Leiper Railroad

To test the matter, and at the same time afford a public exhibition of the merits of tramways, he built a temporary track in the yard of the Bull's Head Tavern in Philadelphia.

The tramway was some sixty feet long, had a grade of one inch and a half to the yard,[1] and up it, to the amazement of the spectators, one horse used to draw a four-wheeled wagon loaded with a weight of ten thousand pounds.

by John Bach McMaster, page 494, A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War[2]Thomas Leiper was a Pennsylvania Militia officer who served during several campaign years, first failing to obtain allowance to build a canal connecting his quarry near Crum Creek to Ridley Creek,[3] reaching flood-waters on the estuary of the Delaware Valley tidewater in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

First, he commissioned a short experimental horse-powered railway in 1809[3] which proved a horse-drawn heavy wagon heavily loaded could advance successfully against a stiff gradient a bit over 4%.

Ironically, when an 1824 petition finally succeeded, the railroad was replaced by the 'long desired canal' just as the world elsewhere was turning to and regularly were considering adopting railways for movement of heavy and bulk goods, as well as people.

[2] Located close to the University of Pennsylvania, one historian has opined that the idea was not Leiper's but belonged to TBDL and found, who became a noted engineer and steam locomotive builder.