Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
other; but in a quiet corner of one of the sheds you will find a boy
with a heap of these filings before him, separating the brass from the
iron by means of a magnet. Only imagine a boy of fourteen or fifteen
doing nothing all day long except raking a magnet through a heap of
black and yellow dust, and brushing into a separate heap the iron
filings off his magnet! You will also see a series of three iron rollers
working on each other, by means of which plate iron can be twisted into
any given form; a mighty "punch" which will make a hole an inch in
diameter through iron an inch in thickness as easily as though it were
clay; and a sharp-cutting instrument that shears through sheets of iron
as easily as a pair of scissors through a sheet of paper.
Go into another shed, and you will see all these various parts getting
their last touches from the hand, and being fitted into each other; and
here, also you find two or three men engraving, on circular segments of
brass, the names the various engines are to be known by. In another shed
the engines are being "erected." Here you see from twenty to thirty in
all stages of progress. Perhaps the framework only has been laid; or
the boiler, with its many rows of long, circular brass tubes, has just
been fastened, and is now receiving its outer clothing of long slips of
wood; or the whole is complete, merely wanting to be tried on the many
lines of rail in and around the sheds. There are two classes of engines
here, whose difference is observable at a glance: some have six wheels,
two of which are very large, about six feet in diameter, and the other
four much smaller. The two first only are driven by the machinery, the
others being merely what are called "bearing wheels." With this
description of engine more speed than power is obtained, and hence it is
used for passenger trains, where a high velocity is required, and where
there is usually little weight, comparatively speaking, to draw. The
others have only four wheels, not so large as the two just described,
but all driven by the machinery. Such engines I are more remarkable for
power than speed, and accordingly they are used for luggage trains. In
another shed, "The Hospital," will be found a number of engines laboring
under various disorders, sent here to be repaired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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