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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
The Railroads:
His son, Robert L. Stevens, carried on to complete the task of building
New Jersey's first railroad. Confidence abounded at a meeting in Mount
Holly in 1828 to promote the project; the success of the elder Stevens
and of British railway ventures swept aside the opposition of stagecoach
operators, who prophetically attacked the plan as a scheme for monopoly.
In 1830 the company obtained a charter for the Camden and Amboy
Railroad, first to be operated in the State, and sent Robert Stevens to England to buy equipment. This included all-iron rails, instead of the wooden
rails that had been tried on tramways.
After a favorable demonstration of the locomotive John Bull at Bordentown in 1831, the Camden and Amboy speeded construction and in 1834
completed the route from Camden to South Amboy. It acquired control
of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railway Company, which had built a
line from Philadelphia to Morrisville (opposite Trenton) and owned the
rights to constructing a railroad between Trenton and New Brunswick.
By making a traffic agreement with the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, which ran a line from Jersey City to New Brunswick,
the Camden and Amboy in 1840 consolidated its holdings and opened the
first through all-rail line from New York to Philadelphia.
Other important lines chartered and constructed in this period were the
Elizabeth and Somerville, the Morris and Essex, and the Paterson and
Hudson, all of which knitted together the growing cities of the north and
the surrounding mining and agricultural sections.
Favored by the State legislature with the necessity of paying only an
insignificant "transit fee" and with an ironclad monopoly concession on
rail transportation between New York and Philadelphia, the Camden and
Amboy rapidly grew into a powerful corporation. In return for valuable
favors received, the railroad turned over to the State 1,000 shares of stock.
The ultimate result was that the railroad entrenched itself so strongly in
the State's political field that New Jersey acquired the sobriquet of the
"State of Camden and Amboy."
Success with the steamboat inspired Colonel John Stevens to work on the idea of a steam railroad. He petitioned his own State
legislature and Governor De Witt Clinton of New York to consider his
proposal for a railroad which would run trains at 18 miles an hour. This
suggestion won as little attention as his plan to connect New York and
New Jersey by a tunnel on the bed of the Hudson. In 1824, however,
when he was 75 years old, he demonstrated an experimental "steam
waggon" which ran 12 miles an hour on a circular track at his Hoboken
estate. This was the first locomotive built and operated in this country.
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