Steam was used to drive boats through the water. Why should not steam be used to haul wagons over a railroad? This was a very easy question to ask, and a very hard one to answer. Year after year inventors worked on the problem. Suddenly, about 1830, it was solved in several places and by several men at nearly the same time. It was some years, however, before the locomotive came into general use. The early railroad trains were rude affairs. The cars were hardly more than stagecoaches with flanged wheels. They were fastened together with chains, and when the engine started or stopped, there was a terrible bumping and jolting. The smoke pipe of the engine was very tall and was hinged so that it could be let down when coming to a low bridge or a tunnel. Then the smoke and cinders poured straight into the passengers' faces. But these trains went faster than canal boats or steamboats. Soon the railroad began to take the first place as a means of transport.

The coming of the steam locomotive hastened the changes which one saw on every side in 1830. For some time men had known that there was plenty of hard coal or anthracite in Pennsylvania. But it was so hard that it would not burn in the old-fashioned stoves and fireplaces. Now a stove was invented that would burn anthracite, and the whole matter of house warming was completely changed. Then means were found to make iron from ore with anthracite. The whole iron industry awoke to new life. Next the use of gas made from coal became common in cities.