Railroad
Delivery of the manufactured iron was a problem at Lonaconing. After experimenting with a horse-powered tram road, the company realized that a rail line, built down the Georges Creek Valley toward the Potomac River at Westernport, would be the answer to the transportation issue. As a result, the Georges Creek Railroad was completed in 1853.
The rail line was unfortunately too late to provide the needed market access for the Lonaconing Iron Furnace. The furnace was abandoned in 1855. Coal, not iron, became the most important commodity shipped out of the region, as better grades of iron ore were discovered in Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes region.
Read more about this topic: Georges Creek Coal And Iron Company
Famous quotes containing the word railroad:
“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
—Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)
“The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)