I receved this old cabinet card from a friends estate…it reads… “Compliments of Wellington Adams as operated at St Louis Exposition 1884” Click on photo to enlarge.
Need any info on this.
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Great photos!!! Thanks!
underworld[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
Don’t know anything about it, but those pics are absolutely stunning! Never seen anything like that. [:O]
- Clint
Hmmm… looks like real plants and water… a Garden style Railway!
Interesting to remember the fascination with ‘modern’, ‘clean’ electric traction back then. Very nice shots.
I can say without any hesitation that this is one of the most amazing things anyone has ever posted on the forums! Thank you so much for sharing it! You made my day! Being one of the first electric trains ever, the historical importance of this photograph cannot be overstated. I know I have seen a reference to this train somewhere, but with no real information other than the fact that it existed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is the first such photograph to come to light. I seriously think that you should contact CTT with this as it definitely deserves publication. A truly amazing find!
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Found a couple of links for court case of Adams Electric Railroad Co. vs Lindell Railway Co. Could make one speculate that the Adams Electric Railway system was a real traction co that produced a display for the exposition. So a question could be if that is a toy train that was in production or simply a one-of-kind model. Regardless it is pretty interesting.
Go to item 52 and look at the items listed.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d8069s3.htm
Another link for the same court reference in the Missouri Railroad Records 1837 - .
http://www.umsystem.edu/whmc/invent/2358.html
Here is a Lindell Railway Co. link for a Mr. Bagnall
Here is another link that seems to put the railway in Washington state. “Adams” may be a mountain, if not a person’s name, or perhaps both:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~westklic/wsman.html
(Note that it’s always “Railway”, not “Railroad”, in all these cases.)
Here is a reference to something entitled “Evolution of the Electric Railway,- Its commercial and Scientific Aspect. By Dr. Wellington Adams.- Eleclrical Enineer, Dec., r884.” in the archives of “The Tech”, the MIT student newspaper:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_004/TECH_V004_S0126_P009.txt
Here is a garbled OCR transcription from 1892:
I have I think unscrambled all but a few words:
Our contemporary the Safety Valve evidently does not place much confidence in the scheme of Dr. Wellington Adams of a two miles a minute electric express between Chicago and St. Louis, which of late has occupied a considerable share of attention in electrical circles. Apropos to the Adams propositions our contemporary blows off his superfluous steam miter the following vigorous fashion.
One mile in 36 seconds. Bmmhm! Where is an electric road that is making the half of this speed, to wit, a mile a minute? or 50 miles an hour? or 40 miles an hour? or anything like it!
Let this electrical genius who claims to be equal to the astonishing feat of producing 200 horse-power with a weight of 6,000 pounds in a motor going at 500 revolutions, build an electric motor that will make 50 miles an hour in actual every-day practice. When he has accomplished this, and we are sure that it can be done, though not at all sure that he could do it, we will be warranted in talki
Very interesting. I didn’t know trains existed prior to Lionel
Maerklin began selling toy trains in 1891.
Adams’ Electric Railway System 1884: Still looking for info on this train. Anyone?
FJ and G,
Lionel was not the only company selling model electric trains in the U.S.A. In the 1930’s there were; Ives, Dorfan and I think Voltamp. Lionel was the most recognized though!
Not too sure when American Flyer started making model trains however they made some O gauge trains before going to S gauge and closed up in the late 1960’s.
Lee F.
American Flyer was formed in 1907 by William Coleman and William Hafner (who left the company in 1914 to make trains on his own), initially starting out with just low-end wind-up trains in O gauge. Eventually came electric trains in both O and Standard gauge. In 1938, American Flyer was bought out by the A.C. Gilbert Company, who by the start of World War II had completely revamped the product line. Gilbert’s prewar trains were S scale, but ran on O gauge track. After the war, their new trains ran on the proper S gauge track.
Lionel wasn’t the first American manufacturer to market electric trains either. When Lionel trains came onto the market, they faced stiff competition from companies such as Carlisle & Finch and Knapp, among others.
The earliest American manufacturers making “real” toy trains that ran on track (i.e. not floor toys) were Beggs and Weeden-Dart who made live steam sets as far back as the 1880’s.
Hey tomkat, you still around? I know, longshot. But who knows.. I’m a descendent of Dr. Wellington Adams. I was just doing some family research and stumbled upon this.
I didn’t know that they had a working model at the Expo. That’s really cool! Thank you for sharing this.
So as per my understanding of all of this, as was verbally passed down to me, is that he invented a way to power a full sized electric passenger train. But another big company suddenly rushed in with the same plans and built the system. He and others involved sued and lost. I know it cost him dearly. I’ve heard some whispers of it being a case of big corporate money stealing an invention. But who knows.. What’s done is done.
OK, so I just got back from skimming the court case. Looks like the model they used at this expo was lost and couldn’t be used to help his case. I’d admit, his patent was weak. It was nothing to specific. So the model, by itself, wouldn’t had helped anyway. I think they lost mostly because of a weak patent and lack of a working model or corporate backings..
Wow, after reading all this and typing this up, I wonder when the model disappeared. Was it stolen? What size was the model? Was it the one he and others built in a lab in St. Louis? What exactly happened? Obviously, I’m no expert. I’ll read more into this another time..
Like I said, this is a really cool and rare piece of St. Louis history. I’m jealous. But incredibly thankful to find this.
Thanks again!
What’s the patent number?
William D. Middleton, in ‘The Interurban Era’, has Wellington Adam’s proposing the Chicago - St Louis air line in 1893, with a peak speed of only 99mph. It would be interesting to see what his sources were…
Compare this with what Weems was doing for M&E with electric traction at high speed.
Looking at the picture, it appears to me suspiciously possible from the size of the ‘motor case’ that Adams was adapting a Long-Waisted Mary Ann as an efficient motor.
If this Wellington Adams is Arthur Wellington Adams, Thomas Bullard has a monograph on him from 1988 called ‘Chained Lightning Doctor’. These were being remaindered out in 2008 by the R&LHS:
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I don’t know about all the mechanics and designs and how they would operate. But it’s patent #300,827 dated 6/24/1884 and filed 3/27/1883.
And yes, Dr. Arthur Wellington Adams (1856-1898).
lol hold up. Let me read this. Thanks for replying and sharing that. I definitely need to do more research. I really need to get ahold of that monograph!
Fun fact, Arthur’s wife is the granddaughter of 1 of the 3 founders of The Pony Express (established 10/24/1861). Seems that there’s a trend of coming out with something just a little to late.. This also shows how rapidly things were changing during this time. Also, the building that this exposition was held in was one of the first in the country to utilize electric lighting.