Group:
Where can I find copies of Engineering drawings of Baldwin diesel locomotives ? I know that a large amount of the steam drawings went to the DeGolyer Library in Texas, but did the diesel drawings get saved as well ?
Thanks in advance.

Kevin

I recently donated a few that had been rescued from the trash to SMS Rail Lines of Pureland, N.J.

A quantity of Baldwin and BLH drawings (two truck loads) are at the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg. These were donated to the archive 20 years ago by the Austin-Western Company, successor to BLH. As far as I know, they have not been completely cataloged, so a comprehensive list of what's available doesn't exist. I believe a small cadre of volunteers has been making slow progress in cataloging these materials, however. In addition to diesel drawings, there are some very late and export steam drawings included. Here's a link to the index: http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/mg/mg427.htm

Edited to correct quantity. I read over the introduction in the link too quickly. Maybe they were two pickups?

Wayne is correct - most post-1941 BLW drawings are at the PA State Archives. However, to say that there are "two tractor trailer loads" is a bit of an exaggeration. They arrived in two accretions - one group in 1975 through RR Museum of Pa and second in 1991 when Baldwin-Hamilton closed their Malvern offices in 1991. Some railfans and model builders may be disappointed, as most of the diesel drawings are card drawings of detail parts as part of Series II, c.1941-1950s--not many elevations of entire vehicles. Currently the State Archives railroad volunteers are organizing them according to size and thereunder alphabetically by subject. Almost all of the drawings from this voluminous collection now have been sorted by size (A-F, R, sizes 1-7) which has taken over twelve years to accomplish. I am transcribing the BLW drawing directories into an Excel db, currently entering all size 4 tracings. Dave Rose, who has been spearheading the project, will tie together all of the data with his db so that, someday, we hope to have a fully searchable catalogue on the PA State Archives website. There are very few older steam drawings in the collection--mostly drawings of a bolt or bracket of a particular engine, not entire series of drawings for a particular locomotive, which are part of Series I, ca. late 19th c.-1940. Those in pursuit of BLW steam drawings will have much better success at DeGolyer, and even then, the ones that Bill Witbeck cherry-picked from Eddystone were very random and they are largely incomplete (it's very much "hit-or-miss" coverage).

K.R. Bell
Railroad Archivist
Pennsylvania State Archives