Great Britain -- Description and travel; Railroad travel -- Great Britain; Railroads -- Great Britain
The forges, which are very numerous, occupy the first department of another
side of the range of buildings. The forges, as is now usual, are supplied
with air by the motion of a fan worked by the engine, and by the side of them
many strong and stalwart arms are wielded with as much skill and ingenuity as
distinguished some of the smiths of the middle ages. The Mechanical
Engineering shops join the forges, and in them will be found many of those
beautiful self-acting tools for which this age is so remarkable. There are
drilling, planing, screwing, and slotting machines of various designs and
adapted to different purposes, as well as numerous expensive and very perfect
lathes. Here the switches used for conducting trains from one line to
another are made, as well as all kinds of machine work. Connected with this
is the Turntable shop, which is, to a stranger, as interesting as any part of
the establishment, from the magnitude of the machinery and the ease with
which gigantic masses of iron are carried about by the traveller to and from
the planing and other machines. The Wheel shop, which is next visited, is
chiefly used for the manufacture of railway carriage wheels, of which, as
must be well known, there are many varieties. The Foundry and Anchor
manufactory must not be omitted in an enumeration of the departments.
The other two sides of the quadrangle are occupied by saw-pits, painters'
shops, stores, offices, and all the conveniences required for carrying on a
business which frequently gives employment to eleven or twelve hundred men.
The reputation of Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., has been long established
among engineers for the construction of railway bridges, iron roofs, and
works of a similar kind; but it has been made European, if not universal, by
the rapidity and skill with which they have constructed the Industrial
Exhibition.
Strangers, if introduced, are permitted to see the works.
Besides the manufactures we have enumerated and described, there are many
others of more or less importance; and new inventions and the spur of
enterprise are creating new manufactures in Birmingham every day.
There are manufacturers of steam-engines and other machinery, of stoves,
grates, and other iron foundry. One firm (Messrs. Hardman Iliffe) employs a
great number of workmen in making every kind of church furniture, from the
most approved mediaeval models and the designs of Mr. Pugin. Another executes
stained-glass windows. Saddlery and harness, or parts of saddles and whips,
employ a certain number of hands; and not only imitation but a good deal of
real jewellery is made. There is one large and curious manufactory of gold
chains.
In a word, there is no town in the world in which the execution of work,
however new or complex, in metal, wood, horn, or ivory, can be so certainly
effected as in Birmingham.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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