The Iron Horse Part 10

"That's a circular saw," replied Will Garvie; "one of the large ones,-- about four feet in diameter."

"A saw!" exclaimed Mrs Marrot, in surprise. "W'y, Will, it's round.

How can a round thing saw? An' it han't got no 'andle! How could any man lay 'old of it to saw?"

"The carpenter here don't require no handles," replied Will. "He's a queer fellow is the carpenter of this shop, as well as powerful. He works away from morning till night with the power of more than a hundred horses, an' does exactly what he's bid without ever making any mistakes or axin' any questions. He's a steam-carpenter, Missis, but indeed he's a jack-of-all-trades, and carries 'em on all at the same time. See, they're goin' to set him to work now--watch and you shall see."

As he spoke, two men approached the circular saw bearing a thick log of oak. One of them fitted it in position, on rollers, with its edge towards the saw; then he seized a handle, by means of which he connected the steam-carpenter with the saw, which instantly revolved so fast that the teeth became invisible; at the same time the plank advanced rapidly and met the saw. Instantly there was a loud hissing yet ringing sound, accompanied by a shower of sawdust, and, long before Mrs Marrot had recovered from her surprise, the log was cut into two thick substantial planks.

After two or three more had been cut up in this way in as many minutes, Will Garvie said--

"Now, let's see what they do with these planks. Come here."

He led them to a place close beside the saw, where there was a strong iron machine, to one part of which was attached a very large chisel--it might have been equal to two or three dozen of the largest ordinary chisels rolled into one. This machine was in motion, but apparently it had been made for a very useless purpose, for it was going vigorously up and down at the time cutting the atmosphere!

"It's like a lot of people as I knows of," observed Mrs Marrot, "very busy about nothin'."

"It'll have somethin' to do soon, mother," said Bob, who was already beginning to think himself very knowing.

Bob was right. One of the oak-planks had been measured and marked for mortice-holes in various ways according to pattern, and was now handed over to the guardian of the machine, who, having had it placed on rollers, pushed it under the chisel and touched a handle. Down came the implement, and cut into the solid wood as if it had been mere putty. A dozen cuts or so in one direction, then round it went--for this chisel could be turned with its face in either direction without stopping it for the purpose--another dozen cuts were made, and an oblong hole of three or four inches long by two broad and three deep was made in the plank in a few seconds.

Even Mrs Marrot had sufficient knowledge of the arts to perceive that this operation would have cost a human carpenter a very much greater amount of time and labour, and that therefore there must have been a considerable saving of expense. Had she been aware of the fact that hundreds of such planks were cut, marked, morticed, and turned out of hands every week all the year round, and every year continuously, she would have had a still more exalted conception of the saving of time, labour, and expense thus effected.

The guardian of the chisel having in a few minutes cut the requisite half dozen or so of holes, guided the plank on rollers towards a pile, where it was laid, to be afterwards carried off to the carriage-builders, who would fit it as one side of a carriage-frame to its appropriate fellow-planks, which had all been prepared in the same way.

Not far from this machine the visitors were shown another, in which several circular saws of smaller dimensions than the first were at work in concert, and laid at different angles to each other, so that when a plank was given into their clutches it received cuts and slices in certain parts during its pa.s.sage through the machine, and came out much modified and improved in form--all that the attendants had to do merely being to fit the planks in their places and guide them safely through the ordeal. Elsewhere Mrs Marrot and Bob beheld a frame--full of gigantic saws cut a large log into half a dozen planks, all in one sweep, in a few minutes--work which would have drawn the sweat from the brows of two saw-pit men for several hours. One thing that attracted the attention of Bob very strongly was the simple process of hole-boring. Of course, in forming the ma.s.sive frames of railway carriages, it becomes necessary to bore numerous holes for large nails or bolts. Often had Bob, at a neighbouring seaport, watched the heavy work and the slow progress of ship-carpenters as they pierced the planks of ships with augers; but here he beheld what he called, "augers and drills gone mad!"--augers small and great whirling furiously, or, as Bob put it, "like all possessed." Some acting singly, others acting together in rows of five or six; and these excited things were perpetually whirling, whether at work or not, ready for service at a moment's notice. While Bob was gazing at one huge drill--probably an inch and a half broad, if not more--a man came up to it with a plank, on the surface of which were several dots at various distances. He put the plank under the drill, brought it down on a dot, whizz went the drill, and straightway there was a huge round hole right through almost before Bob had time to wink,--and Bob was a practised hand at winking. Several holes were bored in this way, and then the plank was carried to another machine, where six lesser holes were drilled at one and the same time by six furious little augers; and thus the planks pa.s.sed on from one machine to another until finished, undergoing, in the course of a few minutes, treatment that would have cost them hours of torture had they been manipulated by human hands, in addition to which the work was most beautifully, and perfectly, and regularly done.

Many other operations did the visitors behold in this department--all more or less interesting and, to them, surprising--so that Mrs Marrot was induced at last to exclaim--

"W'y, Willum, it seems to me that if you go on improvin' things at this rate there won't be no use in a short time for 'uman 'ands at all.

We'll just 'ave to sit still an' let machinery do our work for us, an'

all the trades-people will be throwd out of employment."

"How can you say that, Missis," said Will Garvie, "you bein' old enough to remember the time w'en there wasn't five joiners' shops in Clatterby, with p'rhaps fifty men and boys employed, and now there's hundreds of joiners, and other shops of all kinds in the town, besides these here railway works which, as you know, keeps about 3500 hands goin' all the year round?"

"That's so, Willum," a.s.sented Mrs Marrot in a meditative tone.

Thus meditating, she was conducted into the smiths' department.

Here about 140 forges and 400 men were at work. Any one of these forges would have been a respectable "smiddy" in a country village. They stood as close to each other as the s.p.a.ce would allow,--so close that their showers of sparks intermingled, and kept the whole shed more or less in the condition of a chronic eruption of fireworks. To Bob's young mind it conveyed the idea of a perpetual keeping of the Queen's birthday. To his mother it was suggestive of singed garments and sudden loss of sight. The poor woman was much distressed in this department at first, but when she found, after five minutes or so, that her garments were unscathed, and her sight still unimpaired, she became reconciled to it.

In this place of busy vulcans--each of whom was the beau-ideal of "the village blacksmith," all the _smaller_ work of the railway was done. As a specimen of this smaller work, Will Garvie drew Mrs Marrot's attention to the fact that two vulcans were engaged in twisting red-hot iron bolts an inch and a half thick into the form of hooks with as much apparent ease as if they had been hair-pins. These, he said, were hooks for couplings, the hooks by which railway carriages were attached together, and on the strength and unyielding rigidity of which the lives of hundreds of travellers might depend.

The bending of them was accomplished by means of a powerful lever. It would be an endless business to detail all that was done in this workshop. Every piece of comparatively small iron-work used in the construction of railway engines, carriages, vans, and trucks, from a door-hinge to a coupling-chain, was forged in that smithy. Pa.s.sing onward, they came to a workshop where iron castings of all kinds were being made; cylinders, fire-boxes, etcetera,--and a savage-looking place it was, with numerous holes and pits of various shapes and depths in the black earthy floor, which were the moulds ready, or in preparation, for the reception of the molten metal. Still farther on they pa.s.sed through a workroom where every species of bra.s.s-work was being made. And here Bob Marrot was amazed to find that the workmen turned bra.s.s on turning-lathes with as much facility as if it had been wood. Some of the pieces of brazen mechanism were very beautiful and delicate-- especially one piece, a stop-c.o.c.k for letting water into a boiler, the various and complex parts of which, when contrasted with the huge workmanship of the other departments, resembled fine watch-work.

As they pa.s.sed on, Bob observed a particularly small boy, in whom he involuntarily took a great and sudden interest--he looked so small, so thin, so intelligent, and, withal, so busy.

"Ah, you may well look at him," said Will Garvie, observing Bob's gaze.

"That boy is one of the best workers of his age in the shop."

"What is 'e doin'?" inquired Bob.

"He's preparin' nuts for screws," replied Will, "and gets one penny for every hundred. Most boys can do from twelve to fourteen hundred a day, so, you see, they can earn from six to seven shillin's a week; but that little feller--they call him Tomt.i.t Dorkin--earns a good deal more, I believe, and he has much need to, for he has got an old granny to support. That's the work that you are soon to be set to, lad."

"Is it?" said Bob, quite pleased at the notion of being engaged in the same employment with Tomt.i.t; "I'm glad to 'ear it. You see, mother, when you gits to be old an' 'elpless, you'll not need to mind, 'cause _I'll_ support you."

The next place they visited was the great point of attraction to Bob.

It was the forge where the heavy work was done, and where the celebrated hammer and terrific pair of scissors performed their stupendous work.

At the time the visitors entered this department the various hammers chanced to be at rest, nevertheless even Mrs Marrot's comparatively ignorant mind was impressed by the colossal size and solidity of the iron engines that surrounded her. The roof of the shed in which they stood had been made unusually high in order to contain them.

"Well, I s'pose the big 'ammer that Bob says is as 'eavy as five carts of coals must be 'ereabouts?" observed Mrs Marrot looking round.

"Yes, there it is," said Will, pointing in front of him.

"W'ere? I don't see no 'ammer."

"Why there, that big thing just before you," he said, pointing to a machine of iron, shaped something like the letter V turned upside down, with its two limbs on the earth, its stem lost in the obscurity of the root and having a sort of tongue between the two limbs, which tongue was a great square block of solid iron, apparently about five feet high and about three feet broad and deep. This tongue, Will Garvie a.s.sured his companion, was the hammer.

"No, no, Willum," said Mrs Marrot, with a smile, "you mustn't expect me for to believe that. I _may_ believe that the moon is made of green cheese, but I won't believe that that's a 'ammer."

"No: but _is_ it, Bill?" asked Bob, whose eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement.

"Indeed it is; you shall see presently."

Several stalwart workmen, with bare brawny arms, who were lounging before the closed mouth of a furnace, regarded the visitors with some amus.e.m.e.nt. One of these came forward and said--

"You'd better stand a little way back, ma'am."

Mrs Marrot obediently retreated to a safe distance. Then the stalwart men threw open the furnace door. Mrs Marrot exclaimed, almost shrieked, with surprise at the intense light which gushed forth, casting even the modified daylight of the place into the shade. The proceedings of the stalwart men thereafter were in Mrs Marrot's eyes absolutely appalling--almost overpowering,--but Mrs M was tough both in mind and body. She stood her ground. Several of the men seized something inside the furnace with huge pincers, tongs, forceps--whatever you choose to call them--and drew partly out an immense rudely shaped bar or _log_ of glowing irons thicker than a man's thigh. At the same time a great chain was put underneath it, and a crane of huge proportions thereafter sustained the weight of the glowing metal. By means of this crane it was drawn out of the furnace and swung round until its glowing head or end came close to the tongue before mentioned. Then some of the stalwart men grasped several iron handles, which were affixed to the cool end of the bar, and prepared themselves to act. A signal was given to a man who had not hitherto been noticed, he was so small in comparison with the machine on which he stood--perhaps it would be better to say to which he stuck, because he was perched on a little platform about seven or eight feet from the ground, which was reached by an iron ladder, and looked down on the men who manipulated the iron bar below.

On receiving the signal, this man moved a small lever. It cost him no effort whatever, nevertheless it raised the iron tongue about six feet in the air, revealing the fact that it had been resting on another square block of iron embedded in the earth. This latter was the anvil.

On the anvil the end of the white-hot bar was immediately laid. Another signal was given, and down came the "five-carts-of-coals weight" with a thud that shook the very earth, caused the bar partially to flatten as if it had been a bit of putty, and sent a brilliant shower of sparks over the whole place. Mrs Marrot clapped both hands on her face, and capped the event with a scream. As for Bob, he fairly shouted with delight.

Blow after blow was given by this engine, and as each blow fell the stalwart men heaved on the iron handles and turned the bar this way and that way, until it was pounded nearly square. By this time Mrs Marrot had recovered so far as to separate her fingers a little, and venture to peep from behind that protecting screen. By degrees the unwieldy ma.s.s of misshapen metal was pounded into a cylindrical form, and Will Garvie informed his friends that this was the beginning of the driving-axle of a locomotive. Pointing to several of those which had been already forged, each having two enormous iron projections on it which were afterwards to become the cranks, he said--

"You'll see how these are finished, in another department."

But Mrs Marrot and Bob paid no attention to him. They were fascinated by the doings of the big hammer, and especially by the cool quiet way in which the man with the lever caused it to obey his will. When he moved the lever up or down a little, up or down went the hammer a little; when he moved it a good deal the hammer moved a good deal; when he was gentle, the hammer was gentle; when he gave a violent push, the hammer came down with a crash that shook the whole place. He could cause it to plunge like lightning to within a hair's-breadth of the anvil and check it instantaneously so that it should not touch. He could make it pat the red metal lovingly, or pound it with the violence of a fiend.

Indeed, so quick and sympathetic were all the movements of that steam-hammer that it seemed as though it were gifted with intelligence, and were nervously solicitous to act in prompt obedience to its master's will. There were eleven steam-hammers of various sizes in this building, with a staff of 175 men to attend to them, half of which staff worked during the day, and half during the night--besides seven smaller steam-hammers in the smiths' shops and other departments.

With difficulty Will Garvie tore his friends away from the big hammer; but he could not again chain their attention to anything else, until he came to the pair of scissors that cut iron. With this instrument Mrs Marrot at first expressed herself disappointed. It was not like a pair of scissors at all, she said, and in this she was correct, for the square clumsy-looking blunt-like ma.s.s of iron, about five feet high and broad, which composed a large portion of it, was indeed very unlike a pair of scissors.

"Why, mother," exclaimed Bob, "you didn't surely expect to see two large holes in it for a giant's thumb and fingers, did you?"

"Well, but," said Mrs Marrot, "it ain't got no blades that I can see."

"I'll let 'ee see 'em, Missis, in a minute," said a workman who came up at that moment with a plate of iron more than a quarter of an inch thick. "Turn it on, Johnny."