"They had become very much discouraged at that time by a book that came over from England showing that steam could not be used on a railroad with a radius of less than nine hundred feet; and they had made many of the circulars on the thirteen miles of railroad they constructed ranging from one hundred and fifty feet circular and upwards to get around the different points of rock that they had to contend with. They were so discouraged that the principal stockholders told me that they would not pay up any more; that they would lose what they had put in first, as the short cuts on the railroad could not be affected successfully by locomotive power. And my having been drawn into the purchase with two other persons, as before stated, of some three thousand acres of land taking the whole shore for three miles of what is known as Fels Point Dock, the principal shipping dock of that city, I then saw that the success of the speculation that I made in the purchase of that property would depend almost entirely on the continuance and success of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Stock
"To keep them from abandoning the railroad I got them to use a run so that a hundred and fifty feet circular was the least radius. … I begged of them to hold on a little while, for I thought I could make a locomotive that would go around those short turns. To do that I took this little small engine that I had in operation in my factory and went into a coach-maker's shop in Baltimore and made it into a locomotive."
