High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Railroad Advocate was a weekly newspaper started by Zerah Colburn, the locomotive designer, editor, and publisher. The first issue appeared on November 11, 1854, when it was titled the Rail Road Advocate. It later became Colburn`s Railroad Advocate, and then Holley`s Railroad Advocate when it was part-owned by Alexander Lyman Holley. Finally it was renamed American Engineer. The last issue appeared on September 19, 1857. From the first issue to the last, it remained a weekly paper reporting technical and business aspects of locomotive manufacture and railroad operation in America in the 1850s.