(Gallery Has Six Pictures)	Go to Top

This is the Lafayette, built by the Norris Locomotive Works in 1843 for the B&O Railroad. Its bell was intended to alert people of the approach of the locomotive, and locomotives to this day include bells and horns for this same purpose.

Later steam locomotives grew to much greater size, and to gargantuan size, but their basic elements remained the same.

Today steam locomotives are rare, replaced by larger and more powerful diesel locomotives. Earlier in my life, I commuted to work on a train that was pulled by these locomotives.