Portal:Trains/Featured article/Week 21, 2005

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The John Bull is a 19th century, English-built railroad steam locomotive, operated for the first time in 1831; it became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world (150 years) when the Smithsonian Institution operated it in 1981. Built by Robert Stephenson and Company, the John Bull was initially purchased by and operated for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the first railroad built in New Jersey. The railroad rostered it as locomotive number 1 and used it heavily from soon after the railroad's construction in 1833 until 1866 when it was removed from active service and placed in storage. After the C&A's assets were acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1871, the PRR refurbished and operated the locomotive a few times for public displays. In 1884 the locomotive was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution as the museum's first major industrial exhibit. The locomotive became the world's oldest surviving operable steam locomotive when it ran again under its own power in 1981. Today, the original John Bull is on static display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and a replica John Bull operates regularly at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

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