employer. it is $2 a week per employee. that's not a great deal of money to know if your mother is diagnose you could be by her side or if you have an infant or special need child to know that you can be there when you are needed. >> listen on the free cspan radio app. cspan where history unfolds daily. in 1979cspan was created as a public service by america's cable television company. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. each week american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn about american history. next we tour the railroad exhibit at the henry ford museum

in deerborn, michigan. transportation cure rater matt anderson talks about the progression of the american rail. he shows us an 1831 steam locomotive and a 125-foot engine that weighs nearly 40 tons. >> i'm the curator of transportation and we're here at the henry ford museum of transportation. we're substantial doubting in the midst of our railroad unit. the railroad was the major technology back then. an important collection of railroad vehicles. a what we have are railroad locomotives that tell the story from the very earliest days in the 1930's to the early days of the electronic locomotive in the

1920's. behind me is our earliest examples. this is a replica of an 1831 locomotive. the replica was built in 1892. so it in and of itself is pretty historic now. this gives us an idea of what trains would have looked like first coming out of the scene in the late 1820s and early 1830s. it was located in new york state and eventually became a part of the railroad that would become the new york central, one of the largest railroads in the united states. railroads in the 1930s were small local affairs they might 20 to 50 miles between local cities. some had greater endeavors. eventually we got to that point but it took a few decades for these local systems to kind of coalesce and grow into each other to form what would become a comprehensive national network. people are always kind of shocked to see this locomotive and especially the cars, they

think they look like stagecoaches on steel wheels and that's basically exactly what they are. it took a few years to develop the standard railroad coaches you know today. but of course when it was introduced they just used the technology they knew. the stagecoaches worked fairly well to start with you could get a number of people on them. but it did rock and roll a little bit traveling down the road as they did on the road for that matter. and railroad designers realized they could come up with a more efficient system. it wasn't too long before they were built perhaps within ten years or so that they went to the rectangular box that we think of with a railroad. when the the railroad was introduced in the 1830s it would have been fairly expensive to travel on and just the upper classes that were traveling at that time. as time went on fares started to fall a little bit and the typical working average for the mid to late 19th century would be about $0.03 a mile for your

transportation. by the mid-19th century we had the idea of separate classes of travel you had everything from first class pullman cars with all of the luxuries we might think of. depending on your socioeconomic status you could travel but in more or less comfort depending on what you could pay for your fare. passenger and freight trains were largely using the same technology. the steam locomotive was introduced, some of the earliest in the united states were horsepowered, horses would pull it on the train. but it was in a few years that they realized the steam locomotive offered great potential. railroads in the united states were defined by one type of locomotive the 440 or american type. those were equally at home on passenger trains or freight

trains and really became the prominent symbol of the united states in the 19th century. so the locomotive behind me is really the american type a 440 steam locomotive. what those numbers refer to are the wheel lay out on the locomotive, the arrangement of the wheel. so there are four wheels up front under the pilot. then there are four driving wheels, the wheels that are actually powered be i the rod there. then 0 trailing wheels. the 440. so if we talked about something like the alleghany we're talk about a 2666 so much bigger, many more driving wheels on that than the 440. but this is a locomotive that many of us today think of when we picture steam locomotives. this was the most popular type used in the second half of the 19th century in the united states. absolutely necessary we have one of these in our collection.

this locomotive was used on the atlantic and gulf railroad which was a short line in the american south. and locomotives of course very expensive. and as railroads used them they tried to get as much life out of them as they can but they age. this locomotive would have been increasingly demoted to smaller service. it might have started hauling freight and passenger trains then pushed down to yard service when it was just moving a few cars around a yard and not driving on the mainland anymore. when the locomotive came to the museum it was purchased by henry ford and put back into service to be used in the dedication serb moan i as for the henry ford. on that day he brought one of his closest friends thomas edison out to greenville village along with herbert hoover, president of the united states. so ford renamed the locomotive for that occasion the president. and you can see it on the plaque there and the date october 1,

1891. and that would be henry ford museum now. at that time it was called the edison institute in honor of thomas edison who was ford's great friend and mentor. but i always thought it was kind of interesting this place opened october 21st, 1929, just days before the stock market crash. so arguably one of the last good days of herbert hoover's administration. american railroads are distinguished by britain's railroads. the big distinguishing characteristic is british railroads tended to be very well built, they had flag level grades, stone bridges, substantial construction, they had really larger locomotives and they had fenced off riding ways. in the united states of course we're always moving fast, go, go, go so we don't spend a lot of time making things permanent. our railroads were much less expensively built than the british railroads. they tended to be rough and

bouncy. we would build wood bridges rather than stone. and we didn't bother putting up fence around the right of ways. so it was not uncommon for livestock to wander on to the track. that tends to be a problem with the train coming along. typically the cow comes out on the short end of the conflict. but its body could still be caught underneath the train and cause it to derail. so the cow catchers were designed not so much to safely push the cow out of the way but to keep the cow from falling under the locomotive and causing it to ram. a locomotive like this would require two crew members to operate. you have your engineer controlling the throttle and brake and controlling the track hand. then you have your fireman who would be shovelling not coal but wood into the fire box. that was the first widely used on the railroads because it was abundant and easy to fine. we move to coal by about the mid-19th century because it was

more efficient, you could get more steam and power out of it. but this one still used wood in the fire box. the other thing required now is water. and we take for granted that we have water everywhere in the east but not so much out in the west. so providing water got to be a challenge. railroads would have to build water towers or tanks at a specific number of miles and often you would pull into a station there would be a water tower nearby so the crew could take on water as well. as we move into the late 19th and early 20th century some high speed railroads and tractor trains built track pans. they would build pans of water right two the rails and a scoop would be dropped down. the train could scoop up additional water without stopping. that was kind of interesting. must have been a sight to see that. needless to say they didn't work as well in the winter. they would try to keep it liquid as well as they could but inevitably it would freeze up in

some harsh conditions. that was another reason the locomotive grew so popular, not only did you need the coal and wood but you didn't have to have water every so many miles. it was fueled up and ready to go. when we think about the passenger experience for the dewit clinton it would be different than this locomotive in close cars. there's not much protection even if you're inside in the event of inclement weather you're going to get wet and cold. there's also the matter of embers and sparks being thrown up from the locomotive as well. many would be fairly small and not do much damage but some could be fairly large enough to set clothing on fire. there are stories on people on the first ride actually opening umbrellas and things to protect them from the shower of embers. that was fine until their umbrellas caught fire and burned up and then they were on their own. at least with this coach you'll have some more protection from the sparks and embers. that said you would still if you opened up the windows, if the breeze was right you might catch

a face full of smoke or soot. and of course riding in one of these cars too we have the open plan in our railroad coaches where as you go to britain they have private compartments with 2 or 4 people. in the united states everybody was always in the same car it was the democratic way. so inevitable you would have some conflicts with your seat meat. you might want the window open he or she might want it cold. you might have someone in there reading silently, someone else reading loudly. you have other people talking loudly. frankly basically the way on airplanes we fly today. there's always someone perhaps that's a little annoying whether it's the crying baby or the person who wants to talk when you want to sleep. perhaps less difficult than your clothes catching on fire but nevertheless annoying. when we think of the 440 this is the locomotive that really built the united states. when we talk about our westward expansion moving through the

pacific it could not have been done without locomotives like this and without the transcontinental railroad and then the other transcontinental lines that followed. if you had to think about a symbol of the united states for the 19th century you could pick 2, 1 would be the buffalo and the other the 440 they both represent the united states at that pivotal time in our development. behind me is our 1942 chesapeake and ohio roadway alleghany locomotive. they don't come really much bigger or more powerful than this. this locomotive weighs close to 730,000 pounds without the water and the coal. you add those and you're looking at well over 1 million pounds and weight. horsepower something like 7500. so tremendously powerful. the problem is there's a practical limit the size that you can build the steam locomotive and the alleghany is

pretty much there. anymore and it becomes too heavy to navigate on the track. this is about as big as the steam locomotive ever got. it was designed to hold long coal trains through particularly mountainous sections. it's no surprise it would hold on to steam power as long as it did. really through the 1940s. but the cl made its money mining coal so they would invest in coal technologies for a locomotive like this. this is also easily the most photographed object they have in the entire museum. not a day goes by when i don't walk past here and somebody is posing for a picture in this locomotive. i have a picture of myself as a boy posing with this locomotive. there's something about the size it's so enormous it grabs people. one of the most popular questions is how did you get

this into the museum? it wasn't easy. it came here not under its own powers but its own wheels. our track here in the museum connects to a track behind the museum into our museum but not after removing a few pieces from the side of the locomotive and removing the door and frame from the back of the building. even then it just barically squeezed in. it's been here since 1956. i can say fairly confidently i don't think it's going anywhere. a locomotive like this would have required at least two people in the cab you have to have your engineer and your fireman. now traditionally the fireman is the person shovelling the coal physically into the fire box. with a locomotive of this size it's appetite was so great that there was no way a human being could keep up with the demand. they could not shovel enough coal to keep it running a the peak capacity. so it has an automatic that looks like a screw device that automatically pushes coal into the fire box.

so fireman would still be there but largely checking the fire, checking gauges and so forth more so than the actual physical labor of shovelling coal. hard to believe people could operate something this massive in size. altogether 60 of these locomotives were built and they were built just in time for world war ii which was something of a golden age for american railroads in terms of the service that they provided. hauling not just war material out to the coast but also transporting troops and indeed although these were designed for freight some carried troops off to ships that would transport them overseas. of course they were entirely out of date within about 15 years by which point the diesel locomotive proved itself more efficient and effective. you could certainly add additional locomotives but you'd have to add additional crew members to operate each one.

with a diesel electric you can string up as many as you like and they can be connected electronically. by the time this was operating shortly after the civil war we standardized. prior to that there were a number of different gauges particularly in the south which was fine as long as railroads were local operations as they worked through the first half of the 19th century. of course you create a national network, it can't be done if you have to move your freight from one side to the other because the wheels aren't is same with the parts. then the adoption of standard time too which came a little later in the 1880s. prior to that people based their watches on where the sun was at noon. it might be different this chicago than detroit. so when the railroads changed

that so they could operate their schedules more efficiently. we all eventually adopted standard time of course and it helped us move forward certainly. we not only have these locomotives here inside the henry ford museum but out in the village we have an operating railroad. we have about a 2-mile track that runs around the village and we have a fleet of locomotives that will carry passengers on rides. it's a tremendous experience riding behind the steam locomotive is multisensory there's not only the sound but a unique smell and feel. and one of the questions we often get asked seeing that we have that railroad out there how come we never run the alleghany out. one it's a historic artifact, two it would be tremendously expensive to make it operational again. three this would be a bit oversized for hauling passengers around. and four it just physically would not fit. it could not make the sharp curves through our railroads and it could not clear some of the

buildings and station platforms out there. as much as i would love to see it i'm afraid it's not going to happen here. steam locomotives require almost constant maintenance. there are major repairs that have to be done every so often there are also daily inspections of those locomotives. you have to make sure there are no cracks or weak spots in any of the bolts in the locomotive or the boiler. you have to inspect the boiler tubes that run inside that help boil the water. mineral deposits have to be cleaned out and ash pans have to be cleaned out too. so a great deal of maintenance. very labor intensive and as long as steam was the only game in town that was something railroads just lived with. they accepted the fact all of this maintenance would have to be done. but when the diesel locomotive comes on the scene in the 1920s and especially after world war ii they see they can run for thousands of miles with very little maintenance. basically top off the fuel tank

and that's it. it had tremendous economic advantages so the diesel is adopted and embraced very quickly. the locomotive behind me is perhaps not as hand some or pretty as steam locomotives in our collection. but nevertheless it is equally as important. this is a 1926 diesel electric locomotive. one of the first deceases in use on american railroads. when we talk about locomotives today we refer to them as deceases generally but that's not an entirely accurate way to describe them. they are strictly speaking diesel electric locomotives. in other words the diesel engine in this does not direct le power the wheels. instead it powers an electric generator and that's fed to traction motors. and those traction motors then the electric motors move the locomotive up and down track. you're looking at an electric motor that carries its own

generator with it. very quickly diesel electric locomotives prove their worth on american railroads. they require much less maintenance than steam locomotives. you didn't have to clean ash out of the fire box, you didn't have to have the infrastructure required there was no need for water tanks or round houses in which the regular maintenance and inspection work could be done. you just top off the fuel tank and it could go for thousands of miles before it required major repairs. nevertheless they made their inroads fairly slowly. they started with smaller units that might have been owned by a factory or a power plant use today haul coal cars or cars around a small yard used by that factory. it was by the 1930s the diesel electric moved into passenger service and became very popular

with passengers. then certainly after world war ii they made their inroads on the freight service and by the late 1950s they had completely replaced steam locomotives on the american lines. this is what they looked like in their first generation. they were absolutely revolutionary. not only did they reduce a will the of the maintenance and expense and the crew size in running locomotives they were also much easier on the track. when we think of a steam locomotive we think of the big side rods going back and forth. it's cool to watch but it makes a terrible beating on your railroad track, puts a lot of strain on the physical plant. where these are much gentler to your track. we're looking at the front of the locomotive right now but it will look basically ideal on the rear end as well. that's a big advantage of diesel locomotives they were geared to operate clearly well in either direction. now a steam locomotive could work just as well in reverse in terms of the power. the problem is of course it's hard for the crew to see when they're backing up.

they're not really designed physically to run at full speed in the reverse direction whereas you can go either way and just be fine. that was a big advantage as well. you look at this locomotive you see it doesn't have the cow catcher we think of when we think of steam locomotives the 19th century. and cow catchers kind of by the 19 hundreds they're about the nation was just becoming less rural as a whole and railroads had gotten around to fencing some of the right of ways in rural areas. farmers were more cognizant as well encounters with livestock became increasingly rare. of course now you have to start worrying about encounters with automobiles but that's a whole separate issue. gates with flashing lights start to appear more on railroad crossings. there was confusion with these locomotives. it's obvious to a whole crew which end is the front when

crews say move that engine forward everybody knows intuitively what you're talking about. in this case where it looks the same in size that could be very dangerous if you tell them back up and they go not the direction you're expecting them to move in. there's a little f painted up in the front which is an important distinction when you're operating this in a crew. there was some hesitancy about not so much on the part of passengers as it was on the part of the railroads themselves. they're famously conservative american railroads even to this day and they're hesitant to put a lot of money into a new technology unless it's much improved. the diesel electric locomotive was able to prove itself before it moved on to the main line. but it quickly proved its worth and advantages so they were quick to adopt it. passengers were eager to adopt the diesel locomotive because it

looks so fresh and modern. if you look at the advertising of the 1930s and especially into the 1950s you'll see the streamlined locomotives. they did look very fresh and cutting edge compared to a steam locomotive. this is a time too when they were looking to do whatever they can to attract passengers. by the mid-1950s the interstate highway system is starting to be built. everybody has a family car in the garage and people are driving and flying now in numbers they never had before. it also becomes such a quick success on the american roads because it comes at just the right time. railroads had not been able to replace a lot of locomotives during the great depression or during the war because they weren't being bill during the war. and during the war they're pushing their ageing infrastructure harder than ever before with all of the troop trains and war materials being built. by the time the war ends railroads need to replace their

locomotives anyway. the diesels it's only natural they moved towards them. it's always remarkable to our visitors to think of all of the effort and work and design that went into that alleghany locomotive. visitors ask a lot of questions about these trains, they will ask sometimes why this one looks so weird because it looks totally unlike any other locomotive we have seen. this is just an early example of the diesel electric locomotive in a time when people really didn't know what a diesel locomotive would look like. so this is sometimes called a box cab locomotive probably for obvious reasons. it is really practicality in its truest form. it's just a box or a housing around the diesel prime mover up there which powers that electric

generator and then controls up in the front and back. but of course overtime they became a little more refined. nowadays when we see them they tend to have tabs up front and what would be called a long hood in the back. you just don't walk in it along side the engine like here. you go inside. nowadays you flip open panels on the locomotive to access a part of the diesel engine if it needs maintenance. also when we look at this much shorter than modern locomotives. also today two modern locomotives tend to have platforms on the front and side and a lot of crew members get easy access to them. you're often getting on and off the locomotives and moving cars around. here you have a few basic platforms but they're not particularly safe. and that's a whole other issue with railroads too. visitors will ask why we don't operate these and the fact is that one these are museum pieces so we're trying to preserve them as they are and any time you operate something you tend to

wear away some of the original fabric because you inevitable have to replace or repair things overtime so the object becomes a little less original with each passing year. and there's an expense involved in bringing these back to operating capacity. and then there's just the issue of size, something like the alleghany is far too big for the track we have here so there's no way we could operate it. all of that said we have an operating steam railroad next door that runs around the village. we have three locomotives we keep in regular operating condition. we like to say not only are we preserving that steam locomotive, but also the skill involved to maintain them. needless to say people aren't learning that anymore. steam locomotives aren't being used in wide numbers anymore. so we tend to get people here rather young they want to get involved in that program and work them up through the ranks. this is 150 years ago, you

started in the system out in the shop. they were just cleaning up helping with other tasks then you work on the maintenance of the locomotive and eventually work your way up to fireman then finally up to an engineer where you're able to operate the locomotive. so it's kind of in smaller scale we're preserving that whole system of steam locomotive maintenance and repair. i do actually have a favorite locomotive. it's one that is actually out on our railroad right now. it is the 1897 baldwin locomotive. it's a beautiful 440 but it's from the later 19th century so it's much bigger than the sam hill. we just put that back into operating condition a few years ago. i love seeing it out there because it actually looks a little larger than other locomotives. it's great out there, it has a beautiful whistle you can hear. and the railroad crews will tell you compared to some of our other locomotives it's so much more comfortable ride and so

much more smoother on the track. so that's my personal favorite. but i like the alleghany too, everybody does. it's so impressive. but i'll go with the baldwin. the locomotives we have are more or less permanent parts of our collection. we have added a few in recent decades. and we have gotten rid of some because of the space they take up and they were kind of duplicating the stories we could tell and that's an important concern with every museum artifact what story does it tell, are we already telling this story with something else or can we tell it better with something else. so occasionally museums have to remove something from their collection fortunately with our case they have gone to other museums so they are still in the public eyes just not a part of our collection. we do have a diesel electric locomotive we're operating that we use for some of our yard work out there. then we have a gasoline powered locomotive which is kind of unusual too. those are kind of rare but this

is a gas engine rather than diesel. and that is mechanically connected to the wheel so it's not driving an electric motor of any kind. we have a turntable out there as well that is entirely hand powered. it's not hooked up to any kind of a monther to. if the locomotive is balanced properly on that turntable one person can turn the whole thing around. so that's kind of cool to watch. our railroad exhibit we're really trying to tell the story of the development of the railroad as a technology in the united states and its growth from regional small carriers in the 1830s and 1840s into a natural system and part of american everyday life. from a technological point of view we're trying to tell the story of the steam locomotive from its earliest it rations in the late 1820s through its peak of development in the early 1940s with the alleghany locomotive. so it's a lot of ground to cover

and we have to be judicious in doing it because we only have so much space for these locomotives and cars and of course they take up quite a bit of space. so we have tried to be pretty selective in what we have chosen but i think we have all of the major types and eras represented in our holdings here. we have only talked about a few of the locomotives here. we not only have these but a couple of other locomotives in here. and then we have a number of cars too. we have 1850s passenger coach typical of the civil war era. we have a couple of freight cars, a boxcar, we haven't even talked much about freight railroading but refrigerating cars like that really change it had american diet. prior to that we had to eat fruit ins season. now we could purchase fruits any time of the year grown around the world. and perhaps the most famous of the freight cars the caboose. we have a small red caboose where the crew would have been stationed on a train and the conductor would have set up shop. so we have i think a nice

selection that really tells the story of american railroading in an efficient way but also a very impressive way. we take you to the henry ford museum in michigan, and learn about the changes over the years. then other car makers including the honda accord to learn how cars evolved and why car makers decided to make changes. then we take a look at some of

the auto industry mavericks including de lauren and elon musk. if you missed any of these programs, you can find them online at c-span's video library. we continue thursday with a look at the life of martin luther king jr., showing a 15th anniversary march. . this weekend during our regular american history tv programming, we'll take a look at the murder of one of boston's richest men while he was visiting harvard university in 1849. english professor paul collins specializes in nineteenth century crimes and he talks about his latest book, "blood

and ivey," the 1849 murder that scandalized harvard. then saturday night at 8 eastern a class by rutgers university professor decker, on laws and litigation regarding natural resources and sunday night at 8 during our weekly look at the presidency, harry trueman's russia policy. . this sunday on oriole hift oral histories we continue with eva clayton. >> even my members resistance to me, finally their acceptance of me. and they did. they did. you know, i earned -- i was on

that drafting committee only because i was a ranking ranking member, also because i made a contribution. they accepted me as equal and many of them accepted me as their superior. that allowed me to know that i can negotiate with the best of them. >> and in the weeks ahead, we'll hear from helen bentley, barbara canali, nancy johnson, and lynn woolsey. watch oral histories sunday on c-span3. each week american artifacts takes you to mu # see museums. next we take you to dearborn, michigan. transportation coordinator matt anderson shows us early vehicles made by