Old textbook (1960s) -- locomotive, Schenectady, race with horse?

[Extollager]

Here's another question like my Jupe and Juno one. I seem to remember a school textbook seen probably no later than 1967 or so, with a story in it about an early locomotive. It's a standout occasion, in the story, because the engine goes faster than a horse -- I think that's the plot. It seems to me that a place-name that was strange to me figures in the story, & it might have been Schenectady. I remember a line about how at last the horse -- or mule or donkey? -- hung its "homely head." That seems to have stuck in my memory for about 60 years. I would like to know what was the book I had in hand. I'm interested in writing, for my own use, a sort of personal literacy narrative.