Stourbridge Lion
Honesdale, Wayne County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A replica of the famous Stourbridge Lion, first locomotive run on rails in the U.S., 1829, is housed here. Beside it is the Eclipse, original passenger coach on the D & H Gravity Railroad.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Honesdale honors its place in railroad history with a replica of the Stourbridge Lion, the English-built engine that in 1829 became the first locomotive to run on rails in the United States. Displayed beside it is the Eclipse, an original passenger coach from the Delaware & Hudson's gravity railroad. Together they recall the town's role at the very dawn of American railroading.
Why it matters
By preserving the Lion's memory and an original gravity-railroad coach, Honesdale keeps alive the birthplace of steam railroading in America.
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Related people
- · Horatio Allen
Related events
- · First steam locomotive run in the United States
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stourbridge Lion
Honesdale, PA · est. 1947
On August 8, 1829, at Honesdale, the Stourbridge Lion made the first run of a steam locomotive on rails in the United States. English-built for the level stretches of the Delaware & Hudson's gravity railroad, the engine was piloted by Horatio Allen, who took it out despite doubts that the wooden trestlework could bear its weight. The trial proved that steam power could move on iron rails on American soil — a glimpse of the railroad age to come.
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In the mid-19th century, northeastern Pennsylvania's anthracite fields ran on ingenious gravity railroads — lines that let loaded coal cars coast downhill by their own weight, with stationary steam engines hauling the empties back up a chain of inclined planes. The Pennsylvania Coal Company's route carried anthracite between the mines around Pittston and the canal at Hawley for more than three decades. This surviving 'Pioneer' car, retired when the gravity line gave way to conventional steam locomotives, was handed over to the City of Scranton in 1909 as a relic of that vanished technology.
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