(The following column by Fran Miller appeared at Denver.YourHub.com on October 8.)
DENVER — Note to the reader: Parker used to have a railroad that came through town. It had a depot and there was an attempt to resurrect it back in the 1980s when there was talk or extending RTD trolley car service to Parker. Franktown had always been a stage-stop from its founding in 1859.
In the late 1800s there was an in-between time when the horse and the railroad ruled supreme, along with the telegraph. Although Leonardo daVinci’s drawings contained a bicycle-like apparatus, the first patent was granted after the American Civil War, which was also a period in which railroads were being extended west at a ferocious pace.
In 1877, a mechanic, George Sheffield had a 7 mile walk home down the railroad tracks from work. Over the winter he developed a rail scooter that consisted of a bicycle with a third wheel that served to balance the contraption. In typical American fashion he only avoided jail for trespass on railroad property by noting a break in the tracks one night and saving a train from derailment.
The railroads soon embraced the technology as a means to transport men and materials for repair and maintenance. It was by-and-large a velocipede, the name for the bicycle at the time, but it acquired the affectionate name, the Irish-mail. For over 50 years there was a flurry of patent activity as the railroad handcar was embellished. It eventually became the two-man pumper we remember in the early movies, and, later, became motorized. As trains became faster, having men on the tracks in small cars became more dangerous and the introduction of the internal combustion engine caused the hand-car to disappear from use. It is now all but a museum piece.
What is significant about the velocipede is that it is a piece of Americana that fits into the Victorian period before the age of the automobile. At that time, the invention of the bicyle was not only creating a new form of transportation but, also, transforming society as women abandoned their traditional dress and became bicycle riders. It was one of the first forms of women’s liberation and pre-dated the suffrage movement that gave women a right to vote.
The invention of the railroad hand-car is also indicative of how innovation and technology proceed. Sheffield is probably remembered primarily because he patented his device and turned it into a successful company by acquiring other patents. In fact as early as 1860, on the Little Miami Line, there was a three wheeled handcar in use that had oak beams as struts and weighed 150 pounds. Nine years later Aspinwall and Perry received patents for converting two wheeled bicycles into three-wheeled rail-road cars. Their patent was later acquired by Sheffield.
What is also interesting is the fate of these companies. Sheffield’s company was acquired by the Fairbanks, Morse & Co, a successful railroad scales manufacturer. Typical of such acquisitions, Fairbanks continued to produce a manually-operated handcar for twenty years after gasoline speeders had been replacing them and they faded into obscurity. It was not until 1960, however, that putting flanged wheels on a pickup truck replaced the gas speeder car. So, the technology had a run of nearly 100 years, which is not bad for any invention. And, it continues to occupy the mind space of railroad and movie buffs who remember Abbott and Costello pumping feverishly trying to outrun the train.
I suspect that someday, we will see a re-emergence as bicycle buffs recreate the technology as some kind of extreme sport using modern bicycle frames and composite components. There’s an awful lot of railroad track out there begging to be used.