Inventor Name
Austin, William Liseter
Repository
Hagley Museum and Library
PO Box 3630
Wilmington, DE 19807-0630
302-658-2400
https://www.hagley.org/research
Physical Description
0.125 linear ft. (6 volumes).
Summary
William Liseter Austin (1852-1932) was an executive of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. He entered the company as a draftsman and designer in 1870 and served successively as chief designer, engineer, vice president, president (1910-1911) and chairman of the board (1911-1912). The six pocket notebooks were carried by Austin on separate trips between 1879 and 1892. The trips were undertaken to confer with representatives of Baldwin’s customer railroads concerning proposed designs or faulty performance of Baldwin locomotives. The first notebook covers a visit to the Reading, Pa., shops of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in 1879. It appears to represent a design conference for the new I-1 class freight locomotives that were delivered by Baldwin in the following year. These engines were constructed with the new wide firebox designed by the Reading’s John E. Wootten to burn fine waste anthracite. The notebook contains numerous sketches of components and required clearances. The second and third notebooks describe two extended tours in 1887, during which Austin conferred with numerous officials of customer railroads. The first of these took him as far as Denver, going by way of Chicago, St. Paul and Omaha and returning via St. Louis and Cincinnati. The second was a round trip to Atlanta. These books primarily list itineraries and appointments with little technical data. The next notebook records a trip to Brooklyn and New York in August 1888 concerning the deficiencies in a locomotive built for the Brooklyn, Bath and West End Railroad, as well as an export order for the Provincial Railways of Buenos Aires. Another notebook, with several sketches, records a conference in New York in 1889 concerning the deign of a locomotive for the New York Elevted Railroad. The last records a conference with officials of the Missouri Pacific Railway in St. Louis in March 1892.