Steamtown Special History Study

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 with a sloped back tender.

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

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

Ironically October 1929, the month of Eddystone's ascendency, also featured the stock market crash of Black Friday. With the onset of the Great Depression, Eddystone's locomotive-building business nearly vanished overnight.

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

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

Whether this corporate shuffle had anything to do with it, or whether Baldwin, moving to develop an improved line of diesel locomotives, wanted to project a more modern image, in 1948 the company sold one of its own switch engines, No. 26, to the Jackson Iron and Steel Company of Jackson, Ohio, where the locomotive became the steel 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 of a new pig iron furnace in Jackson, Ohio. First they purchased the mine and equipment of the Jackson and Muncie Coal Company and then, on August 6, 1906, incorporated the Jackson Iron and Steel Company.

Baldwin Locomotive Works switch engine No. 26 exhibited its original paint and lettering at the Eddystone Works in Pennsylvania where the company retained the locomotive as its own shop switcher.
Collection of Thomas Lawson, Jr.

Two miles west of Jackson on the banks of a small creek known as Givens Run, near the coal mine, which was known for its production of fine Sharon No. 1 coal, the new company commenced construction of its new furnace. Construction proceeded throughout 1907, but slowed with the impact of the sharp little depression that hit mines and industries especially hard that year, and the furnace was not blown in until October 6, 1908. It was the twenty-third, and probably the last, pig iron furnace to be built in Jackson County. The stack was hand filled and auxiliary equipment included three boilers, three hot blast stoves, 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 many improvements. 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 a sixth boiler, but still cast the pig iron in a sand bed. More extensive remodeling took place in 1923, and a larger expansion, in 1928, was just in time for the Depression. However, even in the depths of the Depression the furnace received one more remodeling, with three Cottrell Precipitators being added to clean the furnace gas.

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

It remains a mystery why, having used a diesel-electric switcher, in 1948 the Jackson Iron and Steel Company purchased secondhand from Baldwin a recently overhauled coal-burning 0-6-0 steam switch engine with a slope-backed tender. Possibly it was a matter of fuel economy, since the Jackson company owned a coal mine but not oil wells and refinery. Whatever the reasons, the company acquired Locomotive No. 26, which had switched Baldwin's Eddystone plant. Some time between 1945 and its sale in 1948, Baldwin had apparently given the locomotive a thorough overhaul. Eventually, Jackson Iron and Steel Company renumbered the locomotive 3.

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

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

Condition: While stored in Bellevue, Ohio, and up to the time it moved to Scranton, this locomotive reportedly was serviceable. In January 1990. it entered the shop at Steamtown National Historic Site for minor work preparatory to assigning it to hauling yard tours during the summer season of 1990.

Recommendation: As the only typical switch engine in the Steamtown collection, the locomotive is recommended for restoration to operable condition. As the Steamtown collection has other locomotives that represent trackside industrial concerns such as a steel works, it is desirable to restore this particular locomotive to represent its role as a switch engine at Baldwin's Eddystone Plant, an association that will lead into interpretation of the locomotive-building industry and especially the history of the Baldwin firm, probably for much of its history the most prominent of all American locomotive-building firms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

The Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia--The Story of Eddystone. Philadelphia: Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1928.

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

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

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

Directory, Iron and Steel Plants. Pittsburgh: Steel Publications, 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 Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1928. Felton: Glenwood Publishers, 1974. [This is a reprint, with added material, of a 1928 publication by the Baldwin Locomotive 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.