Original Lima & Baldwin Locomotive Prints

All of the origianl Lima Locomotive Works drawings (some 10,000 of them!)
are in the library at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento,
CA (csrmlibrary@csrmf.org) . If you give them the road numbers you are
interested in, they will (for a price!) make copies for you.
** CORRECTION ** California only has about one-third of the drawings,
consisting of mostly the Super Power group, from 1925 - forward. Almost
all of the early drawings remain in the care of the Allen County Historical Society
at Lima, Ohio. A small quantity is apparently at SMU in Texas and some were
clandestinely sold to a private collector and appear to be in the St. Louis area.
All of the order books and construction cards are at the ACHS. Just before the
Locomotive Works facilities were demolished a few years back, about 85 file
cabinets were found in an upper storage room of the Erection Hall Building and
subsequently acquired by the ACHS. That is a mixed collection of drawings. All
photographs and negatives are at ACHS. The ACHS collection is managed by
Charles Bates. I am a regular visitor to the archives, over the past 33 years. The
entire engineering collection was barely saved from the dumper in the mid-1960's
and was put into three semi-trailers which were held in a secure building in Lima,
Ohio, while suitable archives were sought.
The Baldwin Works drawings (not all of them, only about 5,000... the rest
are evidently lost/destroyed) are at the De Golyer Library which is part of
SMU in Dallas, TX. Kay Bost, (kbost@mail.smu.edu) is the contact there. The
De Golyer library is very understaffed so you will have at least a 6-9
month wait for your name to get to the top of the list. Again, they will
make copies for a price. They too, catalog the drawings by road number.
About 30,000 BLW drawings exist at the Pennsylvania State Archive in
Harrisburg. The Manuscript Group, as they are referred to, is complete
(with minor exception) from about 1939 to the end. The collection is quite
complete in all aspects, but generally uncataloged. Included are Sales Orders,
Xtra Orders, Plan Sheets, and bills of material.

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