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The Texas Western Starfebruary 2010

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The Texas Western Starfebruary 2010 The Texas Western ST A R FebruaryOctober 20122010 w w w . t e x a s w e s t e r n m r c . o r g arch 2010 William’s From the CDO.... Family Take Tour of The I am enjoyingTexas the Westerncooler weather and Model I’ll bet you are Railroad too. With school back in session and some of summer’s chores like mowing the lawn and watering slowing down, it is time to get down to serious fall modeling. I NEXT month Member have enjoyed the kit building clinics as much as the members attending Profiles Return on pages ...........................................4-5 seemed to; it was nice to sit and build with others doing the same things. Guess that was the attraction of quilting circles back in the day. Kibitz. In This Issue We are now in the home stretch for getting the club ready for Open From the CDO.................1 House in November. We need all members to come in and help with the final preparations, planning, and maintenance of the layout. For the most The Train Schedule.........6 part we are in good shape for running and as I type we are doing an operat- Birthdays.......................10 ing session this afternoon. Those that want to run trains this year should visit with me for scheduling; we will be alternating this to be fair for everyone and let some show off their trains also. Be sure you have com- pletely tested your consist and eliminated any reoccurring issues. Trains that break down during open house will be put into a siding as getting to problems isn’t easy when we are full of visitors. I will be bringing posters to the club for distribution to hobby shops in the area. If you know you are going to be making a trip to a hobby shop, please get with me for a poster. Have a Suggestion Darrell Cowles Or a Story Idea? Contact: stareditor@ twmrc.org TWMRC October Business Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 4th, at 7:30 pm 2 October 2012 The STAR From the President’s Car: The STAR is published by The Texas Western Model H The photo’s are in and here is a preview of our Texas Western 2013 Calendar! Railroad Club & The Texas Western Railroad Association, A 501c Non-Profit Organization. Visit our web site: www. texaswesternmrc.org Executive Board Fred Tucker President Glen Buie Chief Operations Officer Darrell Cowles Chief Development Officer Connie Stiles The rest of the calendar will be revealed in November when the calendars go Chief Financial Officer on sale at our Annual November Saturday Open Houses! David Kranda - Chief Administrative Officer Fred Tucker President, TWMRC [email protected] 3 October 2012 The STAR Photo’sNominationsTexas Western from Amarillo for Railroad2011 Board Club & of Area Directors: by Chris Galvin Monday Run Night ( continued from page 1 ........ ) “COME OUT & RUN WITH US”. 4 October 2012 The STAR At first, Baldwin contented himself with merely pro- The History of ducing stationary engines for industrial applications. North American Steam However, when news of the great successes in railways in England began to reach his ears, he saw even greater Part 4: Matthias Baldwin potential in constructing steam locomotives for the blossoming rail business. Thus, using designs inspired & His Works by the engines of the Rainhill Trials, he constructed a By Tripper Stiles reduced-scale model locomotive and demonstrated it at the Philadelphia Museum. Much as was John Stevens’ locomotive, Baldwin’s was used to give rides to curi- ous onlookers, garnering much interest both in steam railroading and in Baldwin’s handiwork. Hello guys, You know the drill; less filler, more substance. Let us dive straight in to the next chapter of the chronicle of North American steam. As the account of the John Bull served to make clear, the needs of the railroads of America were vastly dif- ferent from those in the Old World. Hastily-laid trackage, unfenced right-of-ways, and wide stretches of wilder- ness between towns each served to shape the American locomotive into a more utilitarian, rough-and-tumble form than its European brethren. As such, by 1832 it was As a result of this exposition, Baldwin was approached readily apparent that it would be far more pragmatic by investors from the Newcastle and Frenchtown, a pre- and economical for locomotives to be built indigenously decessor of what would one day be the Pennsylvania to American specifications, rather than being built in Railroad, and was asked to assemble for them a loco- Britain, shipped across the Atlantic, and modified to suit motive they had purchased from Britain. He did so un- local requirements. Thus, locomotive builders began eventfully, taking advantage of the experience to bolster springing up all across the industrialized East Coast, his knowledge of steam locomotive construction. This with each having various degrees of success or failure; would be fortuitous, as it was not long before another soon enough however, the efforts of each of these other group approached him, asking him to build for them a fledgling shops would be eclipsed by the efforts of one locomotive, this time from scratch. At this point, Bald- Matthias Baldwin. win was still not entirely certain of his ability to fulfill their request; constructing a demonstration engine The journey that this man took to eventually being and assembling someone else’s design is one thing, but head of the premier locomotive works in the United designing, building, and testing a fully-fledged service States began in 1825, when he and a machinist partner locomotive is an entirely different matter. So, being a opened a machine shop in Philadelphia, intending to resourceful businessman, Baldwin took a journey down build bookbinders’ tools and printing rollers. The pro- to New Jersey to the Camden and Amboy Railroad, which cess of making these tools and rollers required steam was in the process of assembling a locomotive it had power, as it was with almost any manufacturing during just uncrated from England: the John Bull. Baldwin took the Industrial Revolution, and thus Baldwin set out to notes and measurements, studied the mechanical sys- design and build for himself a stationary engine to tems and linkages, and then set out to finally construct power the machinery of the shop. Upon being put into a legitimate railroad locomotive of his own. use, his engine turned out to be extremely efficient and Upon returning to Philadelphia he immediately began well-made; perhaps too much so, because it was not to work, and by November 23, 1832, his locomotive was long before he was receiving orders from fellow shop ready for testing. Christened Old Ironsides for its iron owners for copies of their own. From this unexpected construction and as homage to the USS Constitution, the success, Baldwin immediately saw the potential in engine performed admirably upon setting out from tapping this market, and converted his business into a Philadelphia, despite a few mechanical shortcomings steam boiler works. which were soon remedied, ( Continued on Page 5 ..... ) 5 October 2012 The STAR shops building nothing but the type until 1842, in ( Continued from Page 4.........) ever-refined and improved forms. This marked and was placed in regular service immediately one of the first instances of a builder standardiz- afterwards. This great success for Baldwin’s design ing their designs, resulting in efficiency in pro- soon opened the floodgates, and orders began com- duction through homogenizing the building pro- ing in from railways across the country. cess, and giving Baldwin a reputation for depend- ability and reliability. By 1837, Baldwin’s shops were churning out 40 However, even while Baldwin built up his fame engines a year, and his designs had matured to a as a consistent builder with his 4-2-0s, his experi- degree of reliability and efficiency which few other ments into the cutting edge of locomotive design builders could match. However, despite the superi- also gave him repute as an innovator and foward ority of his locomotives, events soon turned against thinker. Of these original ideas of his, which rang- his favor, and the fledgling Baldwin Locomotive ed from simple refinements to fundamental re- Works was placed into a fight for survival. thinkings of locomotive design, none were more radical than Baldwin’s flexible beam truck en- When the Panic of 1837 struck, Baldwin found him- gines. Devised as a method by which the tractive self facing the same bleak economic situation as force of a locomotive could be maximized, Bald- the rest of the country; inflation was rampant, banks win’s idea consisted of taking one of his standard were failing, and business were shuttering their op- 4-2-0’s, removing the front wheels, and replacing erations left and right. By 1840, annual locomotive them with two extra pairs of drive wheels placed sales for the company were down to just 9, and in a flexible ‘beam truck’ arrangement, allowing Baldwin was forced to take on two partners to keep them to turn around curves. This 0-6-0 layout his business afloat. A similar situation arose twenty proved vastly more powerful than the original years later with the Panic of 1857, which cut busi- 4-2-0, and soon it became a standard heavy freight ness from 66 locomotives in 1857 to just 33 in 1858. design for numerous railroads. A few years later Both times, however, Baldwin proved that he pos- in 1846, Baldwin again expanded the design, add- sessed a business sense to match his engineer- ing a fourth pair of drivers under the cab, creating ing prowess, and the company made it through a monstrous (for the day) 0-8-0.
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