Old Ironsides (Locomotive) - Shelburne Museum, VT
Posted by: 
Telomere
N 44° 22.562 W 073° 13.948
18T E 640813 N 4915159
Quick Description: A full-size replica of an 1832 Baldwin steam locomotive.
Location: Vermont, United States
Date Posted: 11/10/2009 2:11:55 PM
Waymark Code: WM7MVW
Views: 0
Long Description:"The Baldwin Locomotive Works, at Philadelphia, had a humble
beginning. Matthias W. Baldwin, the founder, was a jeweler and
silversmith, who, in 1825, formed a partnership with a machinist,
and engaged in the manufacture of bookbinders' tools and cylinders
for calico printing. Mr. Baldwin then designed and constructed for
his own use a small stationary engine, the workmanship of which was
so excellent and its efficiency so great that he was solicited to
build others like it for various parties, and thus led to turn his
attention to steam engineering.
In 1831 he built a miniature locomotive, for exhibition, which
was so much of a success that he that year received an order from a
railway company for a locomotive to run on a short line to the
suburbs of Philadelphia. The difficulties attending the execution
of this first order were such as our mechanics now cannot easily
comprehend. Tools were not easily obtainable; the cylinders were
bored by a chisel fixed in a block of wood and turned by hand; the
workmen had to be taught how to do nearly all the work; and Mr.
Baldwin himself did a great deal of it with his own hands.
It was under such circumstances that his first locomotive,
christened Old Ironsides, was completed and tried on the road,
November 23, 1832. It was at once put in active service, and did
duty for over a score of years.
It was a four-wheeled engine, weighing a little over five tons;
the driving wheels were 54 inches in diameter, and the cylinders 9½
inches in diameter by 18 inches stroke. The wheels were of heavy
cast iron hubs, with wooden spokes and rims, and wrought iron
tires, and the frame was of wood placed outside the wheels."
(source)
According to
Time Magazine of June 12, 1939, "for Old Ironsides the end came
in 1857 when a Vermont landslide mummified it."
Presumably this is the replica built by the Baldwin Company for
the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.
.jpg)
Popular Science Magazine
featured plans for a 1/24 version of the original in their
November, 1945 issue.
