I’m looking for some specific shop drawings from Baldwin. I have the shop numbers Baldwin assigned to the locomotives, but I cant seem to locate copies of the drawings.
Does anyone have any ideas as to where I can get them?
The drawings are of Deadwood Central locomotives built by Baldwin in 1896 and 1900.
Try the RR museum of Pa. They acquired a lot of the records from Baldwins after they went out of business.
Jake,
did you get what you needed?
If not, drop me an email fletchmc at gmail etc.
I can probably find what you’re after.
David.
Thanks David,
I believe I got drawings of Deadwood Central #5. It happens to be that #5 was renumbered CB&Q 537. Most people remember her that way. The last Narrow gauge locomotive on the Colorado & Southern, I believe. Anyways, the CB&Q historical society published an in-depth article on Q537 which includes drawings. I ordered it so that one should be on the way.
I’m still searching for Deadwood Central #6 (CB&Q 538). She was a similar locomotive built after #5. I believe she had a higher tractive effort than #5. Although the stories are that #5 was the biggest “puller”. Anyways, I’ll keep you in mind after I get the CB&Q stuff.
Jake Smith said:
I’m looking for some specific shop drawings from Baldwin. I have the shop numbers Baldwin assigned to the locomotives, but I cant seem to locate copies of the drawings.
Does anyone have any ideas as to where I can get them?
Just a general comment. Apparently, when Baldwin was closing its doors, the shop drawings were not considered useful. I have not read of any actual ‘donation’ of the drawings to any museum.
I heard one story about an enthusiast who visited and was in the plant on business, spotted the stack, and was allowed to remove any he wanted. He did, according to the story.
I also found a bunch at a University in Atlanta. They put the catalog online so we were able to search and find one or two EBT drawings. Not all were correctly identified!
Dave Fletcher seems to have the best understanding of where they all are.
Pete is spot on,
No formal donations appear to have occured, however there are numerous cases of drawings removed from dumsters, people smuggling drawings home for many years prior to closure and so on.
Today the best can be obtained at:
DeGolyer in Texas (SMU Library), I can give you contacts off-line if you like). Huge collection, but as Pete noted, not always correctly identified. However the coding gives it away, I have no trouble finding stuff there now. Have helped some museums find things they never knew were in the collection. One case was an outside frame 2-8-0 built for Hawaii - the local historical society had searched for years to no avail and assumed the drawings didn’t survive. I found them inside of 5 mins. The codes were fine, the drawing had been mislabled. Pete and I had our own trouble trying to find the drawings to the original 1873 EBT 2-8-0. These are shown to be in the DeGolyer collection but the codes show it to be different locos entirely…gets me to the next good collection:
The Smithsonian Insititute - has a really good collection of very early Baldwin drawings. These drawings are in colour and are gorgeous. All are late 1860s - early 1880s. Colour using drafting standards for sections, not livery colour. This is where we found the EBT #3 2-8-0 drawing and a bunch of stuff from our Auz railways, also I got the D&RG Shou-wa-no here, which I used as the basis for the coloured drawings that appeared in NG&SLG last year. The only problem with Smithsonian is that the colllection is basically huge linen rolls on stacks. It took more than 18 months and $700 to get 7 drawing sets out of the archive and across town for scanning, including shou-wa-no! Strange they were not already scanned at the time. I have a Bendigo steam dummy drawing awaiting extraction. Paid the cash and have waited over a year now. Nothing unusual there.
Then there is Stanford. Good collection of original drawings, but poorly identified. I have the list, but its dumb luck if you get what you want. They need to add drawing numbers to their list so we can really see what they have. Their best stuff however is the Baldwin style books - two large volumes in full colour of locomotive livery standards. This has been essential to me. It was used for many accucraft models I’ve been involved with - DSP #51, D&RG Poncha, Grass Valley, Col Boon, Nevada, and the upcoming 7/8 Fairymead. Plus my own stuff. The books are in full colour including original pigments for Olive Green, Lake and Wine etc.
The Museum of Penn has a collection too, not so large, some repeats from above. What they do have however is a great collection of Vulcan drawings, the stuff that survived the fire. They turned out to have 100% of the drawings of the Vulcan engines exported to Auz. I had the lot scanned over about 12 months - 700 drawings. The best part was I tied in a visit to the museum on one of my trips to the EBT and stayed on an Armish farm etc, and while there spent 2 days at the museum. They put me in a large room to my self and left me fossick through the drawing sets. Those guys were excellent. Also includes the Vulcan specs.
There are others too, Museum of Pa has some, and there are loads in private collection.
DeGolyer has also the Baldwin specification books (now all on-line for viewing) and also the class lists. When one cant find a drawing of the loco in question, chances are another RR bought a loco to the exact same drawing - the class lists reveal this info, and hence you can go chase down a loco from another road. Often when finding the drawing, you’ll find reference to the loco you wanted in the first place right there on the drawing.
Finally, rightly or wrongly, I have no respect for hobbiest drawings in Magazines. Basically start by assuming they are 100% wrong unless they provide reference to the basis of their drawing. Most are just pretty pictures, scaled from photos, or just drawn to look right, or some are measured from a real engine with massive setout errors. Just because one used a tape measure means nothing. Measuring a large and complex item with accuracy is an art.
Given the huge resource out there, the best is to go to the source for drawings and build up a drawing for a magazine from there or drawing for a model etc. Then when publishing, note the origin and location of the info used to create the drawing. In my coloured drawings in NG&SLG etc, I noted the Baldwin cards used and from which library. Sadly Bob messed up some of the data in re-typing it, not realising what it meant. Its reference data to be used by other researchers in future. You should always reference your work so others can follow it. Even the drawings I do for other people or Accucraft etc, I still keep the references on the drawing. People scan and copy and spread this stuff. I dont mind, but this way the references stay with it. Other people in the know, will know when seeing my drawing it is based on archival material, not a crap shoot drawing and therefore is safe to use, or, they can go after the original archive drawing, as I’ve listed the number and location of the drawing.
Thanks chaps,
David.
Thank you David for taking the time to write that up. A very interesting read.
Yes, I second the thank you. It is excellent to have such a knowledge base here. I’m waiting on the CB&Q Bulletin to see what I have to start with first.
From there I will expand my database.