The John Bull Locomotive
Robert Stephenson and Company · 1831
A small black steam locomotive with a tall chimney, a wooden cab and an odd pair of guide wheels sticking out in front stands just inside the Constitution Avenue entrance. Built in 1831 by Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle, England, it was shipped in pieces across the Atlantic to run on the Camden and Amboy Railroad in New Jersey, and it hauled passengers and freight between Philadelphia and New York for more than thirty years. It is the oldest complete locomotive in the United States and one of the oldest operable ones anywhere in the world.
The engine that arrived from England was much simpler than what you see. American mechanics rebuilt it for their rough, curving tracks, adding the two-wheeled pilot truck at the front to guide the engine into curves and the cowcatcher to push livestock off the line, both inventions that became standard on American railways. They added the cab to protect the crew, a headlamp, a bell and a spark-arresting stack. Look at the wooden spoked wheels with iron tyres, the copper firebox and the rocking beams that transfer the motion of the cylinders to the wheels.
The John Bull was retired in 1866, preserved by the railroad as a curiosity and shown at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. It came to the Smithsonian in 1885 as one of the museum's first great industrial objects. In 1981, for its hundred and fiftieth birthday, museum staff fired it up and drove it along a few kilometres of track by the Potomac, which made it the oldest operating self-propelled vehicle in the world. It has stood as the museum's landmark object for transportation ever since.
Did You Know? In 1981 the museum steamed the John Bull up and ran it on real track to celebrate its one hundred and fiftieth birthday.
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