Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Transportation Building Dedication Addresses [PAGE 42]

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It was all the same to George Brown and the other men of Baltimore associated with, and like him, dreamers of dreams. They would go to the moon if they liked, but just

then preferring to elongate immediate oonnections on terra firma, they would be satisfied with the Ohio River. They weren't, as it eventuated, but that is another story * The pioneers of American Railway building with the impatience of boys not to be frustrated in what they had planned, brushed aside all queries, conundrums and the like as to how corners were to be turned, and hills climbed. Corners would be turned and hills climbed when they were reached, and literally this was the case. The way of the

Baltimore & Ohio along river-side as up hill and down dale, over mountains and through forests, was blazed pretty much as the first settlers found and fixed their bearings. American brain and brawn got there, and the Company became kindergarten, primary school, high school, college and university of American railroading, all rolled into one.

Peter Cooper's production of the first Americandesigned and vuilt locomotive was an example of the stimulus the gingery Baltimore men infused into things railroad* He didn't merely thinjc that steam operation of the Baltimore & Ohio was practicable, he knew it.