Transportation - Overview
Americans have always been a people on the move—on rails, roads, and waterways (for travel through the air, visit the National Air and Space Museum). In the transportation collections, railroad objects range from tools, tracks, and many train models to the massive 1401, a 280-ton locomotive built in 1926. Road vehicles include coaches, buggies, wagons, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and automobiles—from the days before the Model T to modern race cars. The accessories of travel are part of the collections, too, from streetlights, gas pumps, and traffic signals to goggles and overcoats.
In the maritime collections, more than 7,000 design plans and scores of ship models show the evolution of sailing ships and other vessels. Other items range from scrimshaw, photographs, and marine paintings to life jackets from the Titanic.
"Transportation - Overview" showing 2 items.
Railroad Switch Lamp, ca 1900 - 1940s
- Description
- This large, kerosene-fueled switch lamp, ca. 1900s-1940s, was placed immediately adjacent to the manual operating lever that controlled the position of a switch in a railroad track. The lever, operated by a brakeman or switchman, changed the position of the movable rails of the switch, aligning the switch for a train's movement from one route to another, or from a main track to a siding track.
- This lamp has fresnel lenses - two blue and two red. The crenelated top allows heat to escape from the burner. The body is embossed with the initials, "M.C.R.R.", showing that it was made for and used on the Michigan Central Railroad, a major part of the New York Central System.
- A switch lamp's position was mechanically interlinked with the position of the switch, so that the lamp automatically indicated which way the switch was aligned. When aligned for a main route or normal path ("normal" as specified in the railroad's employee timetable and/or standing instructions for that particular switch's milepost location), the lamp's green (or blue) lenses showed fore and aft; when the switch was changed to a diverging route or siding, the lamp rotated 90 degrees so that the red lenses showed fore and aft.
- Clearly, the safety of passing trains was dependent on the accurate indication of the lamp, if a derailment due to a misaligned switch was to be prevented.
- This large-size lamp is of a type typically used on principal tracks in railroad yards or on main routes in the vicinity of junctions or stations. The kerosene fuel for the lamp had to be replenished regularly by nearby employees. Electric lighting for such lamps became common in the 1890s-1900s along heavily used routes. But kerosene lamps were common into the 1950s along lightly used routes and in many rail yards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- user
- Michigan Central Railroad
- maker
- Peter Gray & Sons
- ID Number
- 1989.0687.01
- catalog number
- 1989.0687.01
- accession number
- 1989.0687
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Cumberland Valley Railroad Steam Locomotive, Pioneer
- Description
- The Pioneer is a steam locomotive made in 1851 by Seth Wilmarth, owner of a large machine shop in Boston who made few locomotives. Pioneer is an early type of steam locomotive on U.S. railroads and used only on a very few of them. This locomotive is significant only because of that rarity. Its age is also unusual among preserved locomotives; Pioneer was built just two decades after America’s first domestically made locomotive. Its general type was obsolete on almost all railroads in the U.S. by 1850.
- Pioneer served the Cumberland Valley RR, connecting Harrisburg, Pa. with Hagerstown, Md. and Winchester, Va. The locomotive was designed specifically to pull two-car passenger trains. Pioneer was one of several locomotives badly damaged by fire during the Civil War, during a Confederate raid on the CVRR roundhouse at Chambersburg, Pa. The CVRR rebuilt the engine, operated it on light, one- and two-car passenger trains till the mid 1880s, and then saved and exhibited it as an historic relic. The Pennsylvania RR (then one of the nation’s largest) absorbed the CVRR soon after. The PRR entirely repainted Pioneer in 1947 for the 1947-48 Chicago Railroad Fair. The lettering on the fenders, “PIONEER,” is inauthentic. A replica headlight was added by NMAH (then NMHT) in Dec 1965.
- In the standard type nomenclature for steam locomotives, Pioneer is a “2-2-2T” type, meaning that it has an unpowered leading pair of wheels; a single powered axle (the larger-diameter wheels, driven by the steam cylinders via connecting (or “main”) rods; and another unpowered pair of wheels at the rear. The “T” stands for “tank engine,” meaning one that has no separate tender for carrying its fuel (wood) and water for the boiler; fuel and water is carried on the same single chassis as the boiler, cab, and running gear.
- Location
- Currently on loan
- date made
- 1851
- used date
- 1851-1948
- maker
- Seth Wilmarth
- Union Works
- ID Number
- TR*317547.01
- accession number
- 230385
- catalog number
- 317547.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center