How could a Philadelphia-based global giant with 20,000 employees and a history of 120 years of operation disappear, leaving little trace? It happened to the Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW), which perfected the art and science of building steam locomotives for domestic and worldwide markets. Baldwin was so dominant that in 1901, eight smaller builders that were scattered around the East banded together to survive as a unified competitor to the colossus in Philadelphia.

A few years later, Baldwin had its day in the sun, turning out 3,600 steam engines in a single year, or almost 10 a day. But within a few decades, the company was out of business, having failed to successfully make the transition to oil-burning diesel-electric locomotives when that technology arrived in the mid-20th century.

By the time it gave up locomotive building in 1956, Baldwin had turned out 70,500 locomotives of all types. Out of a field of some 150 builders, it was the only North American locomotive manufacturer to survive intact from the dawn of railroads to the end of the steam age. How did it get so big, and how did it fall so far?

 

Miniature Beginnings

Matthias W. Baldwin (1795–1866), a Philadelphia jeweler who opened his own shop in 1819, was interested in railways and built a miniature demonstration locomotive for the Philadelphia Museum. The miniature began running on a small circle of track on April 25, 1831, pulling two small cars capable of carrying four people.

This brought Baldwin an order for a full-sized locomotive from the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad, which later became part of the Reading Company (and today is operated by SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority). It took trial-and-error methods to build, as Baldwin not only had to produce the components but also had to fabricate the tools to make those parts. Entering service on November 23, 1832, it became known as “Old Ironsides” and used a simple four-wheel design with a horizontal boiler. Because of Baldwin’s difficulties in making it, and in subsequently getting paid for it (he settled for $3,500 on an original price of $4,000), he was quoted as telling a colleague, “That is our last locomotive.”

Fortunately for him, and for Philadelphia, it was not. Baldwin’s first shop was located on Minor Street below Sixth in what is today Center City Philadelphia. After moving once, he ran out of space and relocated again to 500 North Broad Street, a then-rural site that occupied eight city blocks covering 19 acres. The neighborhood was known as Bush Hill.

Soon Baldwin took its place as one of a couple dozen locomotive builders scattered up and down the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. In Pennsylvania alone, Baldwin eventually faced plenty of competition. Among those were Norris (also of Philadelphia, and Baldwin’s dominant domestic competitor in the middle 19th century), Lancaster Locomotive Works, Davis Dotterer (Reading), National Locomotive Works (Connellsville), Vulcan Iron Works (Wilkes-Barre), Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, H.K. Porter (Pittsburgh), Climax (Corry) and Heisler (Erie).

By the mid-1850s Baldwin was employing 400 to 600 men, posting a banner year by producing 66 locomotives in 1857. With the onset of the Civil War in 1861, business fell off sharply, dropping to a production of 40 engines. This was because the firm had relied on Southern railroads for business — some 79 percent in 1860. When the South seceded, that business vanished, and the company had to furlough some of its workers. But the Union’s need for coal, iron, troops, supplies and munitions stirred the demand for new locomotives, particularly for the strategically located Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and during the war Baldwin sold 100 engines to that carrier. It sold another 33 to the U.S. Military Railroads, a logistics arm of the Union Army.

 

The Founder Dies

When Matthias Baldwin died in 1866 at age 70, he left a trail of philanthropy and Presbyterian charity as well as an industrial legacy of having built 1,500 locomotives. He had been a founder of the Franklin Institute and was a member of the 1837 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. His funeral service began at his home at 1118 Chestnut Street and ended with a 700-person procession that circled the Baldwin plant as its cupola bell rang out.

Over the span of his life, the number of miles of railroad track in America had grown from zero to more than 30,000. With the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 and several other cross-continent lines in the decades that followed, railroads in America entered a period of explosive growth. Track mileage grew from 52,900 by 1870 to 93,200 by 1880. All this expansion drove the need for more locomotives. Baldwin turned out 331 engines in 1871, 422 in 1872, and 470 in 1873.

The growth wasn’t linear, however. The Panic of 1873 interrupted business affairs. Production at Baldwin dropped to 205 engines in 1874 and to 130 in 1875. Yet the company continued its own expansion. That same year, Baldwin bought control of the Standard Steel Works at Burnham, in Pennsylvania’s Mifflin County, which supplied wheels, axles, and various fittings and forgings. Standard had been organized as Freedom Forge in 1795.

 

A Centennial Salute

In 1876 the celebration of the centennial of the American Revolution brought some renewal of business. The exposition in Philadelphia to mark the event gave Baldwin an opportunity to exhibit eight of its locomotives for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who came to that event.

By 1880 the company had turned out its 5,000th locomotive and had developed a management system that relied on standard parts, shop cards that standardized on specifications, and a system of performance-based contracts with customers. In other words, Baldwin promised that a given locomotive would pull so many tons at a certain speed on a certain grade.

But employing common parts did not mean it was a mass-production operation, as industrialist Henry Ford would later define that term. Baldwin based its growth on its ability to work closely with customers. Each railroad had its own mechanical-department hierarchy, with the top officer usually bearing the title “master mechanic” or “superintendent of motive power.” These officials had first-hand knowledge of nuts-and-bolts detail, wielding complete influence over the design and specifications of locomotives purchased by their employers.

Thus, rather than being production-line plants, Baldwin and its competitors were custom fabricators putting out batches of engines — order by order. As business historian John K. Brown wrote, “Engines were made to order, generally to customer or semicustom designs, and were quite literally ‘built’ — assembled individually,
piece by piece.”

This business model served Baldwin and the other steam builders well for a century but would later come back to haunt them.

 

Growth and More Growth

The period from 1890 to 1900 brought further expansion to the American railroad network. By 1895 the nation’s carriers were operating 180,000 route-miles of track, twice the number in 1880. The growth of American industry and the economy were fueling this expansion and, in turn, being fueled by it.

Trains were growing longer and heavier, requiring larger and more powerful locomotives. Baldwin obliged. From 1890 to 1900, its annual production grew from 946 engines to 1,217 and the average weight per locomotive ballooned from 46 tons to 65 tons. A few years later, the company produced some engines for the Great Northern Railway weighing 167 tons each.

In 1902 the company produced its 20,000th engine. Baldwin’s workforce had grown from about 1,000 employees at the founder’s death in 1866 to 4,000 in 1890, to 6,300 by 1899, and to almost 18,000 in 1907. That same year, the company turned out 2,666 locomotives and generated some $46 million in business.

 

Larger locomotives and more plentiful orders were squeezing the capacity at North Broad Street, hemmed in by residential and industrial development. Baldwin began expanding upward, adding stories to its manufacturing plant. Finally, the firm began looking for new sites.

In May 1906 the company bought 185 acres at Eddystone, just south of the Philadelphia city limits in Delaware County, and moved its foundry operation there, along with 1,000 workers. The site was advantageously located on the Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio and Reading railroads (all good customers of Baldwin) and on the Delaware River, where the company would build docks for exporting its products to overseas customers. Over the next 22 years, the company would buy more ground at Eddystone — a total of 600 acres — and gradually move all operations there. Baldwin also bought land near Hammond, Indiana, raising speculation that it would build a new Midwestern plant, but nothing came of that development.

 

The incorporation of the American Locomotive Co., or Alco, in 1901 brought a unified face of competition from what had been eight smaller competitors. These were old-line names, a few of which were even older than Baldwin: Brooks (Dunkirk, New York), Cooke (Paterson, New Jersey), Dickson (Scranton), Manchester (Manchester, New Hampshire), Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh), Rhode Island (Providence, Rhode Island), Richmond (Richmond, Virginia), and Schenectady (Schenectady, New York). Baldwin likewise incorporated. This brought the prospect of bond (and later, stock) sales and fresh rivers of investor cash, but it also left the company’s board open to outside influences that were, until then, unknown.

 

Labor Unrest

The firm had enjoyed labor peace for decades, even during the national Railroad Riots of 1877, but was drawn into a conflict initially not of its own making in 1910. Five thousand streetcar workers had walked out on the Philadelphia transit system, and on February 23 of that year, city police were attempting to clear the way for trolleys to move along North Broad Street at Spring Garden Street, in front of the locomotive plant.

When Baldwin’s noon whistle blew, thousands of men poured into the street, where they were accustomed to eating lunch or visiting local restaurants. They quickly took the side of the strikers. An exchange of gunfire and projectiles followed. The employees fled inside and began pelting the police from upper-floor windows with nuts, bolts and other heavy objects.

“Baldwin Workmen War with Police: Bluecoats Open Fire on Big Plant When Thousands of Bolts are Hurled From Windows — Many Hurt,” shouted the headline in the next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer, which described the police as “using their nightsticks liberally and making wholesale arrests.”

It was only the start of trouble, however. Although Baldwin employees refused to join a citywide sympathy strike, the unrest prompted them to grouse about their own employer. Soon, 3,500 of them had organized and were demanding restoration of pay cuts and other concessions.

Baldwin Superintendent Samuel M. Vauclain (1856–1940) detested unions but was in the midst of delicate negotiations for a $10 million bond sale, so he didn’t press the issue. Soon, 13 craft unions had organized, but Vauclain created a special association, open only to nonunion workers, that gave privileges and preferential treatment.

Then, with a decline in orders, he announced layoffs, which were targeted at union members. The unions struck. The labor side claimed that 10,000 out of 13,000 men had walked out. Company records showed that more than half of the workforce stayed put.

Vauclain offered strikers their jobs back, but only as individuals, and with conditions. He refused to take back organizers. Many of those who walked out did return — they had to turn in their union cards — and the company hired replacement workers as well. The strike was broken.

 

World War I

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 brought many orders, including for millions of dollars’ worth of military items such as rifles, shells, shrapnel and railway guns. Baldwin built some 1,500 locomotives for wartime use in Great Britain and France, and it also produced gasoline engines for use in battlefront trench railways.

When the United States entered the war in April 1917, BLW was ready to supply the U.S. government. The company was best known for building, on short notice, some 150 2-8-0-type locomotives that quickly got the name “Pershing” engines, after General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front. Baldwin delivered the first one in three weeks’ time from the placement of the order, and the rest followed in a matter of seven weeks.

The orders for Pershing engines pushed Baldwin to its limits, and at the peak, it was turning out 3,600 locomotives annually, or approximately 10 per day. In all, Baldwin built 5,651 locomotives for the Allied forces.

In its prime, Baldwin sold locomotives to almost all of Pennsylvania’s important railroads and many short lines, too. Of course, the biggest customer was PRR, but others went to major lines like B&O, Bessemer & Lake Erie, Erie, Jersey Central, Lehigh Valley, Lehigh & Hudson River, Lehigh & New England, Reading, Union, and Western Maryland.

Other lines in the state such as New York Central, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, Delaware & Hudson, and Delaware, Lackawanna & Western held long allegiances to Baldwin’s main competitor, Alco, and rarely if ever bought Baldwins. Among the short-line Baldwin buyers were the iconic narrow-gauge East Broad Top in Huntingdon County, the Mellon-owned Ligonier Valley in Westmoreland County, and the nine-mile-long Mifflin County carrier with the tongue-twister name, Kishacoquillas Valley.

 

The Prosperity Special

Samuel M. Vauclain rose to the presidency in 1919. He had started with the firm in 1883 and was something of a self-promoter and showman. His autobiography is filled with stories in which he portrays himself in heroic terms, whether winning new orders, or forcing a reluctant customer to pay up, or turning the opinion of a railroad official who preferred Baldwin competitors.

His greatest publicity stunt came during a business downturn after World War I ended. In better times, the California-based Southern Pacific Railroad had ordered a batch of 50 heavy 2-10-2-type freight engines; however, with traffic turning soft in 1922, it lacked the need for them. Normally, Baldwin delivered them two or three at a time as they were completed, but Vauclain hit on the idea of coupling 20 of them together and sending the entourage on a month-long cross-country delivery trip as an optimistic-sounding “Prosperity Special.”

Ceremonies kicked off the tour on May 26. “My blessings on the Prosperity Special,” read a wire sent from President Warren G. Harding. “May it speed steadily to its destination.”

With banners attached, the engines left Eddystone behind two of PRR’s L1s-class 2-8-2-type freight locomotives. Each SP engine weighed 300 tons and measured 100 feet long. At a cost of $75,000 each, the movement represented an investment of $1.5 million.

“The fact that prosperity is back will be impressed on the minds of citizens all along the route,” reported the Newark (Delaware) Post, adding: “All along the route, engines saluted the heavy train with tooting of whistles and ringing of bells.”

Rolling slowly west only in daylight to maximize public viewing, the special stopped overnight in Enola Yard before moving on to Altoona, where crowds viewed it from the city’s Red Bridge. It posed for publicity photos on Horseshoe Curve, then paused briefly for schoolchildren in Cresson. After that, it moved on to stops in Pitcairn and Pittsburgh.

 

On its arrival in Los Angeles, where it was viewed by a crowd of thousands, a message from Pennsylvania governor William C. Sproul read: “Please accept congratulations . . . upon the arrival of Pennsylvania-built locomotives comprising the ‘Prosperity Special.’ It has been a great lesson of confidence in our country’s progressive future, and the Southern Pacific Company is to be commended for its faith and courage in the business outlook.”

 

No. 60000

Baldwin made a practice of showing off each engine that represented a multiple of 10,000 in its production series, and sometimes reserved that number for a special purpose. Such was the case with Baldwin’s 60,000th engine, which emerged from the erecting halls at Eddystone in March 1926. This 4-10-2-type engine was not built for a customer but was a demonstrator of various technical innovations.

The engine visited PRR’s Altoona test plant and racked up a record horsepower rating of 4,515. No. 60000 then embarked on a national tour but, despite performing well, did not win any orders for duplicates.

“‘Wow’ isn’t exactly the reaction Baldwin got in 1926 when it built the 60000 and began shopping it around,” wrote Kevin P. Keefe, retired editor of Trains magazine, in 2019.

 

“It was the Edsel of its day,” wrote the Philadelphia Daily News. “Alas, the railroads found the engine’s three-cylinder design difficult to maintain and the heavy load on its driver axles played hob with the roadbed. Baldwin wound up selling zero.”

But the engine wasn’t scrapped. Vauclain also sat on the board of the Franklin Institute, and as a result, the Daily News wrote, “the 60000, an engine nobody wanted, wound up enjoying a far lengthier life than any of her sisters in steam.” In 1933 the engine became an exhibit at the Franklin Institute. It was moved over city streets on special truck dollies, entering through an opening in a building that was left unfinished so that the engine could be placed. After it was inside, the wall was sealed, and the 60000 has remained there ever since.

Baldwin went on to build thousands of large, successful designs of steam engines after that, but none of them was patterned after No. 60000.

 

Eddystone Move Completed

In 1928 Baldwin finally closed its Philadelphia plant, with Vauclain ceremonially locking the door for photographers. All work was now being done at Eddystone, a sprawling complex sandwiched between Chester Pike and the Delaware River that covered 600 acres, of which 108 acres were under roof. An eight-story administration building was constructed in an unusual cruciform shape, with its footprint or floorplan resembling a Greek cross. In all, the complex consisted of 21 buildings from which Baldwin could ship locomotives anywhere in the United States through its access to three railroad lines. Its wharf on the Delaware River facilitated shipments to export customers. By the 1920s, the company had sold engines to nearly 80 countries on six continents.

Just prior to the 1929 Wall Street crash, rumors flew when the Fisher Brothers, of General Motors auto-body fame in Detroit, bought a controlling interest in Baldwin. Fisher elevated Vauclain to the ceremonial position of chairman of the board. No motivation for Fisher’s acquisition was ever disclosed, but historians speculate that GM, which was then exploring diesel-electric locomotive technology, was using Fisher as a front to acquire control of an established locomotive builder.

With the economy in free fall as a result of the Great Depression, railroads had little to haul and no cash to spend. Baldwin’s stock price plunged from $271 in 1929 to $5.50 in 1933. The company’s workforce dropped from 5,500 in 1930 (when it produced 439 locomotives) to 610 in 1932 (when it built 65 locomotives). The following year, output fell to just 23 locomotives, the lowest since 1848. The company made $3 million profit in 1930 but lost $4 million in 1931.

If not for diversification, Baldwin might have gone under. Through its subsidiaries, it made heavy machinery, forgings, tool steel, ship propellers, heavy castings, and mining and small industrial gasoline-powered locomotives.

In 1935 the company voluntarily entered bankruptcy and began reorganizing. B.F. Doran of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the action “did not take financial circles by surprise. Since last November officers and directors had been considering various plans to meet the situation arising from impaired working capital.”

One bright spot in the Depression was that in 1934 Baldwin built the streamlined body and parts for the prototype GG1 electric locomotive for the PRR. Many consider the GG1 model to be the most successful electric locomotive design ever, and one of the longest-lived, serving until 1983. Baldwin supplied parts for the prototype and 25 of the 138 production models. PRR’s electrified lines stretched from New York to Washington (passing through the Baldwin plant) and Philadelphia to Harrisburg, plus numerous freight branches, for a total of 2,677 electrified track-miles.

Electrification was expensive but worth it in areas of dense railroad operations. Elsewhere, the cost couldn’t be justified. But just around the corner lay a technology that would bring electric power to free-running locomotives without the costly installation of substations, transmission lines and overhead wiring.

 

Technological Change

For American railroads, the 1930s began a period of slow but certain technological change. Baldwin and other builders had dabbled in diesel-electric equipment, in which an oil-burning diesel engine powered a generator, which produced current to drive electric motors geared to a locomotive’s axles. Both Baldwin and Alco considered the new technology to be worth pursuing, and so they developed lines of switching locomotives. Switch engines were always around a yard and if one of these new diesels failed, they could be quickly repaired or substituted with a steam switcher.

A few lightweight streamlined diesel passenger trains had been built, and although they were successful, they were still considered to be experimental. At two builders, the heavy-duty, high-speed work of passenger trains and the tonnage demands of freight trains were considered to be the province of steam power, as they had been for a century.

On April 25, 1935, Baldwin vice president Robert S. Binkerd delivered an address to the New York Railroad Club titled “Muzzle Not the Ox That Treadeth Out the Corn,” in which he blasted the attention being paid to diesel locomotives. “Today we are having quite a ballyhoo about streamlined lightweight trains and diesel locomotives, and it is no wonder if the public feels that the steam locomotive is about to lay down and play dead,” he said. He predicted that the future “will not find our railroads any more dieselized than they are electrified.”

Vauclain also declared in a speech that the steam locomotive was guaranteed a future in American railroading until at least 1980.

 

Alco officials made similar proclamations, stating that each motive-power type would have its place for the foreseeable future — steam, diesel-electric, and straight electric (drawing current from overhead wires or an energized third rail).

But just as steam locomotives had replaced, not supplemented, horses and mules in the 19th century, diesel-electrics were on course to replace, not supplement, steam power in the 20th century.

Steam engines were capable, powerful and fast, but they suffered several disadvantages. Most burned coal, which was plentiful, but increasingly was viewed as dirty in an era when environmental concerns were beginning to awaken. They required a constant supply of good water that was free of scale-producing minerals (PRR owned its own water companies to ensure enough suitable water to make steam). They required a monthly inspection that kept them out of service for several days, reducing their availability. And they required an army of skilled machinists to maintain.

Diesel-electrics, on the other hand, cost more to construct but less to maintain, month to month. They did not pollute with coal smoke, they sipped modest amounts of then-cheap diesel fuel, and they could run day in, day out, around the clock, with little maintenance attention. It was once said that it took five minutes to figure out what was wrong with a steam engine but five hours to repair it, while it took five hours to figure out what was wrong with a diesel-electric, but only five minutes to fix it.

But it wasn’t a case of Baldwin ignoring diesel-electric technology. In tandem with Westinghouse, the firm had been building straight electric locomotives since the 1890s and put together its first diesel-electric-powered unit in 1925.

The problem was that it — and the handful of other old-line steam-engine builders in America — failed to adapt when it faced a formidable foe. General Motors Corp. could, and did, pour almost unlimited amounts of cash into research and development, marketing and sales.

 

GM’s Advantage

Although the classic steam builders like Baldwin and Alco were tinkering with diesel power in the run-up to World War II, these efforts mostly focused on lighter-duty switcher and passenger power. General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division (then called Electro-Motive Corp.) was thinking big and built a four-unit demonstrator freight locomotive called the FT—F for freight, T for thirteen-hundred-fifty horsepower per unit, or 5,400 horsepower for the set. GM sent the engine on an 83,000-mile nationwide tour to show the diesel’s capability in freight service, which had been up to now the domain of steam giants from Baldwin (with about 40 percent of the market share), Alco and Lima (Ohio) Locomotive Works.

In the East, the FT was demonstrated on three of the four trunk lines — New York Central, B&O and Erie — but not on the steam-bound PRR, where it was not welcome. The three other lines placed orders for production models of the FT. Western railroads especially found the model to be ideal — on long mountain and desert runs, it freed them from having to supply good-quality water to steam engines every so many miles.

Trains magazine editor David P. Morgan dubbed the FT “the diesel that did it” — “it” meaning the FT broke the stronghold of steam locomotives in freight service, the most taxing and profitable of all duties.

But World War II was about to give GM-EMD an even greater advantage. All locomotive builders diverted some of their production to military output for the war effort — tanks for Baldwin, Alco and Lima and diesel engines for submarines at GM-EMD. As in World War I, the government developed a universal 2-8-0-type steam engine that could be used in war-torn countries to replace those native engines destroyed by fighting. Some 1,200 of them were built by all three steam builders, of which 712 were built by Baldwin.

During the conflict, the War Production Board limited Baldwin and Alco to building steam locomotives and diesel switchers (Lima did not have a diesel design until 1947) and curtailed their development work on diesel freight engines. Meanwhile, the WPB gave EMD the go-ahead to mass-produce FT diesels. In some cases, railroads wanted to buy FTs, but the WPB prevented that, dictating instead that they buy modern steam locomotives.

After the war, both Baldwin and Alco resumed development of a full line of diesel-electric locomotives, but EMD’s lead was already too great. By 1946 many railroads had decided to proceed with full dieselization and began to flood GM-EMD with orders. That year, Baldwin built its last steam locomotive for its steady customer, PRR. In 1949 Baldwin built its last steam engine for a U.S. customer, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.

But neither Baldwin nor the Eastern coal-hauling railroads went down without a fight. Because they carried millions of tons of coal, the railroads had a vested interest in promoting the coal-mining industry. Baldwin built five experimental coal-turbine locomotives — one for PRR, three for C&O, and one for Norfolk & Western — that were designed to compete with the diesel and maintain coal as a standard for fuel. None of them worked out. Anyway, the tide had already turned in favor of the diesel.

 

Decline and Sale

Baldwin did develop a line of postwar freight, passenger and switching diesels, but it was too little, too late. Faithful customer PRR bought hundreds of Baldwin diesels, just as it had bought thousands of Baldwin steam engines. Although the Pennsy was the largest railroad in America, it was just one of hundreds, and Baldwin failed to penetrate the diesel market as it had with its steam locomotives. Its diesels were powerful — in fact, the company itself advertised them as “hauling fools” — but were outnumbered by products from GM-EMD that beat Baldwin in several important measures — reliability, flexibility and ease of maintenance, not to mention sales, marketing and service.

In 1951 Baldwin merged with a smaller rival, the Lima Locomotive Works, which had become the Lima-Hamilton Corp., to become BLH, or Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton. But by this time, Lima’s tiny production of diesel locomotives, which came even later to market than Baldwin’s, was irrelevant, and the firm was now primarily a crane and heavy equipment builder. In May 1952 the number of diesel-electric units exceeded the number of steam locomotives in the United States for the first time — 19,082 diesels compared to 18,489 steamers. By 1960 fewer than 100 steam engines remained in regular (nontourist) operation.

Baldwin stopped diesel-locomotive production in 1956 but continued to operate its divisions, including a heavy equipment department, machine tool making, and a parts line for Baldwin diesel locomotives. As with many old-line companies, the corporation was bought, subdivided and sold in pieces, becoming first a subsidiary of Armour & Co. in 1965, the meat-packing firm, and then of the Greyhound Corp., the bus line, in 1970. Greyhound sold off parts of Baldwin to various purchasers and closed what was left at Eddystone in 1972.

Standard Steel was sold through a number of owners but still makes railroad wheels and axles in Burnham.

Part of the Eddystone property was sold to Boeing Co. for production of helicopters and then mass-transit vehicles. The Baldwin administration building there has been renovated as offices and still stands just off I-95.

And as for the legacy of Baldwin locomotives, many traces remain. The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, Lancaster County, houses a bronze statue of Matthias Baldwin that once stood outside the office building in Eddystone. Four of the steam engines in the museum were built by Baldwin. Another statue of Baldwin stands at City Hall in Philadelphia. And, of course, No. 60000 still resides in the Franklin Institute.

Some Baldwin records are housed at repositories, including the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg and the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Franklintown Park in Philadelphia, near the location of the old Bush Hill locomotive plant, has been renamed Baldwin Park to honor the man who established the works there.

Around the nation, some 1,800 steam locomotives have survived, many of them Baldwins and most of them either static displays in museums or rusting outdoors in municipal parks. A few lucky ones have been restored to operating condition and can be found at tourist railroads and heritage sites. Three of the four operating steam engines at the Strasburg Rail Road in Lancaster County are Baldwins. East Broad Top Railroad in Huntingdon County has operated as many as four Baldwins simultaneously.

And an industrial park at Morrisville, Bucks County, is still serviced by a pair of Baldwin diesel switchers, two of just a handful of Baldwin diesels still active.

 

Surviving Baldwin Steam Locomotives in Pennsylvania

About 140 steam locomotives survive in Pennsylvania, which is second only to California (with 200+). Pennsylvania has 26 Baldwins, of which five are operable, all listed below. California has 76 Baldwins. Across North America, about 615 Baldwin steam engines survive.

In the Whyte classification system, steam engines are described by wheel arrangement. The first number shows the number of wheels leading the engine, the second (and sometimes third) number indicates the driving wheels, and the final number gives the trailing wheels under the firebox and cab. Engines with no leading wheels are switchers, those with two leading wheels are usually freight locomotives, and those with four leading wheels are usually passenger engines, which need the additional stability to guide them through curves and switches at higher speeds.

Claysburg, owned by Everett Railroad
Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain 2-8-0 No. 38, 1927

Everett
Morehead & North Fork 2-6-2 No. 11, 1909

Greenville, Greenville Railroad Park
Union Railroad 0-10-2 No. 304, 1936

Mount Union
East Broad Top 0-6-0 No. 3, 1923

New Hope, owned by New Hope Railroad
Lancaster & Chester 2-8-0 No. 40, 1925*

Philadelphia, Franklin Institute
Baldwin Locomotive Works 4-10-2 No. 60000, 1926

Port Clinton, owned by Reading & Northern Railroad
Gulf, Mobile & Northern 4-6-2 No. 425, 1928*

Rockhill Furnace
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 12 (narrow gauge), 1911
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 14 (narrow gauge), 1912
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 15 (narrow gauge), 1914
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 16 (narrow gauge), 1916
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 17 (narrow gauge), 1918
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 18 (narrow gauge), 1920

Scranton, Steamtown National Historic Site
Baldwin Locomotive Works 0-6-0 No. 26, 1929*
Brooks-Scanlon Corp. 2-6-2 No. 1, 1914
Duquesne Slag 0-6-0 No. 8, 1923
Grand Trunk Western 4-8-2 No. 6039, 1925
Rahway Valley 2-8-0 No. 15, 1916

Strasburg, Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Railroad 2-8-2 No. 520, 1916
Pennsylvania Railroad 2-8-0 No. 2846, 1905
Virginia & Truckee 2-6-0 No. 20 “Tahoe,” 1875
Waimanalo Sugar Co. 0-4-2T No. 3 “Olomana” (narrow gauge), 1883

Strasburg, Strasburg Rail Road
Canadian National 0-6-0 No. 7312, 1908
Great Western 2-10-0 No. 90, 1924*
Norfolk & Western 4-8-0 No. 475, 1906*

Tannersville
Bethlehem Steel Corp. 0-6-0 Number unknown, date unknown

*Operable

 

Further Reading

Brown, John K. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831–1915: A Study in American Industrial Practice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. / Dolzall, Gary W., and Stephen F. Dolzall. Diesels from Eddystone: The Story of Baldwin Diesel Locomotives. Waukesha, WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1984. / Vauclain, Samuel M., and Earl Chapin May. Steaming Up! The Autobiography of Samuel M. Vauclain. New York: Brewer & Warren, 1930. / Westing, Fred. The Locomotives That Baldwin Built. New York: Bonanza Books, 1966. / White, John H., Jr. “Old Ironsides, Baldwin’s First Locomotive.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin no. 118 (April 1968): 85–87. / Withuhn, William L. American Steam Locomotives: Design and Development, 1880–1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.

 

Dan Cupper, descended from a family of railroaders, is a transportation historian from Harrisburg and a retired locomotive engineer for Norfolk Southern Railroad. He has written numerous books and articles on railroad history. His most recent contributions to Pennsylvania Heritage are “Marketing Patriotism: Pennsylvania Railroad Advertising During World War II (Summer 2020) and “WWII Target: Altoona” (Winter 2020).