Baldwin Locomotive Company Story

Eureka & Palisade Railroad Historical Society

The story of the locomotive named Eureka began in 1875, in a sprawling 616-acre factory on Broad Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

 

Matthias Baldwin originally trained and worked as a jeweler in Philadelphia in 1817. Business wasn’t as good as he hoped, so by 1825 his interests morphed, and he partnered with a machinist to build small tools for bookbinders and other occupations. As that business grew, Baldwin soon realized that he needed steam power in his manufacturing process.

Baldwin bought his first steam engine soon after 1825, but it was an inferior machine and didn’t work well enough to suit him. Baldwin then set out to build his own, better, steam engine for the factory and had designed and built a vertical steam engine prior to 1830. This new engine required only a small 5’ by 5’ footprint in the factory, making it a very popular design for use in small manufacturing spaces. The Baldwin-designed stationary steam engine was such a success that his business mutated again, this time from making small hand tools to making his extremely popular steam engines for others.

In 1830 and 1831, a few steam locomotives from England were first imported to the United States; they met with only limited success due to design flaws. The first US-made steam locomotive was made at a foundry in New York, but it failed miserably and never made it into service.

 

Seizing on the growing popularity of using steam to achieve motion (rather than simply providing work from a stationary position) and owing to Mr. Baldwin’s accomplishments with stationary steam engines, the Philadelphia Museum contracted with him to build an operating model steam locomotive for the museum. Working from only crude drawings and published descriptions of operating locomotives, Mr. Baldwin built his model and delivered it to the museum which put it immediately on display. The small-scale coal fired model locomotive debuted on April 25, 1831, and pulled two cars seating four passengers.

This model locomotive incorporated an innovation by Mr. Baldwin in the manner that exhaust steam was released. Rather than release the exhaust steam directly to the atmosphere as did contemporary designs, Mr. Baldwin routed the exhausted steam into the smokestack. This simple design allowed the force of the exhausted steam to increase the draft through the firebox making the fire hotter and more efficient. This design innovation would quickly become the standard for locomotive design the world over.

Mr. Baldwin’s second locomotive, Old Ironsides, wasn’t one of his own design, though. He was engaged to assemble a locomotive imported from England for a Philadelphia railroad company. Considering that the common tools needed to complete such a new project hadn’t yet been invented or manufactured, the team created their own tools and processes, and slogged through the build with great difficulty. Not to mention that the “kit” from which Mr. Baldwin was to assemble Old Ironsides was not complete: not only were the assembly instructions absent, but major components such as cylinders were not there either. Despite these challenges, Mr. Baldwin and his team designed what he needed and built the locomotive. Road trials began on November 23, 1832, and, with some tweaking of the design, Old Ironsides entered service just three days later, on the six-mile road. Able to reach speeds over 30 miles per hour and pulling around 30 tons, Old Ironsides – with Mr. Baldwin’s design improvements – proved herself to be far better and much more capable than any locomotive then existing either in the US or in England. Such began Mattias Baldwin’s newest career: locomotive builder.

According to History of The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1923, by 1923, the company employed 21,500 workers working 10-hour days in a 23-hour per day operation. The scale of their operation is hardly fathomable today. They used 4,200 tons of coal and 6,500 tons of iron and steel each week. Through 1923, The Baldwin Locomotive Works had built over 57,500 locomotives that were shipped for use in the US and in 71 other countries.

 

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