Nearly 200 years later, Tom Thumb locomotive returns to Old Ellicott City

On a late-August day in 1830, a strange contraption that looked like a large black bottle atop a small wheeled platform belched white steam as it pushed a railcar carrying railroad executives from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills, which is now Old Ellicott City.

The debut of the steam locomotive, dubbed Tom Thumb for its diminutive size, marked the first time a steam engine moved a train on a railroad in the United States.

Before then, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad used horses to pull carloads of passengers and cargo along 13 miles of newly laid track. But steam power started replacing horsepower, first in Europe and then around the world.

Now, Tom Thumb — or at least a replica of the historic locomotive — has returned to Ellicott City nearly 200 years later for display at the Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum, housed in the oldest surviving railroad station in the U.S.

Baltimore’s National Museum of Railroad History & Innovation, formerly known as the B&O Railroad Museum, loaned the replica to the museum operated by Howard County Recreation and Parks. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, or B&O, was chartered in February 1827 and named for its origin in Baltimore and intended destination of Ohio.

“When you think of what a train looks like, you’re not thinking this,” said Keenan Holmes, the historical and cultural resources section manager at Howard County Recreation and Parks, gesturing toward Tom Thumb on the museum’s second floor. “It looks like a platform on wheels.”

Peter Cooper, an inventor and industrialist, designed and built Tom Thumb and drove it on its inaugural journey.

Cooper wanted to demonstrate to the B&O executives that a steam locomotive built on American soil could power the railroad. At the time, railroad executives were unsure that a steam locomotive could successfully run on the B&O’s winding track from Mount Clare in West Baltimore south to the Patapsco River and then west along its banks.

On Aug. 28, 1830, Cooper stoked Tom Thumb’s upright, bottle-shaped, coal-fired boiler, which powered the geared drive to pull the carful of B&O directors along.

The steam locomotive’s inaugural 13-mile trip took roughly 1 hour and 12 minutes, Holmes said.

“That travel was groundbreaking to passengers at that time,” Holmes said.

Tom Thumb “traveled at an impressive speed of 10 to 14 miles per hour,” amazing its passengers, according to the national railroad museum’s website.

Despite the initial fanfare, passengers traveled on Tom Thumb only until March 1831. The tiny locomotive wasn’t big enough to haul larger trains with more passengers and cargo and was never put into regular service, but it did prove that a steam-powered locomotive could do the job. Tom Thumb was scrapped and salvaged for parts in 1834.

Roughly 60 years later, the first replica of Tom Thumb, a nonworking model, was built for the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair.

Joseph G. Pangborn, a B&O assistant passenger agent, designed a collection of wooden replicas of pioneering trains, including Tom Thumb, for the 1893 exposition. The purpose of the exhibit was to showcase B&O’s contribution to steam-powered locomotives.

The model has been in storage at the National Museum of Railroad History & Innovation for at least the past two decades. The museum loaned Pangborn’s replica long-term to the B&O Ellicott City Station Museum, which is next to the railroad bridge over Frederick Road at the foot of historic downtown Ellicott City.

It traveled there last Friday on a flatbed trailer pulled by a pickup truck.

A second Tom Thumb replica, an operational one, remains on display at the Baltimore museum. That replica was built for the 1927 Fair of the Iron Horse, which took place in Halethorpe, celebrating the centennial of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, now part of CSX, a Jacksonville, Florida-based railroad spanning most of the U.S. east of the Mississippi River.

While the operational replica reflects Cooper’s “general description” of Tom Thumb, it was built for performance rather than historical accuracy, according to Jonathan Goldman, the national railroad museum’s chief curator.

The replicas on display in Ellicott City and Baltimore “form the two bookends of the Tom Thumb’s historic 13-mile route that began service in 1830,” Goldman said in a statement.

Tom Thumb’s significance was recognized yet again in 1952, during the B&O Railroad’s 125th anniversary. A 3-cent stamp was issued in Baltimore on Feb. 28, 1952, that included an image of Tom Thumb alongside a horse-drawn passenger car and a modern diesel locomotive.

The Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday. Admission is free.

The two-floor museum allows visitors to visualize what the historic station looked like, including the superintendent’s office, the ticket office and the car house.

An annual holiday train garden begins on Nov. 27.