Like so much of the American West, the historic engine emerged from mystery and died unremarked. Thought to have been built by the Baldwin Company sometime around the year 1837, the locomotive traveled from Massachusetts to Galveston by boat in 1852 after being purchased by the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado (BBBC) Railway.
Eventually named for Texas Revolution veteran Sidney Sherman, who was involved in the construction of the railway, the locomotive was placed in service on December 24. It carried customers under its own steam for the first time in Texas in August 1853.
The railway that the Sherman traveled on was the first in Texas, originally spanning 20 miles of East Texas verdure from Harrisburg to Stafford’s Point.
On top of the fact that steam locomotives were invented in England mere decades earlier, these twenty miles were just the second railway west of the Mississippi. To put it not-so-figuratively, BBBC engineers were exploring uncharted territory, one of a burgeoning number of enterprises trying to adapt a British invention to American topography and distance. So when the company extended the railway past the Brazos River, it needed a creative solution.
Before eventually building permanent bridges, BBBC engineers built ramps on each bank of the river and used a ferry in the middle. The Sherman would dip down onto the ferry and pick up speed while crossing the river to build up momentum and travel up the ramp on the other bank. As the Texas State Historical Association describes it, this method “prevented efficient operation of the railroad.”
The company wouldn’t build a permanent iron bridge until after the Civil War, which was an inconvenient time for railroads in the South. The company stopped adding new track after 1860, and the Sherman engine was scrapped in 1899.
Though the company was eventually sold, the railroad is now a part of the Southern Pacific transcontinental Sunset Route between New Orleans and Los Angeles. It still carries commercial cargo as well as traveling passengers.
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