A rare paired view records the experimental cog locomotive John Brough, built for the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad and named for the company’s president. The engine was designed in 1849 and delivered in 1850 by M. W. Baldwin to work the notorious Madison Hill incline. One plate presents the locomotive at rest with crewmen posed on and beside the footplate. The companion plate is a near-identical rendering likely made as a period copy by rephotographing an original daguerreotype. A related nineteenth-century paper print from a daguerreotype of the same scene survives in the Indiana State Library’s River to Rail and Lemen Collection, which also notes that the machine was rebuilt from the earlier Marion for rack operation.

About John Brough: before lending his name to the locomotive, Brough was a prominent Midwestern newspaperman and railroad executive who served as Ohio state auditor from 1839 to 1845. He became president of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad and sponsored major works on the incline, including an ambitious lower-grade bypass whose abandoned tunnel in Clifty Creek gorge is remembered as “Brough’s Folly.” His public career culminated in election as the 26th governor of Ohio on a pro-Union ticket in 1863. He served from January 11, 1864 until his death in August 1865, guiding wartime mobilization and earning frequent notice in contemporary accounts.

Historical significance reaches beyond a single machine. Madison Hill was then the steepest regularly worked main-line grade in the country, and the railroad cycled through solutions from horses to rack locomotives before later adopting powerful adhesion engines. The daguerreotypes document an early Baldwin response to that problem and fix the public image of an experimental cog locomotive at the moment of its introduction.

Provenance and format

Two half-plate daguerreotypes, each approximately 4¼ by 5½ inches, showing the John Brough cog locomotive with crew. Identification and dating follow Baldwin and Indiana State Library records cited above.