| From the Keowee Courier (Walhalla, S.
C.) |
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| December 15, 1898 |
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| Stole A Railroad |
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How Col. T. R. Sharp Took Engines and Cars Across Country
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A frequent visitor to the Grand
Hotel, Colonel Thomas R. Sharp, now connected with the engineering
department of the Black Diamond Railroad, enjoys the rare distinction
of having picked up bodily and transported across country during the
War of the Rebellion nineteen locomotives, over a hundred freight cars
and a vast quantity of railroad iron, all of which did effective
service for the side of the South. Even to railroad men and engineers
the feat is still so remarkable and difficult that wherever he goes
Colonel Sharp is admirably looked on and referred to as the man who
succeeded in stealing a railroad and bodily carrying it away with him.
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The opportunity for the raid
occurred in June, 1861, when the Confederate forces under General
Joseph E. Johnston occupied Harper's Ferry, and controlled the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from Point of Rocks, a few miles South
of Harper's Ferry, to a considerable distance West of Martinsburg.
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The Union forces, under General
Patterson, were between the Potomac and the Pennsylvania line. Between
the hostile lines and yet within the grasp of the Southern forces ran
the Baltimore & Ohio road. Martinsburg, only thirty-eight miles
from the nearest Southern railroad and but eighteen miles from
Winchester, which the Confederates held without dispute, was the
terminus of one of the divisions of this great trunk line, and its
shops and roundhouses were filled with engines and coaches.
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The Great Raid
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Colonel Sharp was Captain and
acting Quartermaster in the Southern army, and he conceived the idea
of raiding the Martinsburg shops and hauling the engines and cars over
the pike from Martinsburg to Strasburg, Va., where they could be
placed on the tracks of the Manassas Gap Railroad.
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The engines were dismantled, all
but their drive wheels, the forward ends being placed on a heavy truck
made for the purpose, with iron-shod wheels. Forty horses in a team
were attached to each engine. Jack-screws were used as breaks in going
down hill, being fastened to the engine frame and placed sidewise
against the drive wheels and tightened or loosened as necessity arose.
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The work of transportation was
necessarily show, and the cavalcade, with horses four abreast and
stretching out for 100 feet along the road, furnished a startling
spectacle, doubtless never before seen anywhere. Sometimes the
distance between Martinsburg and Winchester, eighteen miles, was made
in one day, but the average time from Martinsburg to Strasburg was
three days.
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The engines were put together again
as soon as they reached Strasburg, and they and the cars were able to
render such aid in transporting troops that it is questionable whether
the second battle of Manassas, or Bull Run, would have terminated as
it did if it had not been for the increased transportation facilities
they afforded.
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The engines were afterward taken to
Richmond, and when that city was threatened they were removed to
Raleigh, N. C., and did valuable service to the Confederacy throughout
the war.
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Armor For The Merrimac
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It is related that some of the
railroad iron that was included in the quantity carried away by Col.
Sharp formed the armor which made the Merrimac the destroying terror
of the United States Navy, and which, but for the providential arrival
of the Monitor, must have sunk at will every Federal gunboat which she
attacked.
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Some of the stolen property was
recovered by the B. & O. road after the war, and so high regard
did the management have for the genius of Col. Sharp that he was made
Master of Transportation of the road, a position for a number of years
under President John W. Garrett, who was also at the head of the road
during the war.
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Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, April 6, 1898
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