The Backstory on How Bladensburg Made Railroad History

If you’ve been to the Bladensburg Waterfront Park, you’ve seen a cherry-red caboose that commemorates the city’s past as part of the B&O railroad as well as a little-known moment in railroad history.

Nearly 30 years before the first electric passenger train went into service, Bladensburg played a part in a trial run of the first battery-powered train in history.

On April 29, 1851, a patent officer and professor named Dr. Charles Grafton Page set off from Washington, D.C., with several passengers in a railway coach he had designed to prove that an electric train could be competitive with steam-powered trains.

Page had a lot riding on the trial run. After receiving $20,000 in funding from Congress — the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars today — he had gone $6,000 into debt to finish his prototype and refute critics.

It was an utter disaster. Page’s battery involved a pair of metal plates, one immersed in nitric acid, which causes noxious fumes, and the other in sulfuric acid, a highly corrosive acid used today in some drain cleaners.

But the battery was extremely fragile, with no way to cushion it from the “jostling and oscillations” of a typical train trip, and it sparked every time Page switched connections.

Page had hoped to take the prototype along the B&O railroad line all the way to Baltimore. But after 39 minutes, with less than half of his battery cells working and his passengers choking on nitric acid fumes, he decided to turn around in Bladensburg.

With the battery badly damaged, the trip home took two hours.

But for a brief shining moment near Bladensburg, Page’s train lived up to his promises, as he and a friend jerry-rigged the wiring around the broken battery cells, and the engine hit a speed of 19 miles per hour. People waved handkerchiefs from windows of nearby homes.

It was, in the words of one passenger, the realization of a future of “travelling by lightning” — as though they were “propelled by some invisible giant, which by his silence was as impressive as his noisy predecessor.”

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4 responses to “The Backstory on How Bladensburg Made Railroad History”

  1. Christine Dawson says:

    That’s a very cool story and I always love your posts. You always have something interesting to teach me. Thank you!

  2. Alison Beckwith says:

    Thanks for reading!

  3. Hi, Alison,

    I’m so pleased that you’ve reminded us of Professor Page’s vexed trip to Bladensburg in his electric locomotive 170 years ago. In 1972-73 my wife Dian and I were living in Bladensburg as she was establishing her book packaging firm called Post Scripts and I was finishing my doctoral dissertation while ensconced as a “visiting fellow” in an office at what was then called the National Museum of History and Technology. Later we moved to Hyattsville and Post Scripts flourished as I worked my way through a succession of editorial and curatorial assignments at the Smithsonian. In all, I would write about a dozen books, but was always most fond of my first, published in 1976, a revision of my dissertation. The title was “Physics, Patents & Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page.” Besides the government subsidy for his locomotive, much else about Page’s career resonates in our own time, and I am pleased to say that my book is still available. It’s handled by Tim Boyle, a bookseller in Easton, where Dian and I moved when I retired.
    For my book, or anything else in the realm of Tim’s specialty in “Maryland Lore,” contact him at vintagebooksmd@yahoo.com. And thanks again, Alison, for telling about the good professor’s excursion with “galvanic power.”

    Bob Post

  4. John says:

    Very cool article. I grew up and went to school in this area in the 60s. Always heard a lot about the history of the battle of Bladensburg and the port but never this little known piece of history. Curious if anyone knows the history of the caboose pictured in the article. It looks very similar to one that was on display at Allen Pond in Bowie.

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