Stevens deposited a handsome sum guaranteeing the
expense of repairing the mill in case it was damaged. The receipt for
this deposit was preserved for many years among the archives of the
Camden and Amboy Company. As a matter of fact, the rolling apparatus
did break down several times. "At first," as Mr. Stevens in a letter
to his father, which I have seen, described it, "the rails came from
the rolls twisted and as crooked as snakes," and he was greatly
discouraged. At last, however, the mill men acquired the art of
straightening the rail while it cooled.
The first shipment,[3] consisting of five hundred and fifty bars
eighteen feet long, thirty-six pounds to the yard, arrived in
Philadelphia on the ship Charlemagne, May 16, 1831.
Over thirty miles of this rail was laid before the summer of 1832.
A few years after, on much of the Stevens rail laid on the Camden and
Amboy Railroad, the rivets at the joints were discarded, and the bolt
with the screw thread and nut, similar to that now used, was adopted
as the standard.
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