Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1913 — RAN THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE [ARTICLE]

RAN THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE

Engineer Now 92 Years Old, but Still In Active Service, Gets Medal of Much Historic Interest. George W. Scott, ninety-two years old, the oldest locomotive engineer who is now in the employ of the Camden & Amboy railroad; has been presented .with a medal. It bears a portrait of the engine John Bull No. 1, the first locomotive on the road of that company, of which Mr. Scott was engineer and which is now on exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution. — Dispatch in the New York Evening Post. An ancient man and an honorable record. The history of New York-Phil-adelphia traffic is a stirring chapter in the romance of annihilation of distance. In the early seventeenth century the only road save Indian trails in Jersey was that over which the Dutch at New Amsterdam had contact with the settlements on the Delaware. It followed the New BrunsWickTrenton line and developed into what came to be called the “upper road” when' a later route through Amboy, Bcrdentown and Burlington was the “lower” route; In the eighteenth century Philadelphia moved up to within three days of New York, and the “flying machines” of 1766 made lt,ln two days—in summer. The Camden & Amboy followed the lower route, and it was a marvel to sit in one of the funny little coaches and be rattled across the Jerseys in a few hours. Mr. Scott could spin some time-anni-hilating yarns of pioneer days on'the road.