Illustrated Catalogue of Locomotives; Baldwin Locomotive WorksBaldwin Locomotive Works
History
Illustrated Catalogue of Locomotives; Baldwin Locomotive Works
Baldwin Locomotive Works
Baldwin locomotives; Locomotives -- Catalogs
After building, during the years 1843, 1844, and 1845, ten
four-wheels-connected engines on the plan above described, viz., six
wheels in all, the leading wheels and the front drivers being combined
into a truck by the flexible beams, Mr. Baldwin finally adopted the
present design of four drivers and a four-wheeled truck. Some of his
customers who were favorable to the latter plan had ordered such
machines of other builders, and Colonel Gadsden, President of the
South Carolina Railroad Company, called on him in 1845 to build for
that line some passenger engines of this pattern. He accordingly
bought the patent-right for this plan of engine of Mr. H. R. Campbell,
and for the equalizing beams used between the drivers, of Messrs.
Eastwick & Harrison, and delivered to the South Carolina Railroad
Company, in December, 1845, his first eight-wheeled engine with four
drivers and a four-wheeled truck. This machine had cylinders thirteen
and three-quarters by eighteen, and drivers sixty inches in diameter,
with the springs between them arranged as equalizers. Its weight was
fifteen tons. It had the half-crank axle, the cylinders being inside
the frame but outside the smoke-box. The inside-connected engine,
counterweighting being as yet unknown, was admitted to be steadier in
running, and hence more suitable for passenger service. With the
completion of the first eight-wheeled "C" engine, Mr. Baldwin's
feelings underwent a revulsion in favor of this plan, and his
partiality for it became as great as had been his antipathy before.
Commenting on the machine, he recorded himself as "more pleased with
its appearance and action than any engine he had turned out." In
addition to the three engines of this description for the South
Carolina Railroad Company, a duplicate was sent to the Camden and
Amboy Railroad Company, and a similar but lighter one to the
Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, shortly afterwards. The
engine for the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, and perhaps the
others, had the half-stroke cut-off.
From that time forward, all of his four-wheels-connected machines were
built on this plan, and the six-wheeled "C" engine was abandoned,
except in the case of one built for the Philadelphia, Germantown and
Norristown Railroad Company in 1846, and this was afterwards rebuilt
into a six-wheels-connected machine. Three methods of carrying out the
general design were, however, subsequently followed. At first the
half-crank was used; then horizontal cylinders inclosed in the
chimney-seat and working a full-crank-axle, which form of construction
had been practiced at the Lowell Works; and eventually, outside
cylinders with outside connections.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--BALDWIN EIGHT-WHEELS-CONNECTED ENGINE, 1846.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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