OT - Chinese copies of US equipment manuals?

PCook · **Joined:** Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:16 am **Posts:** 2127

Originals or copies? The description "used" doesn't tell much. Just posting this as an item of interest. It seems unlikely that multiple copies of an obscure original Baldwin manual would have ended up in China to then be sold on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-HAVEN-THE-D ... SwbYZXVCFr

Maybe Alco parts books are next?

Note: The eBay auction link will probably expire in a couple days.

PC

70000 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 08, 2016 1:25 pm

My guess is that they are reproductions of the originals as someone has deemed that there might be money to be made that way.

It was interesting to see the rather pristine (and multiple) copies of Nazi era/WW2 German publications on sale at a flea market in Sofia, Bulgaria, a few years back, awaiting gullible tourists to snap them up! They did at least look quite good, unlike some of the repros of various other things like steel helmets were unbelievably bad.

Must admit a Baldwin loco manual doesn't have the potential mass appeal for sales though....

JayZee · **Joined:** Sat May 07, 2016 1:12 am **Posts:** 140

Since China has a reputation for stealing intellectual property is it possible when the railroads retired all of the locomotives of this class the manuals were sold and then ended up in China to experiment and reverse engineer the locomotive? It would have been around the time China started to think about modernizing their railroads.

Bobharbison · **Joined:** Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm **Posts:** 3011

Looking at the cover, and based on a mediocre photo, this looks like it may be legit. I'm mostly looking at the binding style, which seems like it would be a lot of work to replicate for such an obscure and relatively low priced item.

It also appears this seller only has this item up for sale, rather than say dozens of these.

Then again, I could be totally off base.

In any case, if you do buy, be sure to know the shipping costs nearly as much as the item. I once tried to order a blade for a toy quadcopter on Amazon. The blade sold for under a buck, but shipping was going to be roughly $100 (for a 2 inch sliver of plastic) and best of all, estimated delivery was 4 to 6 weeks. So be sure to read the fine print.

PMC · **Joined:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm **Posts:** 2876

Forgive me for going OT (the topic is reproduction manuals being sold as originals) but those manuals could have value as part of a case study of what NOT to do if you are a builder of products that has been disrupted by new technology, i.e. the steam builders and diesel electric technology, and the mistake being, when you fail to compete with EMD on price and quality, get into the batch production market with specialized niche products. There was an interesting article on how Kodak reacted to a similar disruption on Huffington Post a few days back that immediately made me think of Baldwin:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dia ... 87774.html

The Dan'l Webster was the last nail in the coffin of Baldwin (and FM too).

JimBoylan · **Posted:** Fri Jun 10, 2016 2:24 pm

Jimmy McHugh of New Hope & Ivyland RR fame bought a lot of the Baldwin Diesel locomotive manuals from Baldwin. I don't remember the Dan'l. Webster in that haul, though.

p51 · **Posted:** Sat Jun 11, 2016 1:40 am

Seeing what aluminum copies of builder plates are going for on ebay, I do not get why were not seeing copies of them out of china...