Happy 125th, Prototype for the El
By Margaret Lyons in Miscellaneous on Jun 2, 2008 11:09AM
Happy birthday, elevated electric railways! On this day in 1883, Thomas Edison and Stephen D. Field tested out their demo train before unveiling it at the Chicago Railway Exposition, where it was a smash hit.
The locomotive weighed 3 tons and was 12 feet long by 5 feet wide. It drew current by rubbing a wire brush on each side of an electrified, central third rail. The 15-horsepower locomotive pulled a passenger car at a stately 9 mph. [Sounds like the Blue Line! Ho, ho.] Between June 5 and the exhibition's conclusion June 23, Chicago's protoype 'L' had carried 26,805 passengers.
Photo by sfmoe
Twelve years later, the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railway was born. [Wired]