Of presses and such. Visitors who enter the Sheepscot shops from the southwesterly corner side door are immediately confronted with our sleeping giant, the Southwark-Baldwin vertical hydraulic press. As I’ll probably say often in this series, you may not need this machine often but when you do there’s nothing else like it. If you don’t count the control levers and pump, this press essentially has but one moving part – a vertical ram that can generate up to 80+ tons of downward pressure!
Steam locomotive construction depends on assembling parts so that they stay assembled durably when subjected to the forces and stress inherent in their operation. Wheel bearings need to stay in their journals, crank pins in their driving wheels, etc. There are many machine shop terms for pressing operations but they all boil down to stuffing a part into a hole or space that’s too small for it!
The average small railroad operation might not have had a press of this capacity, or any press at all, save for the small arbor presses that I’ll talk about in a later post. That said, the class of work engaged in at the Sheepscot shops not only involves repair but new builds. This vertical press, along with a smaller horizontal unit have been indispensable in the Build 11 project. I urge you to look back through the build 11 updates, especially those of this past year and you will see these machines in action.
So, about our press. Southwark Iron Foundry started out in 1836 in Philadelphia, and would become Southwark Foundry & Machine Co. in 1863. They produced machine tools, stationary engines and sub contracted to other firms, but hydraulic presses became their specialty. In 1930 Baldwin Locomotive Works acquired them and they became the Baldwin-Southwark Division of BLW. Note the builders’ tag in the photos. Our press was manufactured in Sept., 1943. She no doubt helped win World War Two and now still keeps ‘em rolling on the WW&F.
Earl
