<Li> 1800 - 1825 Various inventors and entrepreneurs make suggestions about building model railways in the United States . Around Coalbrookdale in the U.K., mining railways become increasingly common . An early steam locomotive is given a test run in 1804, but is then wrecked carelessly . For unknown reasons, the inventor does not rebuild it for nearly two decades . </Li> <Li> 1809 Scottsman quarry owner Thomas Leiper, in 1809 when denied a charter to build a canal along the Crum Creek from his quarry to the docks in the tidewater, commissions a short temporary 60 yards (55 m) railroad test track in the yard of the Bull's Head Tavern in Philadelphia . The track had a grade of one inch and a half to the yard, with a 4% grade to test whether a horse could successfully pull 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) against the slope . </Li> <Li> 1810 - 1829 The Leiper Railroad was a short horse drawn railroad of three quarters of a mile opens in 1810 after the quarry owner, Thomas Leiper, failed to obtain a charter with legal rights - of - way to instead build his desired canal along Crum Creek . The quarry man's' make - do' railroad solution was the continent's first chartered railway, first operational non-temporary railway, first well documented railroad, and first constructed railroad also meant to be permanent . It was perhaps the only railroad replaced by a canal, and also one of the first to close, and of those, perhaps is alone in reopening again in 1858 . </Li> <P> Inspired by the speedy success of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825) in England's railway historical record, capitalists in the United States--already embarking upon great public works infrastructure projects to connect the new territories of the United States with the older seaboard cities industries by the canals of America's Canal Age, almost overnight began dreaming up projects using railroads--a technology in its infancy, but one employing steam engines which were rapidly becoming widely known from their successful use on steamboats . American Steam engine pioneers were willing to experiment with Heat Engines using higher pressures than the mainly Atmospheric engines still fashionable in Great Britain . The rest of the world lagged the two English speaking nations . Railroads began to be proposed where canals wouldn't do, or would be too costly and with an increase in rolling stock tonnage capacity, locomotive power, and a growing confidence born of experience and new materials in less than three decades, the United States generally would discard canals as the principal design choice in favor of far more capable freight haulage technologies . </P>

When was the first railroad built in the united states
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