This 1927 exhibit near Baltimore, by the B&O railroad, looks more like something from Rube Goldberg or Doctor Seuss.
Really, it has to be a joke who would want to ride very fast, or very far, on that contraption?
Well it is real, and they didn't travel either fast or far. The locomotive is an 1892 replica of the 1832 Atlantic, 0-4-0, nicknamed Grasshopper.
Wiki says...
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Built at a cost of $4,500, the Atlantic weighed 6.5 tons and had two vertical cylinders. It was commissioned after Davis' entry had won the competition for a steam locomotive design, but the contract was awarded to the inventor of the Tom Thumb; when the five locomotives commissioned failed the contracted delivery, B&O bought out the patents. A few of these were incorporated in the Atlantic by Davis, whether by specification or because Davis wanted them is unclear. The locomotives he delivered before his death in 1835 were the first commercially feasible, sufficiently efficient coal burning steam locomotives produced domestically in the United States and placed into traction service.
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B&O built 20 of these engines after the prototype traveled 40 miles, with 50 psi boiler pressure, on one ton of coal. I didn't see a speed, but with 63 hp (47 kW) it couldn't have been that fast, even in relatively flat MD.