B & O railroad - wooden rails or stone rails

During the early days of railroad building, various materials were used to make the rails, including wood, stone or iron.

First passenger car with Cooper's steam engine

The first ride of a carload of dignitaries behind the Cooper steam engine was on August 28, 1830 from Baltimore to Ellicott mills on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  The open car, fashioned after a canal boat, was a "perfect jam" and whisked along the curves at 15 miles an hour - 18 when full speed!

Winans friction wheel for the new railroads

Ross Winans (1796-1877) was born in NJ and moved to Md in the late 1820s as the B&O railroad was starting. He invented the friction wheel with ‘outside bearing’ in 1828, sold his locomotives also to the Russian Czar during his highly successful business 1843-1863, was arrested as a southern sympathizer, designed cigar boats 1859 (submarines) with son Thomas and although invented by Charles S. Dickinson in 1860 in Boston, the 'Winans Steam Gun' was worked on in his shop.

Tom Thumb steam engine vs a horse

Did Peter Cooper's steam locomotive "Tom Thumb" race a horse drawn train car, as told by John Latrobe years later?  He said Cooper's new steam engine was winning until "the band which drove the pulley, which drove the blower, slipped from the drum."  The daughter of one of the B&O directors, was on that "trial trip" and often related how Mr. Jenifer's horse on the turnpike won due to the "slipping of a belt on the engine." She also remembered how their "clothes and umbrellas were ruined by sparks thrown from the smokestack."  So, maybe it did happen...or not.