Steamtown NHS: Special History Study (2024)

AMERICAN STEAM LOCOMOTIVES

BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVE WORKS NO. 26

Owner(s):

Baldwin Locomotive Works (Eddystone) 26
Jackson Iron & Steel Company 3

Whyte System Type: 0-6-0 Switch engine
Class:

Builder: Baldwin Locomotive Works
Date Built: March 1929
Builder's Number: 60733

Cylinders (diameter x stroke in inches): 20 x 24
Boiler Pressure (in lbs. per square inch): 180
Diameter of Drive Wheels (in inches): 50
Tractive Effort (in lbs.): 29,375

Tender Capacity:
Coal (in tons):
Oil (in gallons):
Water (in gallons):

Weight on Drivers (in lbs.): 124,000

Remarks: This is a typical switch engine or switcher witha sloped back tender.

Baldwin Locomotive Works, 0-6-0 Switcher No.26

History: The only typical switch engine in theSteamtown collection, equipped with the only sloped tender in thecollection, Jackson Iron and Steel Company 0-6-0 No. 3 rolled out of theBaldwin Locomotive Works in March 1929, but instead of selling it tosome railroad or industry, the Baldwin company retained the locomotivefor switching duties at the massive Eddystone Plant. Baldwin had builtmany locomotives at the Eddystone plant since 1910, but it was not untilOctober 1929 that the company moved all locomotive production there fromits cramped Philadelphia shops. One may surmise that the little 0-6-0was retained by the company for work in enlarging the Eddystone plantfor its absorption 7 months later of all of Baldwin's locomotiveproduction.

Ironically October 1929, the month of Eddystone'sascendency, also featured the stock market crash of Black Friday. Withthe onset of the Great Depression, Eddystone's locomotive-buildingbusiness nearly vanished overnight.

In 1939, Baldwin offered its first standard line ofdiesel locomotives, all designed for yard service. Two years later,American entry into World War II destroyed Baldwin's diesel developmentprogram when the War Production Board dictated that Alco and Baldwinproduce only limited numbers of diesel yard switch engines while theElectro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation won the assignmentto produce road freight diesels, which gave the latter an advantage overits competitors in that line in the years that followed World WarII.

Business declined drastically in the postwar years asAlco (American Locomotive Company) and E.M.D. seized the bulk of thediesel market from Baldwin, Lima-Hamilton Corporation, and Fairbanks-Morse. Baldwin also misjudged the market, concentrating on products oflittle interest to railroads. In July 1948, Westinghouse Electric, whichhad teamed with Baldwin to build diesel and electric carbodies,purchased 500,000 shares, or 21 percent, of Baldwin stock, becoming thelargest shareholder. Baldwin used the money to cover various debts.Westinghouse Vice President Marvin W. Smith became Baldwin'spresident.

Whether this corporate shuffle had anything to dowith it, or whether Baldwin, moving to develop an improved line ofdiesel locomotives, wanted to project a more modern image, in 1948 thecompany sold one of its own switch engines, No. 26, to the Jackson Ironand Steel Company of Jackson, Ohio, where the locomotive became thesteel company's No. 26.

Jackson Iron and Steel Company was a fairly old firm.In 1906, Moses Morgan, John F. Morgan, David D. Davis, John J. Thomas,and Henry H. Hossman combined their resources to finance construction ofa new pig iron furnace in Jackson, Ohio. First they purchased the mineand equipment of the Jackson and Muncie Coal Company and then, on August6, 1906, incorporated the Jackson Iron and Steel Company.

Baldwin Locomotive Works switch engineNo. 26 exhibited its original paint and lettering at the Eddystone Worksin Pennsylvania where the company retained the locomotive as its ownshop switcher.
Collection of Thomas Lawson, Jr.

Two miles west of Jackson on the banks of a smallcreek known as Givens Run, near the coal mine, which was known for itsproduction of fine Sharon No. 1 coal, the new company commencedconstruction of its new furnace. Construction proceeded throughout 1907,but slowed with the impact of the sharp little depression that hit minesand industries especially hard that year, and the furnace was not blownin until October 6, 1908. It was the twenty-third, and probably thelast, pig iron furnace to be built in Jackson County. The stack was handfilled and auxiliary equipment included three boilers, three hot blaststoves, and one blowing engine. Furnace capacity was 40 tons per day,all of which was cast in sand beds. The product was known as "JISCO[from the initials of the company] Silvery Pig Iron."

As the years passed the company made manyimprovements. In 1914 the firm adopted a stock bin system, larry car,and skip hoist and built two more boilers and one more stove. In 1917,with America entering World War I, the firm added a fifth stove and asixth boiler, but still cast the pig iron in a sand bed. More extensiveremodeling took place in 1923, and a larger expansion, in 1928, was justin time for the Depression. However, even in the depths of theDepression the furnace received one more remodeling, with three CottrellPrecipitators being added to clean the furnace gas.

World War II followed, along with yet anotherremodeling in 1942, which included dismantling the old stack andconstruction of a new one. The company at that time made many otherimprovements, including construction of a sixth hot blast stove,remodeling of the engine house, extension of the ore trestle, purchaseof two new diesel-electric cranes, installation of Carrier airconditioning to dehumidify the hot blast, construction of anotherbattery of boilers, and purchase of a diesel-electric switch engine.

It remains a mystery why, having used adiesel-electric switcher, in 1948 the Jackson Iron and Steel Companypurchased secondhand from Baldwin a recently overhauled coal-burning0-6-0 steam switch engine with a slope-backed tender. Possibly it was amatter of fuel economy, since the Jackson company owned a coal mine butnot oil wells and refinery. Whatever the reasons, the company acquiredLocomotive No. 26, which had switched Baldwin's Eddystone plant. Sometime between 1945 and its sale in 1948, Baldwin had apparently given thelocomotive a thorough overhaul. Eventually, Jackson Iron and SteelCompany renumbered the locomotive 3.

While the history of the use of the switcher byJackson Iron and Steel Company is unknown, presumably it switched emptycars into the plant and loaded cars out to the two railroads that servedthe plant, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Detroit, Toledo andIronton Railroad. When it last operated for the steel company isunknown, but it apparently remained there for nearly 31 years. In 1979,Jerry Jacobson purchased the locomotive. It remained in Jackson untilJune 1983, when it moved to Grand Rapids, Ohio, then in July 1983 to theMad River and N.K.P. Railroad Museum at Bellevue, Ohio. It remainedthere until January 1986, when that museum traded the locomotive to theSteamtown Foundation for Canadian National Railways 4-6-0 Locomotive No.1551. However, the locomotive remained in Ohio while the SteamtownFoundation transferred its collection to the National Park Service andwent out of business, and it was not until January 1990 that thelocomotive arrived in Scranton.

A total of about 112 0-6-0 type switch engines withtenders survive in the United States. Typically, they have a brakemen'sfootboard across the front of the locomotive instead of a pilot, and asimilar footboard across the rear of the tender. Generally they featuredone of three types of tenders: a standard rectangular tender, aslope-backed tender, or a Vanderbilt tender with its cylindrical tank.The 0-6-0 was probably the most typical of all switch engines; the nextmost typical was the larger 0-8-0 type. Usually, such locomotivesswitched freight and passenger cars at major terminals and yards.

Condition: While stored in Bellevue, Ohio, andup to the time it moved to Scranton, this locomotive reportedly wasserviceable. In January 1990. it entered the shop at Steamtown NationalHistoric Site for minor work preparatory to assigning it to hauling yardtours during the summer season of 1990.

Recommendation: As the only typical switchengine in the Steamtown collection, the locomotive is recommended forrestoration to operable condition. As the Steamtown collection has otherlocomotives that represent trackside industrial concerns such as a steelworks, it is desirable to restore this particular locomotive torepresent its role as a switch engine at Baldwin's Eddystone Plant, anassociation that will lead into interpretation of thelocomotive-building industry and especially the history of the Baldwinfirm, probably for much of its history the most prominent of allAmerican locomotive-building firms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahrens, Chris, Chief Mechanical Officer, Steamtown National HistoricSite. Telephone communication with author, Mar. 26, 1990.

The Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia--The Story ofEddystone. Philadelphia: Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1928.

Conrad, J. David. The Steam Locomotive Directory of NorthAmerica, Vol. 1. Polo: Transportation Trails, 1988: 107.

Directory, Iron and Steel Plants. Pittsburgh: The AndresonCompany, 1925. [See entry for Jackson Iron and Steel Co.]

Directory, Iron and Steel Plants. Pittsburgh: SteelPublications, Inc., 1935: 50.

Directory, Iron and Steel Plants. Pittsburgh: SteelPublications, Inc., 1948: 59.

Dolzall, Gary W., and Stephen F. Dolzall. Diesels from Eddystone:The Story of Baldwin Diesel Locomotives. Milwaukee: Kalmbach Books,1984.

The Story of Eddystone: A Pictorial Account of the BaldwinLocomotive Works in 1928. Felton: Glenwood Publishers, 1974. [Thisis a reprint, with added material, of a 1928 publication by the BaldwinLocomotive Works.]

A Story of SPEED in Blast Furnace Construction. Jackson, Ohio:Jackson Iron and Steel Company, 1942: 3.

Westing, Fred. The Locomotives that Baldwin Built. Seattle:Superior Publishing Company, 1966.