The noise which reverberated within this boiler, in addition to that which was resounding without, formed altogether a dose which it is astonishing the tympanum of the human ear can receive uninjured; at all events we could not help thinking that if there should happen to exist on earth any man ungallant enough to complain of the occasional admonition of a female tongue, if he will only go by rail to Crewe, and sit in that boiler for half-an-hour, he will most surely never again complain of the chirping of that ‘cricket on his hearth,’ the whispering curtain lectures of his _dulce domum_.” It is impossible to follow and narrate, in a work of this description, all the details of manufacture by which the rough masses of iron, steel, copper, and brass become converted into the perfect locomotive. We therefore close these extracts from Sir Francis’ pleasant book, by what he says of the erecting-shop at Crewe, it being remembered that production being now more than double what it was in 1849, the delivery of an engine every three days is its usual amount, and sixteen or eighteen times a-year there is an interval of only two working days between the births of two engines:— “At the farther end of the line of rails close to the north wall, there appeared a long, low, tortuous mass of black iron-work, without superstructure or wheels, in which the form of an engine-bed in embryo could but very faintly be traced. A little nearer was a similar mass, in which the outline appeared, from some cause or other, to be more distinctly marked; nearer still, the same outline appeared upon wheels. To the next there had been added a boiler and a fire-box, without dome, steam escape, or funnel-pipe. Nearer still, the locomotive engine, in its naked state, appeared in point of form complete, and workmen were here busily engaged in covering the boiler with a garment about half an-inch thick of hair-felt, upon which others were affixing a covering of inch deep plank, over which was to be tightly bound a tarpaulin, the whole to be secured by iron hoops. In the next case the dome of the engine was undergoing a similar toilette, excepting that, instead of a wooden upper garment, it was receiving one of copper. Lastly (it was on a Saturday that we chanced to visit the establishment), there stood, at the head of this list of recruits, a splendid bran-new locomotive engine, completely finished, painted bright green (the varnish was scarcely dry), and in every respect perfectly ready to be delivered over on Monday morning to run its gigantic course. On other rails within the building were tenders in similar states of progress; and, as the eye rapidly glanced down these iron rails, the finished engine and tender immediately before it seemed gradually and almost imperceptibly to dissolve in proportion to its distance, until nothing was left of each but an indistinct and almost unintelligible dreamy vision of black iron-work.”