Eddystone Arsenal was a

Baldwin Locomotive Works The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...

subsidiary located in

Eddystone, Pennsylvania Eddystone is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The population was 2,410 at the 2010 census. History The area at the mouth of Ridley Creek was first called "Tequirassy" by Native Americans. The land was owned by Olof Persson Stille, ...

that produced military hardware for the

Allies of World War I The Allies of World War I, Entente Powers, or Allied Powers were a coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Em ...

. As orders from combatants exceeded the production capacity of Baldwin's

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

factory, new manufacturing facilities were built in

. When the first world war ended, this manufacturing complex was used for

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

manufacturing as Baldwin's Eddystone Plant. Eddystone PA factory

Wartime locomotive orders

Baldwin received locomotive orders from

Imperial Russia The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, and the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a sovereign state in the British Isles that existed between 1801 and 1922, when it included all of Ireland. It was established by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Great B ...

as those nations' manufacturing facilities were refocused on armaments production. Baldwin's vice president

Samuel M. Vauclain Samuel Matthews Vauclain (May 18, 1856 – February 4, 1940) was an American engineer, inventor of the Vauclain compound locomotive, and president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

visited Russia in 1914 to obtain orders for thirty 0-6-6-0

Mallet locomotive The Mallet locomotive is a type of articulated steam railway locomotive, invented by the Swiss engineer Anatole Mallet (1837–1919). The front of the locomotive articulated on a bogie. The compound steam system fed steam at boiler pressure ...

s for the

3 ft 6 in gauge railways 3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societie ...

between

Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk (, ; rus, Арха́нгельск, p=ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲsk), also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies o ...

and

Vologda Vologda ( rus, Вологда, p=ˈvoləɡdə) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the river Vologda (river), Vologda within the watershed of the Northern Dvina. ...

. This was followed by orders for

2-10-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-10-0 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, ten powered and coupled driving wheels on five axles, and no trailing wheels. This arrangement was of ...

Russian gauge Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

locomotives and 75 cm gauge gasoline locomotives for Russian

trench railways Trench railways represented military adaptation of early 20th-century railway technology to the problem of keeping soldiers supplied during the static trench warfare phase of World War I. The large concentrations of soldiers and artillery at the ...

. France ordered more than one-thousand trench railway locomotives, and the United Kingdom ordered 495 trench railway locomotives and 465 locomotives for

standard-gauge railway A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

Eddystone Ammunition Corporation

France and the United Kingdom then placed orders with Baldwin for artillery shells of calibers from to . Although Baldwin's Philadelphia plant was enlarged to include a 4-story extension to the truck shop and a new 8-story building, completion of ammunition orders required construction of new manufacturing facilities at Eddystone, where Baldwin had been operating a shop since 1905. Baldwin formed the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation on 10 June 1915 to manufacture 2,500,000

shrapnel shell Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almo ...

s of Russian design. The Eddystone Ammunition plant adjacent to the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...

was operational by November 1915 including a modern wharf along the river front. This plant was the source of the

Eddystone explosion On April 10, 1917, four days after the United States declared war on Germany, an explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation's artillery shell plant in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, killed 139 people. The majority were women and girls who worke ...

which killed 133 people on 10 April 1917. Another Baldwin subsidiary, the Eddystone Munitions Company, was organized on 27 September 1917 to manufacture shrapnel for the United States government. Total production was 6,565,355 artillery shells before the plant was converted to locomotive shops in 1919.

Eddystone Rifle Plant

On 30 April 1915 the United Kingdom placed a contract with

Remington Arms Remington Arms Company, LLC was an American manufacturer of firearms and ammunition, now broken into two companies, each bearing the Remington name. The firearms manufacturer is ''Remington Arms''. The ammunition business is called ''Remingto ...

for 1,500,000

Pattern 1914 Enfield The Rifle, .303 Pattern 1914 (or P14) was a British service rifle of the First World War period. A bolt action weapon with an integral 5-round magazine, it was principally contract manufactured by companies in the United States. It served as a ...

rifles. When Remington subcontracted the bulk of this order to Baldwin, Baldwin built a rifle plant at Eddystone, the largest factory in the United States during World War I. This Eddystone Rifle Plant began production on 31 December 1915 with 10,000 machines powered by of belting from of

line shaft A line shaft is a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission that was used extensively from the Industrial Revolution until the early 20th century. Prior to the widespread use of electric motors small enough to be connected directly to e ...

s. The rifle plant employed 15,294 workers, with women accounting for 20 percent of the peak work force, manufacturing up to 6,000 rifles per day. Rifle plant operations ceased on 11 January 1919 after producing 1,959,954 rifles with spare parts equivalent to 200,000 more rifles. Contract changes resulted in most rifles being completed to the modified

M1917 Enfield The M1917 Enfield, the "American Enfield", formally named "United States Rifle, cal .30, Model of 1917" is an American modification and production of the .303-inch (7.7 mm) Pattern 1914 Enfield (P14) rifle (listed in British Service as Rifle No. ...

design, which was carried by nearly two-thirds of the

American Expeditionary Forces The American Expeditionary Forces (A. E. F.) was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I. The A. E. F. was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of General John J. Pershing. It fought alon ...

Sources

{{reflist 1915 establishments in Pennsylvania Ammunition manufacturers Companies based in Delaware County, Pennsylvania Firearm manufacturers of the United States Defunct manufacturing companies based in Pennsylvania