Tom Thumb (locomotive)

Tom Thumb is an early American steam locomotive built by inventor Peter Cooper in 1830 to demonstrate the practicality of steam power to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, one of the first steam locomotives built and operated in the United States. It is remembered above all for an impromptu race against a horse-drawn railroad car, which the locomotive was reportedly winning before a mechanical failure forced it to concede, an episode that nonetheless helped persuade the railroad's directors that steam traction had a future on American lines.