HOW NOT TO WIN OVER THE FERROEQUINOLOGISTS.

One of the statues the rage mob decided to paint all over was one in Philadelphia, of Matthias Baldwin.  Those old white guys, they all look alike, right?

Born in 1795, Baldwin moved to Philadelphia from New Jersey at the age of 16 and rose from an apprenticeship at a local jeweler to establish a successful business manufacturing train locomotives. Baldwin argued for the right of African Americans to vote in Pennsylvania during the state’s 1837 Constitutional Convention, and helped establish a school for African American children where he paid teachers’ salaries for years.

“He hired blacks in his shops when that was not the norm,” [park advocate Joe] Walsh said. “He was BLM [Black Lives Matter] before there was a slogan.”

There's a legend that antebellum Southern railroads would not buy Baldwin's locomotives, as a protest against his abolitionist views. I suspect that the fragmented railroad network of the era, plus the idiosyncratic Southern wide gauges, made it more convenient for master mechanics to build their power in their own shops, or buy them locally.

The statue has been scrubbed back to a state of good repair.

Baldwin had an uneven reputation as a locomotive builder into the late Steam Era, and their transition to building diesels was mostly false starts.

That said, they built some of the steamers pretty.

Boston and Maine 4106, Little John.  Enough oomph to move a hundred cars of paper products and potatoes south from Maine, and enough speed to keep a holiday-length East Wind or Bar Harbor on time, in preference to calling two Pacifics, and making a longer stop at Dover for water.