Railroads & Cigars

This little railroad station, in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, used to ship around 100 million cigars a year. (Photo courtesy of MDRails)

(Cigar History Museum) Experiments had been going on for a few years when, in 1832, steam driven railroads were proven once-and-for-all to be fiscally practical. A coal powered steam engine on the two-year-old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad hauled 50 tons over a distance of 40 miles at a speed of 12 to 15 mph. The engine burned $16 worth of coal compared to the $33 and 42 horses it had taken to move that much freight over the same tracks the previous year. The timing couldn't have been better for the growing U.S. cigar industry. Continued