuel of the steel industry.
As coal and coke became ubiquitous to manufacturing processes, creosote—a coal-tar distillate—also became produced on a mass scale. Creosote was already known to be the most effective wood preservative, especially since the invention of pressure-treatment method in 1838, but creosote had not been widely available or always affordable. By at the turn of the 20th century, creosote-treatment plants dotted the United States, more effective pressure-treatment methods were developed, and nearly all wooden railroad ties were creosote-treated. Treated wood was then utilized in a number of other types of wooden infrastructure, from bridges to telegraph line utility poles, as the country continued to develop.
If Franklin and his family had lived just 40 years later, the train car they rode in would have driven on tough and long-lasting creosote-treated crossties, had stronger steel axels, and burned coal with its steam engines. They would likely have returned home to Concord, NH, safely, and filled their Franklin stove with domestically produced anthracite coal to stave off the bitter January cold.
Note: This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of the Railway Tie Association’s Crossties Magazine.
Works Cited
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/americans-hated-coal-180980342/
- https://coalheritage.wv.gov/coal_history/Pages/Birth-of-the-Industry.aspx
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-burning-locomotives-1858-04-17/
- https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-us-coal-industry-in-the-nineteenth-century-2/
- https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/waughj/classes/gildedage/private/industry_and_labor/history/industry.html#oil
- https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/heating-home/
- https://mechanical.strasburgrailroad.com/blog/history-steam-locomotive/
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/americans-hated-coal-180980342/
- https://www.steelincga.com/a-brief-history-of-steel-construction/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Canal
- https://energyhistory.yale.edu/rise-of-coal-in-the-nineteenth-century-united-states/
- https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/waughj/classes/gildedage/private/industry_and_labor/history/industry.html
- https://ufl.pb.unizin.org/imos/chapter/steel/