1867 | Transportation
Transportation
Cornelius Vanderbilt gains control of the New York Central Railroad (see 1865). Now 72, he issues an order January 14 that all trains on his New York & Hudson River Railroad must terminate at East Albany, two miles from the Albany depot; he shows protesting legislators an old law that specifically forbids the New York & Hudson River to run trains across the Hudson River, stock in the Central drops sharply, and Vanderbilt buys enough to secure control by December (see 1869).
Pullman Palace Car Co. is founded at Chicago by George M. Pullman with backing from Andrew Carnegie, who will be its major stockholder until 1873 (see 1865). The new company will build sleeping cars and operate them under contract for railway companies, taking a percentage of the extra fare charged (see first dining car, 1868).
The Wagner Drawing Room Car designed by New York wagon maker Webster Wagner, 49, goes into service during the summer on the New York Central. Born at Palatine Bridge, N.Y., Wagner became station master for the Central at his hometown when he was 25, held the job for 15 years, received financial help from Commodore Vanderbilt to build four crude wooden sleeping cars that were put into service 9 years ago, and by 2 years ago had developed a more sophisticated version; he will soon contract to use George Pullman's folding upper berth and hinged seats (see 1875).
Steel rail production begins in the United States, whose railroads have been using rails of iron or imported steel. Engineer-editor Alexander L. Holley, now 35, bought U.S. rights to the Bessemer process 4 years ago, effected a pooling of potentially conflicting patents with holders of the Kelly patent, and has built a steel mill at Troy, N.Y.
Construction begins at St. Louis on the Eads Bridge that will span the Mississippi at its widest point. Financiers, politicians, and other engineers scoff at the proposal by Louisville, Ky., engineer James Buchanan Eads, now 46, to sink massive stone piers through 103 feet of turbulent water to bedrock below the dense river bottom, and they ridicule his project of cantilevering three steel spans, each more than 500 feet long (see politics [Eads], 1861). So little is known about the properties of steel that its use in bridges has been prohibited in Britain, and one out of every four U.S. bridges that have been built of steel has collapsed. Eads innovates fabrication techniques that are unique, imaginative, and effective; he will put nearly $7 million into the endeavor in the next 7 years, but 12 men will die in the huge pneumatic caisson of his east pier (see 1874).
A suspension bridge designed by J. A. Roebling opens to span the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Ky. (see 1855; Brooklyn Bridge, 1883).
The first U.S. elevated railway begins operation December 7 at New York on a single track from Battery Place to 30th Street above Greenwich Street (Ninth Avenue). Cable-pulled steam trains designed by engineer Charles T. Harvey for the Gilbert Elevated Railway Co. provide much quicker transportation than do the horse cars below, and the Gilbert line will hook up within a decade to a Third Avenue Railroad operating between City Hall Park and 42nd Street (see 1878; San Francisco, 1873; subway, 1904).
An alpine rail line with 22 tunnels opens through the 4,500-foot high Brenner Pass between Innsbrück, Austria, and Bolzano in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy (see Vienna-Trieste, 1854).
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company begins regular service between San Francisco and Hong Kong.