Wilmington to Havre de Grace Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of America,

with a new travelling companion.

Published in 1879, my Appletons' General Guide will steer me

to everything that's novel,

beautiful,

memorable,

or curious

in the United States.

Amen.

As I cross the continent, I'll discover America's gilded age,

when powerful tycoons launched a railway boom that tied

the nation together and carved out its future as a superpower.

I'm continuing my journey south.

Indeed, I shall be crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary

between Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, which,

after Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1781,

also became the frontier between the slave states and the free states.

This will be my opportunity to reflect on the divisions

between north and south that untied the United Sates,

and on the legacy that they've left to America today.

On this journey I began in the cradle of independence,

Philadelphia,

and continued through the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg.

I'm turning south to Baltimore, in Maryland,

before taking in the nation's capital of Washington DC.

I'll then continue to Richmond, Virginia, finishing in Jamestown,

the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Starting in Wilmington, today I head to Newark on the historical

boundary between the northern and southern states.

After crossing into Maryland, I'll end in Havre de Grace,

where the mighty Susquehanna River meets Chesapeake Bay.

'Along the way, I ride a giant of the railroads.'

HOOTER BLOWS

The drama of an American locomotive bears no comparison with

anything in Europe.

'Discover the explosive origins of an American powerhouse.'

POP!

Whoa!

What a magnificent noise.

'And encounter the untamed landscape that would have greeted

'the first settlers.'

What you've seen is a touch of wildness, you know, the wildness

this place used to have, the wildness that this place still has.

I've crossed from the state of Pennsylvania into the state

of Delaware, and my first stop is the city of Wilmington.

On the site of an early Swedish colony,

it came under British rule in 1664, and takes its name

from the Earl of Wilmington, a favourite of King George II.

My guidebook tells me

that Wilmington is the chief city of the state of Delaware,

"regularly laid out, with streets at right angles,

"the principle ones being paved with stone.

"The buildings are uniformly of brick."

It's on the main railway line between Washington

and New York City, but most of us just pass it by, and I've been

surprised to discover that it is a major industrial city,

on America's mighty East Coast.

Wilmington has long been an important

port on the Delaware River.

And when the railroads came here in 1837,

it became a hub for East Coast trade.

HOOTER BLARES

During the 19th century, a number of private railroads were built.

I'm off to visit one that still runs today,

the Wilmington & Western Railroad.

When I swap my colourful jackets for my dirty overalls it's

a pretty good sign that I'm going to ride on a heritage railway!

Hello.

Hello, my name is Phoebe Snow.

How do you do, you are the most beautiful vision in white.

-Oh, thank you!

-Tell me your story, Phoebe Snow.

From 1900 to 1917, I rode the railroad,

advertising clean burning anthracite coal, telling people that

Phoebe says and Phoebe knows that soot and cinders spoil good clothes.

So she keeps her dress bright and white

by riding the road of anthracite.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

-Like that?

-Love it!

-There are many more where that one came from.

The fictional character of Phoebe Snow was used to advertise

the railroad's latest modern features, from clean burning coal

to electric lighting, and dining cars to restrooms.

That was an innovative period for the railroad.

It was just growing and growing, tying this country together.

It made us what we are and we come back to it today in hopes of

reminding people of what it meant to our history and where we came from.

Phoebe, it's been so delightful to meet a good,

-clean Delaware girl like you.

-Indeed!

Nice to meet you as well, sir.

If you'll excuse me, I have to get about my business.

-How are you? Hello.

-Hi.

-Hello, you must be Tommy.

-Hello, good to meet you. Yes.

-I'm Michael. Hello, Michael.

-Hello, John.

-John, good to see you.

So, what a wonderful railway.

How long does it been a heritage railway?

-Since 1966. 2016 is our 50th season.

-Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

'Conductor to 114. You are clear to proceed west.

114, clear to go west, here we go.

If you'd like to do the honours, sir.

Two long.

HOOTER BLASTS

HOOTER BLASTS

And the bell.

BELL RINGS

I love that, don't you love American locomotives with

their great big, long horns and their bells?

Off we go!

HOOTER BLASTS

The drama of an American locomotive bears no comparison with

anything in Europe.

HOOTER BLASTS

Tommy, what was this railway originally?

It was originally built as the Wilmington & Western Railroad,

and the line opened in 1872.

By the 1880s, it had failed

and was purchased by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

When it was the Baltimore & Ohio, what was it doing,

freight and passengers?

Yes, this served the Red Clay Valley

for freight, passengers and US Mail.

And believe it or not, this little valley was just teeming with

industry and farms and people and all kinds of mills.

During the 1920s, demand for rail services on this branch line fell,

and in the 1950s, closure loomed.

A group of volunteers began to lease the tracks at weekends,

and now own and run a section of the railroad.

-How long have you been associated with it?

-Since 1981.

-That's a good long time.

-It's a long time.

Do you think the American public is as engaged with railways as,

say, the British public?

I think maybe the British public is a little more engaged.

It's more of a train culture over there, where we have

a bit of a car culture here.

The line takes tourists on a 20-mile round trip,

along and across the Red Clay Creek, giving them a taste of

the heyday of the railroads

before they were eclipsed by the automobile.

And thousands come each year to experience it.

Excuse me.

Ah.

Do you mind me asking why you've taken the train ride today?

The reason I've taken the train today is because my husband's dream

-to ride a train for the first time.

-How have you found it today?

-How do I like this?

-Yeah.

-I love it. I'm excited.

It's the first time I've ever been on a train.

-How old are you, sir, may I ask, roughly?

-52. 52.

52 years without being on a train.

I always wanted to, but this is the first time. I love it.

Looks like my stop. Bye!

The old mills of Red Clay Creek are long gone,

and I'm keen to know more about America's 19th-century

economic boom and the part that the railroads played in it.

Led by my guidebook,

I'm heading to the countryside north of Wilmington city.

Appletons' tells me that,

"Wilmington's manufactures embrace shipbuilding, cotton

"and wool, flour mills, shoe and leather factories,

"and powder mills."

Here on the outskirts of the city,

on the banks of the Brandywine River,

it's time to discover the city's explosive past.

In my hunt for this industrial heritage,

I've come across a most unusual sight.

I had not expected to find a chateau in the Delaware countryside.

You may not be surprised to know that this belonged to a Frenchman,

the magnificently named Eleuthere Irenee du Pont,

who had been imprisoned during the French Revolution

and arrived in the United States as a political refugee in 1799.

He established a company which has gone down in history as DuPont,

and made an enormous contribution to the United States,

and in particular to its military.

Du Pont founded a gunpowder mill here in 1802, at a time

when this burgeoning nation had a great need of explosives,

first for construction and later for the battlefield.

Still based in Wilmington, DuPont today is one of the biggest

chemical companies in the world.

I'm meeting archivist Lucas Clawson to find out

about its 19th-century beginnings.

-Hello, Lucas.

-Hello.

Lucas, I'm in ecstasy, a beautiful river valley

and a railway line running through it.

What was it that made Monsieur du Pont go into gunpowder?

He had a lot of experience in gunpowder, actually.

He learnt chemistry from Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier in France,

who ran the French national black powder manufactory at Essone.

What brought him out here to this quite remote spot?

First of all, water power.

You know, there's a lot of drop in the Brandywine River,

so it's the perfect place to power your machinery with water.

And secondly, it's remote - in case there's an explosion,

there's no worries about blowing anyone up.

'At one time, this was one of the largest industrial sites

'in the eastern United States.'

So, you told me it was water power.

How does it work?

Well, the first thing you have to do is start the water.

The apparatus here before us is called the sluice gate.

What I'll have to do...is turn this handle...

..which opens up the cover to a pipe...

It takes a few seconds. There's a large pipe that goes underground.

Once it fills up with water you can hear the turbines start.

You certainly can.

Shall we go and have a look at what you've caused to happen down there?

Yes, absolutely.

'Gunpowder was made from charcoal, potassium nitrate and sulphur,

'which needed to be mixed together in water.'

Lucas, that is the most unexpected and magnificent sight,

these enormous rollers powered by water.

-And they were grinding up the powder, were they?

-Yes, exactly.

What sort of precautions could they take to minimise

the danger of accidents?

The main thing to do was to not have people inside the buildings

while these were operating.

Also, workers were supposed to have shoes that didn't have any

type of metal in the soles.

And also, as you walk through the powder yards,

there's a narrow-gauge metal railway,

but as the tracks go in front of each building they turn to wood.

That way there's no chance that the wheels on the cars will make a spark.

So the United States has a Civil War,

and we're very near the dividing point of North and South.

Du Pont was with which side?

Henry du Pont, who ran the factory at that period,

was an adamant Unionist.

Whenever southern states seceded, he cut them off completely.

So how important was his powder to the Union's success, do you think?

The DuPont factory produced 40% of all powder used by all

the United States Armed Forces.

They produced over a million pounds of black powder a year

from 1862 to the end of the war.

And what made DuPont's gunpowder dominate the market was

the high quality of the product.

-Michael, I want to introduce you to Angelica.

-Hello.

-Hello.

She will show you this historical piece of machinery called

an eprouvette.

That's the French word for a gunpowder tester.

So what do you have to do?

Well, I have loaded this chamber with about a gram of powder.

I close the lid.

Once I light the fuse, we'll hopefully have a small

explosion which will make the wheel turn.

The wheel has numbers on it, so the further the wheel turns,

the higher the number,

the bigger the explosion, the better the powder.

-Ooh. Do you mind if I light the fuse?

-Please, go ahead.

FUSE FIZZES

POP!

Whoa!

What a magnificent noise!

So, it sent it back a long way.

Yeah, we have some pretty good powder.

It went almost all the way round.

Angelica, that was fantastic.

I go out with a bang.

It's the morning of a new day, and I'm leaving Wilmington

to continue my journey towards the southern sates.

Delaware is bordered to its north by Pennsylvania

and to its west by Maryland,

and I'm travelling towards the point where all three states meet.

I'm headed for Newark, Delaware, which Appletons' tells me

is the seat of several excellent educational institutions.

I'll be going to the University of Delaware.

"And four miles beyond, the train crosses the celebrated

"Mason and Dixon's Line, the boundary between the northern

"and southern states as it enters Maryland."

Now, I know something about that demarcation but nothing

of its history, and it's time to draw a line under my ignorance.

Newark is relatively small, with a population of just 30,000,

and students make up more than half of that number.

The University of Delaware is one of the oldest in the Unites States,

and with the Mason-Dixon Line running by it,

I want to find out what its students know of this historical boundary.

May I ask you what you think is

the significance of the Mason-Dixon Line?

-Isn't is the divider between...

-The North and the South.

..North and the South.

Historically, it was the clear delineation between the North

and the South, and since then cultures have kind of

built a reputation off what is defined as the North and the South.

-What are those cultural differences?

-They're more conservative.

A lot more conservative. And up north, they're a lot more liberal.

The big thing that hits me is the music.

North of the Mason-Dixon Line, it's a lot of hip-hop,

a lot of rock and roll.

Once you go more south, it's blues, country.

Would you feel when you cross from Delaware or from Pennsylvania

into Maryland that you've reached the South?

I feel it wouldn't.

When I think of the South, I think of more like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina.

Maybe Virginia, but definitely not Maryland.

-When would you think you'd reached the South?

-West Virginia.

Virginia.

-Hm-mm. Not Delaware?

-No.

-Not Maryland?

-No.

-Parts of Maryland.

Cecil County, maybe.

But mostly Virginia and West Virginia.

The Mason-Dixon Line may today be outdated as a dividing line

between two ways of life,

but for nearly 100 years it was the boundary between the southern

slave states and the non-slave states of the North.

Its origins, however, have nothing to do with ideology.

I'm meeting geologist Sandy Schenck of the Delaware Geological Survey.

Sandy, why is it necessary to draw a line, and when?

Well, in the 1760s, there was a dispute between Lord Calvert

of the Maryland colony and William Penn of Pennsylvania

over exactly where the boundary between those two colonies went.

And so how was that to be settled?

In England there were two astronomers that worked for the

National Observatory and they were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

And they were hired by the courts in England to come to the colonies

and divide this peninsula in half.

And then go west and divide Maryland

and Pennsylvania at the northern boundary up here.

Mason and Dixon surveyed,

and in 1768 settled the boundary between Maryland

and Pennsylvania, leaving what later became

the state of Delaware as part of Pennsylvania.

It seems to me that when Pennsylvania abolishes

slavery in 1781, the Mason-Dixon Line assumes a new significance.

Would that be right?

Probably at that time it did divide what people thought of the North

and the South.

Even though Maryland was a slave state, it never joined

the Confederacy

but slaves, certainly,

escaping from Confederate states, heading north for safety,

would consider

crossing the Mason-Dixon Line as a sign

of being safe finally, they're in the North.

Less than 20 years after the land dispute,

this became a line that would split the nation for almost 100 years.

And for black Americans,

life on either side would be dramatically different.

I'm continuing my journey across the line

and heading to the southern states, beginning in Maryland.

The train is crossing the Susquehanna River,

the greatest river of the eastern United States.

At 444 miles,

the Susquehanna is the longest river on the East Coast, running

through New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, before it

pours into Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America.

I'm alighting at Aberdeen, and making my way to the pretty

city of Havre de Grace, where the river meets the bay.

Appletons' tells me that, "at Havre de Grace in Maryland,

"the Susquehanna River is crossed on a lofty wooden bridge a mile long."

Well, that has been replaced by a newer structure,

but it's still the case that every train between New York City

and Washington DC must cross the mighty Susquehanna at this point.

When the railroads arrived in 1837,

their tracks ended at each bank of the river

and for 29 years a ferry service connected the two

until the Susquehanna was finally spanned by a bridge.

The landscape has been both asset and obstacle

since the first British colonists arrived, more than 400 years ago.

'I'm meeting Joel Dunn, from the Chesapeake Conservancy.'

Well, here we are, on the very beautiful

banks of the Susquehanna River. Who was responsible for exploring it?

In modern-day history, it sort of started in 1608,

when Captain John Smith came as part of a venture capital company

from Britain to North America to explore the Chesapeake Bay.

Captain John Smith was one of the first English settlers,

and played a pivotal role in the colonisation of America.

Working for the Virginia Company,

he explored and charted this unknown territory, producing journals

and maps that were to be relied upon by settlers for decades to come.

But these so-called new lands were actually home

to 75,000 Native Americans.

This is the map he made when he came here.

Notice the exquisite detail of each river that he drew with

a compass and a pen when he explored the Chesapeake Bay.

We're right here, on the Susquehanna River.

And this is one of the Susquehannock Indians that John Smith met

when he first came here.

What sort of a relationship did he have with the Native Americans?

Smith had a mixed relationship depending on which tribe,

but for the most part it was fairly peaceful.

John Smith knew that he depended upon the Native Americans

because they knew where the food was,

they knew where the best places to live and find fresh water...

John Smith depended upon their information to create

much of this map.

It wasn't simply about map making.

Like all early European settlers, their first job was to survive.

The first permanent English settlement in North America,

they were based at Jamestown, and they were starving.

So Smith was out looking for food,

looking for cultures to trade with, to learn information on how

to survive here in North America, n the Chesapeake Bay.

Come you imagine coming to this river for the first time

without any power and electricity, no Google Maps, no phones,

not knowing what you'd encounter?

He was a really extraordinary individual.

Hey, Garret.

'I'm taking to the water for a feel of what John Smith would have

'experienced and to take a closer look at the wildlife of the region.'

Garret, what sort of wildlife will we see on the Susquehanna?

We'll see plenty of bald eagles, ducks, hawks of all kinds.

Lots of migratory birds come through here on their way from Canada

down to parts of the southern US.

Look, there's deer swimming in the river.

In a few moments we've seen bald eagles,

we've seen great blue herons, we've seen ducks,

and we've seen four young deer bathing in the river.

This is just a paradise of nature.

What you've seen is a touch of wildness, you know, the wildness

this place used to have, the wildness that this place still has.

We protect those special places for future generations

and we celebrate the Chesapeake as a national treasure.

This part of the United States bears the imprint of talented Englishmen.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon established a boundary that

endures to this day.

And many years before them, Captain John Smith explored

Chesapeake Bay and the rivers of the region.

A few years after he'd completed his work, the English

colony of Virginia imported its first black slaves from Africa.

That began a system that has haunted the United States

throughout its existence and gave a significance to the line

between North and South that Mason and Dixon could never have foreseen.

Next time, I discover the origin of America's railroads.

They had known of this thing called a railroad in England,

and they decided to basically - do the next best thing to invent it yourself,

-is steal that.

-We're cousins, after all!

I find out about life on the wrong side of the tracks.

I'd been to close to 200 funerals by the time I graduated high school.

And I sink my claws into a local delicacy.

Can you give me any idea what's in that sauce?

Absolutely not, that's a secret recipe!