T. H. Paul, Master Locomotive Builder

of Frostburg, Maryland

Patrick H. Stakem

The Mount Savage Shops of the Cumberland & Pennsylvania (C&P) Railroad produced approximately one hundred locomotives between 1868 and 1917. At the same time, a smaller locomotive manufacturer flourished just up the line in Frostburg .

The Thomas H. Paul and Son Iron Works Company had its facilities at the bottom of Depot Street, across from the C & P Depot. His residence was located nearby. The site is now occupied by buildings of the Maryland Coal & Reality Company. The facility was purchased by Consolidation Coal in 1900, and by the Jenkins family in 1947. The Paul works were originally located in 1855 where the Presbyterian Church now stands on Broadway. The move to Depot Street occurred in 1867. Production continued until 1883, when Paul left to build a locomotive facility in Baltimore. This effort was not successful, and he returned to Frostburg, although not to continue his work. He later moved to Sioux City, Iowa, in 1890. His son died in Frostburg in 1903.

Paul’s credentials were well suited to his chosen profession. He learned the machinery trade from his father, who was a millwright and engine builder with a shop in Patterson, NJ. Paul’s father was born and married in Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1818. Paul was born in New York on March 10, 1820. He was apprenticed in his father’s shop, and later, at the age of 15, to the Rogers Locomotive Works in Patterson, NJ. He was there in 1837 when the works completed its first locomotive. He served for seven months as engineer on the Patterson & Hudson Railroad, the youngest engineer in charge of a locomotive. Paul then worked at his father’s locomotive works in Baltimore for ten years as general manager. His father had purchased the facilities from William Winans, brother of Ross Winans, a noted locomotive designer and builder. Paul journeyed to Paraguay in 1850, returning to Baltimore by way of England. By 1854, he was Master Mechanic for the Cumberland & Pennsylvania in Mount Savage. In that year he also married Marian Neff of Kuntztown, PA. In 1855, he opened the Frostburg Iron Works to capitalize on the need for mining cars and machinery in the nearby coal mines. Paul may have built the first narrow gauge steam locomotive in the United States. Frostburg had been reached by the Mt. Savage & Cumberland Railroad some three years earlier. He expanded his business to produce narrow gauge mine locomotives and stationary boilers. He is listed in the Census of 1860 as having $5,000. of property. In the 1870 Census, this has increased to $16,000 in real estate, and $7,000. in property.

The real property was on Main Street, and consisted of store fronts with a stage upstairs for performances. This structure burned in Feb. 1874. It was insured, and thus rebuilt. In 1876, Paul’s Opera house opened in Frostburg. The building still stands, and is called the Lyric. Paul was in business with his brother R.C. Paul from 1855 through 1863. By 1872, R.C. Paul is advertising independently as a founder and machinist, with shops on the south side of the C&P tunnel. A member of the Lutheran Church, he cast bronze and brass, and was the inventor of a type of heating radiator used in churches. The 1893 Frostburg City Directory lists Thomas H. Paul & Son as having a facility at the foot of Mill Street. Paul’s Foundry in Frostburg was extensively damaged by a cyclone in 1890 (ref. 20). The Frostburg Mining Journal of March 15, 1883 mentions a 4 horsepower gasoline engine built by Paul.

T. H. Paul was producing larger road engines for the railroads, using his old employer, the C&P shops, under subcontract. He sent his drawings and patterns to Mt. Savage to get the parts made. The C&P shops were doing $10,000 a month worth of work for Paul in the period 1881 through July of 1884. His son, another Thomas, was general manager. An extension shop in Cumberland was considered in 1882. Around 1882-1883, T.H. Paul bought buildings in Baltimore. There were financial problems, and these evidently never opened. The Cumberland Civilian newspaper of Aug. 19, 1883, mentions a receivership.

The period beginning in 1883 was a busy one for heavy manufacturing in Mt. Savage. A locomotive catalog was issued for the Works by their agent, Thomas B. Inness & Co. of Broadway, New York. The catalog listed five types of engines for sale. Numerous sales resulted.. Narrow gauge engines proved so popular a product that the works installed a third rail up the main line from Mt. Savage for customer acceptance testing. The narrow gauge equipment, 4 of the 5 types listed in the catalog, was all of the Paul pattern. It is unclear if the relationship between Paul and Mt. Savage deteriorated. In any case, the Mt. Savage Shops shipped quite a few narrow gauge engines of the Paul pattern. Up to that point, Mt. Savage had only built standard gauged units.

Numerous units were built at Mt. Savage for Paul under contract. All were 3’ gauge, as contrasted with the standard gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches. Two units went to the Green Ridge Railroad (GRRR) of eastern Allegany County, Md. Number 1 is featured in an illustration in the Mt. Savage catalog as the model for the 0-6-0 units. GRRR Number 2 is an 0-4-0 unit. The rail line was eight miles to the east of Cumberland, in the vicinity of Town Hill and Fifteen Mile Creek. It belonged to the Merten family, and supplied timber to a sawmill at Oldtown. The lumber was used by the Merten's boatyards in Cumberland to construct canal boats. The railroad operated from 1889 to 1897. It interchanged with the B&O railroad near PawPaw, WV, after crossing the Potomac on a trestle bridge. Disposition of the engines is unknown.

Three engines went to the Pacific Coast Railroad, Oregon Improvement Company. Three more went to the Toledo, Delphos & Burlington in Ohio as their numbers 39, 40 and 47. The Pittsburgh & Western (P&W) got two units. A 2-6-0 unit built in March 1882 was sold in April 1884 to the Bright Hope Railway as their number 3. Another 2-6-0 unit was built as P&W No. 4 in April 1882, and was later sold in November 1887 to the Grafton & Greenbrier railroad. The Pittsburgh & Western was absorbed into the B&O system in 1902. The engines were listed on the roster at that time.

The Austin & North Western Railroad was a narrow gauge line that wandered north and west from Austin, Texas. Our interest in this Texas narrow gauge shortline is that they had 5 engines, all from T.H. Paul. He built the first four at his shops, and had Mt. Savage build the fifth one. The 5th engine had 3 foot gauge, 15" x 18" cylinders, and weighed 28 tons. A picture of that engine, outside the shops at Mt. Savage, shows the third rail. There was narrow gauge as well as standard gauge track from Mt. Savage to Borden.

The most important job of the Austin & North Western was to haul 50,000 tons of pink granite from quarries to build the new Texas state house at Austin. Doubtless, Number 5, the big engine, did the bulk of the work. This engine was listed as Mt. Savage serial #33 by the Southern Iron & Equipment (SI&E) Company, a broker, in 1918. It went to the Tallahalla Lumber Co. in Mississippi, and worked on that line for some years. It then came back to SI&E, and was listed as #1264. The engine was then sold to the Madrozo Sugar Company (Compania Amuracera Madrozo S.A.) of Cuba as their #4 on 26 August 1918. It was reported retired in 1958. A drawing, courtesy of Mr. Albin Lee, of Austin, TX., shows the engine as it came to the Austin & North Western, and as it was in service in Cuba.

In February of 1882, Paul shipped a 22 ton passenger locomotive to Ohio, then in March he shipped a 20 ton unit, built at Mt. Savage, to Texas. This was followed by a 10 ton tank engine to Pennsylvania, and a 22 ton Mogul (2-6-0) to the Pittsburg & Western. Fifteen locomotives were shipped by Paul between 1880 and 1883. He is reported to have done "a very extensive business in Cuba." The Rehor letter (ref. 17) lists nine engines built at Mt. Savage for resale by Paul. At the time of the Civil War, an average locomotive cost between $8,000 and $10,000, and prices remained stable for many years.

In July 1885, Ulysses S. Grant traveled from New York City in Mr. Pullman’s personal railcar, up along the Hudson River, through Poughkeepsie and Albany, to Saratoga Springs. He then took the narrow gauge Saratoga, Lake George & Mt. McGregor Railroad to the resort at the mountain top. President Grant died in Drexel Cottage on Mt. McGregor shortly later. His body was brought back down the mountain by train. The 3 foot gauge railroad, opened in July of 1882, had three engines. There is a good possibility, although not confirmed, that these were from T.H. Paul.

At its peak in 1881, the Paul works employed 60 men. The foundry building measured 33 feet by 70 feet, and numerous machinery, storage, and engine houses were adjacent. A branch foundry was located at Cumberland, at the corner of Davidson and Front Streets. The facility used local coal and firebrick, and may have used pig iron from the Bowery Furnace. This furnace, located in Midlothian and operated by the Cumberland Coal & Iron Company, was producing 140 tons per week in 1871. By 1880, the good ore was nearly depleted, and the furnace shut down. Plentiful iron was available by rail from Pittsburgh.

The pattern room of the foundry was located above the machine shop. Here, wooden forms were built to allow the rough casting of parts. In the casting department, molten metal was poured into sand molds made around the patterns. The cooled rough castings were finished in the machine shop. Here, lathes, planners, mills, and drills were driven by leather belts from an overhead main shaft, powered by a stationary steam engine. In the adjoining boiler room, steam punches, hammers, and rolls would be used to shape and form iron plate. The blacksmith’s shop, next to the boiler room, made and repaired tools. Wooden frame and coach work, and boiler lagging would have been done on site, or parceled out to local artisans. The shops probably produced almost all of the locomotive parts from raw materials.

Shops like Paul’s were the backbone of the industrial revolution, and the center of innovation in the age of steam. His shops, like the iron furnace facility at Lonaconing and the industrial center at Mt. Savage, provided and depended upon the transportation infrastructure that was essential in the emerging world power that was the United States.

References, Bibliography & Further Reading

1. Best, G. M. "Thomas H. Paul & Son, Locomotive Builders," R&LHS Bulletin , No. 141, Autumn, 1979, pp. 19-26

2. Stakem, Patrick H., "T.H. Paul & Son, Locomotive Builders in Frostburg, Md.," Jan. 1992, Automatic Block (Newsletter of the Western Maryland Chapter, National Railway Historical Society), Cumberland, Md., Vol. 14, No. 1

3. Smith, Gene. Lee & Grant, 1984, Promontory Press, pp 358-360

4. Poor, H.V. and H.W., Poor’s Manual of Railroads, 1884," 1884, 17th Annual Number, pp. 188

5. Stakem, Patrick H., "Engine #5," 1995, March, 1996, The Automatic Block, Vol. 18 no. 3

6. Mellander, Deane. Rails to the Big Vein, the Short Lines of Allegany County, Maryland, January 1981, Potomac Chapter, NRHS, Inc.

7. Stegmaier, Harry, Jr., et al. Allegany County - A History, 1976, McClain Publishing, Parsons, WV.

8. Ware, Donna M., Green Glades and Sooty Gob Piles, 1991, Maryland Historical Trust.

9. Frostburg Mining Journal, (Microfilm, FSU library)

a) late 1880, re: 2-6-0 engine for Kansas & Gulf

b) June 1882, re: engines to Oregon

c) March 15, 1890 re: 4 hp gas engine

d) May 24, 1890 re: to Sioux City, Iowa

e) April 27, 1872

also, Cumberland Civilian, August 19, 1883, re: receivership

10. Lacoste, Kenneth C.; Wall, Robert D., "An Archaeological Study of the Western Maryland Coal Region: The Historic Resources," 1989, Maryland Geological Survey

11. Scharf, History of Western Maryland, Vol 2, p. 1488-1489

12. Lee, Albin, "The Austin & Northwestern Railroad," Jan./Feb. 1990, Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette , pp. 60-63.

13. Lubar, Steven. Engines of Change, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1986.

14. Randolph, B.S. "History of the Maryland Coal Region," Journal of the Alleghenies, Vol. XXIX-1993, pp. 47-62

15. Wigginton, Eliot (ed), Foxfire 5, 1979, Anchor Books, p. 77-207. (Iron manufacturing)

16. Rail Tracks in Allegany County, Maryland, Book 1, 1980, Preservation Society of Allegany County, Md., Cumberland, Md.

17. Letter of Feb. 18, 1963, Rehor to Fisher, subject: Feb. 10, 1883 Baltimore Manufacturers Records, and reprint of Railroad Gazette of Feb. 16, 1883 (article on T.H. Paul)

18. Letter from Mr. Claus, General Manager of C&P to Mr. Charles E. Fisher, L&RHS, dated March 23, 1939, Cumberland, MD, concerning Mt. Savage production

19. Frostburg City Directory, Ort Library, FSU

20. J. Alleghenies, Vol XXIX-1993, p. 80