Traveling with his father from time to time, he had good opportunities for meeting many distinguished engineers and of visiting the great iron works, the most famous of which was the Carron Iron Works. “The Carron Iron Works,” he writes, “are classic ground to engineers. They are associated with the memory of Roebuck, Watt, and Miller of Dalswinton. For there, Roebuck and Watt began the first working steam engine; Miller applied the steam engine to the purposes of navigation, and invented the Carronade gun. The works existed at an early period in the history of British iron manufacture. Much of the machinery continued to be of wood. Although effective in a general way it was monstrously cumbrous. It gave the idea of vast power and capability of resistance, while it was far from being so in reality. It was, however, truly imposing and impressive in its effect upon strangers. When seen partially lit up by the glowing masses of white-hot iron, with only the rays of bright sunshine gleaming through the holes in the roof, and the dark, black, smoky vaults in which the cumbrous machinery was heard rumbling away in the distance--while the moving parts were dimly seen through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping steam and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about with masses of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron--it made a powerful impression upon the mind.”[87] [87] _Ibid._, p. 109. By the time he was seventeen Nasmyth had become a skilled model maker. While he was still attending lectures in the Edinburgh School of Arts and in the University, he had built up quite a brisk business in engine models, for which he charged £10 each. He made his brass castings in his own bedroom at night, arranging a furnace in his grate. He had a secret box of moulding sand and rammed his patterns gently so as not to awaken his father who slept below. In the morning the room would be all clean and gave no indication that it was serving for a foundry as well as a bedroom, and by some miracle he managed to complete his practical education without burning down the house. In 1827, when he was nineteen, he built a steam road carriage which ran about the streets of Edinburgh for many months, but the condition of the Scotch roads was such as to make a machine of this kind almost useless. When he went to London he broke it up, and sold the engine and boiler for £67.