When Tom Thumb showed up on the scene in 1830, there weren't too many places to go.

Back then, there were only 23 miles of railroad track in the whole country, so as you can imagine,

getting anywhere was pretty tough.

This Tom Thumb, though, wasn't P.T. Barnum's famous pint-sized protégé that we've already

discussed in an earlier episode.

This Tom was a tiny steam engine, one of the first ever to be built in America.

It weighed less than one ton and made its inventor, the industrialist Peter Cooper, very proud

and very excited.

The Tom Thumb steam engine was under the ownership of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, or the

B&O for short.

On July 4th of 1828, Charles Carroll broke the first ground at the's official commissioning. At 91 years old,

he was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence.

One day in 1830, Peter Cooper decided he would take Tom Thumb out for a spin on the tracks near

Baltimore. He was out in a rail yard when a horse-drawn train pulled up alongside him and challenged him to a gentlemanly drag race.

Peter's engine had been known to clock speeds as high as 14 miles per hour, and he wanted to test its metal.

The two men lined up with each other, sitting in parallel on their respectful steeds, paused for a moment, and then

we're off to the races. Down the tracks they surged at what must have felt like breakneck speed,

although it's more likely they barely broke into the double digits. Peter and his Tom Thumb

effortlessly took the lead, but it wouldn't last. One of the train's belts had broken loose, and it slowly

came to a halt. But it wasn't over yet. You see, Peter may have lost this battle, but he would

end up winning the war. Because he had impressed some important people that day, people who would

be making the big decisions for the future of the train line. The Tom Thumb

...