Thanks one and all for the education.  I was totally unaware that such a thing existed though I was aware of horses and other animals going around in circles to grind stuff.  Bombus, the diagram  did it--for some reason I just wasn't able to "see" the horses at the side but saw them more to the middle.  A model would certainly draw a lot of viewers and maybe that's an interesting enough project for next years' county fair. I know exactly where to get nice scale horses. Thanks Brian for all the links. Really interesting reading.

Just reading through this thread. In my hometown of Havre de Grace, Md., the first railroad reached the shores of the Susquehanna River in 1836 from Baltimore. It was to join with the line on the opposite side at Perryville that came from Philadelphia. Large horse powered paddle wheel ferries carried the train cars across the river between the two towns until the first steam powered ferry "Susquehanna" was put into service. (Later replaced by the "Maryland" Rail Ferry)
This was the first railroad ferry operation in the Americas. It was in service from 1836 to 1866.

Hi River Rat
Does any photos exist from that large boats? Would be interesting to see how they lokked!
Regards
Gerhard

No. No pictures or drawings that I know of. I remember seeing a drawing of a four horse paddle wheel ferry somewhere. It was probably something like that. Remember, the train cars back then were smaller and lighter than today. They also shipped one car across at a time. If I do find anything out, I will let you know. As of right now, I am in Germany and not home. Kinda hard to research from here.

I just did`nt find too much about that ferrys, just one article from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright's_Ferry but still searching around if there is more!
Regards
Gerhard

This is the largest horse powered ferry that I could find as of yet. It was powered by six horses and could reach speeds of up the 6 miles an hour (9.65 km).
Year: 1827