LaureatesKids

Fire Truck

When someone's house catches on fire you call 911 and tell them about the fire and in minutes a bunch of giant red and yellow fire trucks loaded with firemen will come rushing to the fire as fast as they can, but back in the olden days fire trucks were smaller and not so fast as they are today.

This old fire truck belongs to the Greensboro, North Carolina Fire Department but it is no longer used to put out fires, it goes to parades instead.

Train, Train, Hear That Whistle Blow!

Do you like trains? I know I sure do. Trains are the biggest vehicles on earth. Thankfully they travel on railroad tracks and not on our highways. Can you imagine how hard it would be to pass a train in your school bus or how long it might take to cross the street to your best friend’s house if you had to wait on a train to pass by?
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In the old days, back before any of us were born, trains were powered by steam that came from water heated in a coal-fired boiler. There are some places where trains still run on coal-fired steam engines but modern trains are powered by diesel engines that turn huge electric generators that make electricity which is used to turn the wheels of the locomotive that pulls the other railroad cars along the rails.
Look Out!

The first railroads were built 2000 years ago in Greece with tracks made of stone and the cars were more like wagons than railroad cars. As a matter of fact, the Greeks used horses to pull their trains. Later-- in the 1500s-- German miners built tracks out of wood for transporting horse drawn carts filled with coal, iron, silver, and lead they mined from beneath the ground.


Out To Pasture In 1803, a man named Samuel Homfray saw a horse pulling three loaded wagons along a tramway in Wales and decided that a steam engine as was already being used to power pumps designed to pump water out of mines might work better than a horse. He then went to a man named, Richard Trevithick, who knew how to build reliable steam engines and told him of his plan. On February 22, 1804, the world’s first steam locomotive hauled a load of 10 tons of iron, 70 men and five extra wagons the 9 miles between the ironworks at Pen-y-Darron and the town of Merthyr Tydfil.

Railroads then began popping up all over England, but it wasn’t until August 28, 1830 that a little train called the Tom Thumb began running on a railroad known as the B&O Railroad in Baltimore, Maryland. Tom Thumb was the first train in America. The first Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869 when railroad crews working from two different directions connected their tracks in a place called, Purgatory, Utah.

Trains haul almost anything you can think of. They have tanker cars to carry gases and liquids, bottom dumps for grain, gravel, and other minerals, flatbeds for lumber, and even special cars that haul the trailers pulled by big trucks. Other railroad cars haul cars like the cars driven by your mom and dad.

Trains are fun to watch and even more fun to ride, but you should never play on or near a railroad track, or try to jump on or off a moving train. Lots of people have been killed by moving trains. Instead of playing around railroad tracks, you’d be better off learning to fly a kite.
Fly a kite!