The history of the first locomotives in America. From original ...

LOCOMOTIVE-WORKS. 231
reputation for its builder that secured for him more work than the
capacity of his shop could accommodate. Before the close of
1834 he had completed five engines. New shops were erected,
and in 1835 fourteen locomotives were built, in 1836 forty, and in
the next year forty-five. The business was, therefore, fully estab-
lished, and grew from year to year, experiencing, with other
departments of manufacture and trade, periodical revulsions, but
yet moving forward, until the ' Baldwin Locomotive Works ' assumed
and maintained the enviable distinction of being the most
extensive locomotive establishment in the world ; and from the
capacity of one small engine in six months, the works, within the
third of a century, attained the capacity of one engine a day, or
over three hundred of the most powerful and complete railroad
locomotives in a year.
" One of the secrets of the great success of the works lay in
the genius of the founder. Mr. Baldwin was gifted with a mind
fertile in practical inventions to a degree rarely found in any
country. During the earlier years of his experience as a locomo-
tive builder, almost every engine produced was in some particular
an improvement over any of its predecessors, many new devices or
changes in combination giving increased strength, durability, and
general eificiency to his machines. The Baldwin Locomotive
Works are located on North Broad Street, Philadelphia, and
occupy the greater part of three blocks, from Pennsylvania
Avenue to Spring Garden Street, a^d an area of two hundred and
forty thousand square feet. On the centre of the Broad-Street
front stands the old shop erected by Mr. Baldwin in 1834. Here
are the offices, store-room, and drawing-department, and in the
Hamilton-Street shops the boiler-shop, smith-shop, brass-foundery,
'first, second, and third story machine-shops,' and pattern-loft.
South of this was the Willow-Street shop, where cylinders and
frames are finished, and tanks, tracks, stacks, and cabs, are made.
Adjacent to this, on the west, is a building two hundred and sixtysix
feet long, and sixty feet deep in the central part, and with two
wings one hundred and eight feet deep at either end. The central
part of the building and the east wing are used for the iron-foun-
dery, where all the cast-iron work used about a locomotive, except
the truck-wheels, is made. The west wing is used as a hammer-
shop ; one large steam-hammer, rated at five thousand pounds, is in
constant use here, working up scrap and bar iron into blooms from
which the engine-frames are made. On the north side, beyond
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