Figure 64.—Model of Baldwin Old Ironsides, 1832.
The original Old Ironsides was the first full sized locomotive built by Matthias W. Baldwin, a jeweler turned machinist, of Philadelphia. It was constructed for the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Rail-Road Co., which had been using horse cars in operating a short line of only 6 miles between Philadelphia and Germantown.
The line’s first locomotive, Old Ironsides, was initially operated on the road on November 23, 1832, and was a success from the start, though a few understandable imperfections were noted during the trials and shortly corrected. The fairly new locomotive John Bull of the Camden and Amboy Rail Road and Transportation Co. had been inspected by Baldwin before he undertook the project. Undoubtedly it furnished helpful suggestions to the man whose locomotive building enterprise was ultimately to eclipse anything possibly dreamed of by him.
The locomotive, contracted for at $4,000 but for which Baldwin was, after some difficulty, able to collect only $3,500, was somewhat similar to the locomotives of the English Planet class quite popular at the time. The two driving wheels, located at the rear, were larger than the carrying ones at the front, the diameters being 54 and 45 inches, respectively. The two cylinders had a bore of 9½ inches and a stroke of 18. The exhaust steam was discharged into the chimney in order to increase the draft. The boiler, 30 inches in diameter, contained 72 copper tubes 1½ inches in diameter and 7 feet long.
A complete description of Old Ironsides and detailed accounts of its first trials are to be found in “History of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1923.”
Davis and Gartner Locomotive Arabian, 1834
Davis and Gartner, who built the Atlantic in 1832 for the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road (see [p. 47]), built as their next two “grasshoppers” the Traveller and the Arabian. The latter of these was placed in service on the B & O in July 1834. Neither of these two locomotives is extant, but a 2-foot-long nonoperable model of the Arabian ([figure 65]) is now in the National Museum collection (USNM 233511). It was made in the Museum in about 1900 by C. R. Luscombe.
The Arabian was similar in design to the three “grasshoppers” that have survived, but differed from them in many small ways. Its two cylinders, for example, had a bore and stroke of 12 and 22 inches. This bore was fractionally less than that of the other three. Also, its weight with fuel and water, 7½ tons, was about a ton less than that of any of the others.
The extent to which the Museum’s model represents these slight differences between the Arabian and the “grasshoppers” that followed it cannot now be determined. Most of these differences would be impossible to reproduce on such a small scale. It is entirely possible that the model represented no particular “grasshopper,” and the name Arabian may have been selected by chance.
A detailed description of the construction of the Arabian and a discussion of its performance characteristics appear in the eighth (1834) and ninth (1835) annual reports of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Co.