Granite Railway

Granite Railway, first commercial railroad in the United States. Chartered on March 4, 1826, it was designed and built by the engineer Gridley Bryant, and it began operations on October 7, 1826, running three miles from Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Neponset River. The wooden rails were plated with iron and were laid 5 feet (1.5 meters) apart. Horse-drawn wagons with wheels 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter hauled blocks of granite along these rails to the river, from where they were taken by barge to Charlestown in Boston, for use in the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument. In winter the cars were equipped with a kind of snowplow. The Granite Railway later came under the control of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company.