Thomas DeKay Winans accompanied Major George Washington Whistler (the father of artist James McNeill Whistler) to Russia in 1844, where they began construction on a railroad line between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Winans became wealthy through the venture, and shortly after returning to Baltimore in 1851 built "Alexandroffsky." James McNeill Whistler had briefly worked for the Winans Locomotive Company at Baltimore in 1854, after his discharge from West Point. The artist's elder half-brother George Whistler married into the Winans family.