Illustrated Catalogue of Locomotives; Baldwin Locomotive Works

by Baldwin Locomotive Works

February 14, 1854, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. David Clark, Master Mechanic of the Mine Hill Railroad, took out conjointly a patent for a feed-water heater, placed at the base of a locomotive chimney, and consisting of one large vertical flue, surrounded by a number of smaller ones. The exhaust steam was discharged from the nozzles through the large central flue, creating a draft of the products of combustion through the smaller surrounding flues. The pumps forced the feed-water into the chamber around these flues, whence it passed to the boiler by a pipe from the back of the stack. This heater was applied on several engines for the Mine Hill Railroad, and on a few for other roads; but its use was exceptional, and lasted only for a year or two.

In December of the same year, Mr. Baldwin filed a caveat for a variable exhaust, operated automatically, by the pressure of steam, so as to close when the pressure was lowest in the boiler, and open with the increase of pressure. The device was never put in service.

The use of coal, both bituminous and anthracite, as a fuel for locomotives, had by this time become a practical success. The economical combustion of bituminous coal, however, engaged considerable attention. It was felt that much remained to be accomplished in consuming the smoke and deriving the maximum of useful effect from the fuel. Mr. Baird, who was now associated with Mr. Baldwin in the management of the business, made this matter a subject of careful study and investigation. An experiment was conducted under his direction, by placing a sheet-iron deflector in the fire-box of an engine on the Germantown and Norristown Railroad. The success of the trial was such as to show conclusively that a more complete combustion resulted. As, however, a deflector formed by a single plate of iron would soon be destroyed by the action of the fire, Mr. Baird proposed to use a water-leg projecting upward and backward from the front of the fire-box under the flues. Drawings and a model of the device were prepared, with a view of patenting it, but subsequently the intention was abandoned, Mr. Baird concluding that a fire-brick arch as a deflector to accomplish the same object was preferable. This was accordingly tried on two locomotives built for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1854, and was found so valuable an appliance that its use was at once established, and it was put on a number of engines built for railroads in Cuba and elsewhere. For several years the fire-bricks were supported on side plugs; but in 1858, in the "Media," built for the West Chester and Philadelphia Railroad Company, water-pipes extending from the crown obliquely downward and curving to the sides of the fire-box at the bottom, were successfully used for the purpose.

The adoption of the link-motion may be regarded as the dividing line between the present and the early and transitional stage of locomotive practice. Changes since that event have been principally in matters of detail, but it is the gradual perfection of these details which has made the locomotive the symmetrical, efficient, and wonderfully complete piece of mechanism it is to-day. In perfecting these minutiæ, the Baldwin Locomotive Works has borne its part, and it only remains to state briefly its contributions in this direction.

The production of the establishment during the six years from 1855 to 1860, inclusive, was as follows: forty-seven engines in 1855; fifty-nine in 1856; sixty-six in 1857; thirty-three in 1858; seventy in 1859; and eighty-three in 1860. The greater number of these were of the ordinary type, four drivers coupled, and a four-wheeled truck, and varying in weight from fifteen ton engines, with cylinders twelve by twenty-two, to twenty-seven ton engines, with cylinders sixteen by twenty-four. A few ten-wheeled engines were built, as has been previously noted, and the remainder were the Baldwin flexible-truck six- and eight-wheels-connected engines. The demand for these, however, was now rapidly falling off, the ten-wheeled and heavy "C" engines taking their place, and by 1859 they ceased to be built, save in exceptional cases, as for some foreign roads, from which orders for this pattern were still occasionally received.

A few novelties characterizing the engines of this period may be mentioned. Several engines built in 1855 had cross-flues placed in the fire-box, under the crown, in order to increase the heating surface. This feature, however, was found impracticable, and was soon abandoned. The intense heat to which the flues were exposed converted the water contained in them into highly superheated steam, which would force its way out through the water around the fire-box with violent ebullitions. Four engines were built for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in 1856-57, with straight boilers and two domes. The "Delano" grate, by means of which the coal was forced into the fire-box from below, was applied on four ten-wheeled engines for the Cleveland and Pittsburg Railroad, in 1857. In 1859, several engines were built with the form of boiler introduced on the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1851 by Mr. A. F. Smith, and which consisted of a combustion-chamber in the waist of the boiler, next the fire-box. This form of boiler was for some years thereafter largely used in engines for soft coal. It was at first constructed with the "water-leg," which was a vertical water-space, connecting the top and bottom sheets of the combustion-chamber, but eventually this feature was omitted, and an unobstructed combustion-chamber employed. Several engines were built for the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company in 1859, and thereafter, with the "Dimpfel" boiler, in which the tubes contain water, and, starting downward from the crown-sheet, are curved to the horizontal, and terminate in a narrow water-space next the smoke-box. The whole waist of the boiler, therefore, forms a combustion-chamber, and the heat and gases, after passing for their whole length along and around the tubes, emerge into the lower part of the smoke-box.

In 1860, an engine was built for the Mine Hill Railroad, with boiler of a peculiar form. The top sheets sloped upward from both ends toward the centre, thus making a raised part or hump in the centre. The engine was designed to work on heavy grades, and the object sought by Mr. Wilder, the Superintendent of the Mine Hill Railroad, was to have the water always at the same height in the space from which steam was drawn, whether going up or down grade.

All these experiments are indicative of the interest then prevailing upon the subject of coal-burning. The result of experience and study had meantime satisfied Mr. Baldwin that to burn soft coal successfully required no peculiar devices; that the ordinary form of boiler, with plain fire-box, was right, with perhaps the addition of a fire-brick deflector; and that the secret of the economical and successful use of coal was in the mode of firing, rather than in a different form of furnace.

The year 1861 witnessed a marked falling off in the production. The breaking out of the war at first unsettled business, and by many it was thought that railroad traffic would be so largely reduced that the demand for locomotives must cease altogether. A large number of hands were discharged from the works, and only forty locomotives were turned out during the year. It was even seriously contemplated to turn the resources of the establishment to the manufacture of shot and shell, and other munitions of war, the belief being entertained that the building of locomotives would have to be altogether suspended. So far, however, was this from being the case, that, after the first excitement had subsided, it was found that the demand for transportation by the general government, and by the branches of trade and production created by the war, was likely to tax the carrying capacity of the principal Northern railroads to the fullest extent. The government itself became a large purchaser of locomotives, and it is noticeable, as indicating the increase of travel and freight transportation, that heavier machines than had ever before been built became the rule. Seventy-five engines were sent from the works in 1862; ninety-six in 1863; one hundred and thirty in 1864; and one hundred and fifteen in 1865. During two years of this period, from May, 1862, to June, 1864, thirty-three engines were built for the United States Military Railroads. The demand from the various coal-carrying roads in Pennsylvania and vicinity was particularly active, and large numbers of ten-wheeled engines, and of the heaviest eight-wheeled four-coupled engines, were built. Of the latter class, the majority were with fifteen and sixteen inch cylinders, and of the former, seventeen and eighteen inch cylinders.

The introduction of several important features in construction marks this period. Early in 1861, four eighteen inch cylinder freight locomotives, with six coupled wheels, fifty-two inches in diameter, and a Bissell pony-truck with radius-bar in front, were sent to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. This was the first instance of the use of the Bissell truck in the Baldwin Works. These engines, however, were not of the regular "Mogul" type, as they were only modifications of the ten-wheeler, the drivers retaining the same position, well back, and a pair of pony-wheels on the Bissell plan taking the place of the ordinary four-wheeled truck. Other engines of the same pattern, but with eighteen and one-half inch cylinders, were built in 1862-63, for the same company, and for the Don Pedro II. Railway of Brazil.