The Boilermaker Special is the official mascot of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It resembles a Victorian-era railroad locomotive and is built on a truck chassis. It is operated and maintained by the student members of the Purdue Reamer Club. It is often incorrectly assumed that Purdue Pete is the official mascot of the university. Inspiration for the Boilermaker Special Purdue University is a land-grant university (or Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) university) created through the Morrill Act of 1862. In the 1890s, Purdue became a leader in the research of railway technology. For many years Purdue operated the "Schenectady No. 1", "Schenectady No. 2", and the "Vulclain" on a dynamometer in an engineering laboratory on the West Lafayette campus. The Schenectady was a 4-4-0 type steam locomotive manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a classic Victorian-era design similar in construction to the Western and Atlantic Railroad No. 3 (see The General (locomotive) on display at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History). Purdue even operated its own railroad to connect the campus powerplant to a main rail line. The American Railway Association Building, which stands on the West Lafayette campus to the southwest of the Mechanical Engineering Building, is one of the few remaining vestiges of the railroad testing which occurred on the campus. It was constructed in 1926 to test railroad car draft gears. Locomotive research ended in 1938 when the Vauclain's boiler was declared unsafe and the dynamometer was decommissioned. Creation of the mascot For many years Purdue did not have a mascot. In 1939, Purdue pharmacy student Israel Selkowitz suggested the school adopt an official mascot to represent Purdue's engineering heritage. He originally proposed a "mechanical man". After much debate, it was decided to build a locomotive on an automobile chassis. This choice allowed the mascot to build on Purdue's engineering and railroading heritage, as well as represent the school's nickname "Boilermakers" in a meaningful way. The "Boilermaker" nickname came about during the early years of Purdue football. There had been rumors the university enrolled burly boilermakers from the Monon Railroad shops in Lafayette, Indiana as students/football players to help beef up the scrawny football team after a 4-4-0 victory over Wabash College in 1891. When a railroad operated an extra train independent of the scheduled timetable, it was known as a "special". Thus, the trains which carried Purdue's