Cumberland Valley Railroad Steam Locomotive, <I>Pioneer</I>

Seth Wilmarth · 1851

The <I>Pioneer</I> is a steam locomotive made in 1851 by Seth Wilmarth, owner of a large machine shop in Boston who made few locomotives. <I>Pioneer</I> is an early type of steam locomotive on U.S. railroads and used only on a very few of them. This locomotive is significant only because of that rarity. Its age is also unusual among preserved locomotives; <I>Pioneer</I> was built just two decades after America’s first domestically made locomotive. Its general type was obsolete on almost all railroads in the U.S. by 1850.