Close to the entrance of the Locomotive Department stands, as its _primum mobile_, the tall chimney of a steam-pump, which, besides supplying the engine that propels the machinery of the workshops, gives an abundance of water to the locomotives at the station, as also to the new railway town of Crewe, containing at present about 8000 inhabitants. This pump lifts about eighty or ninety thousand gallons of water per day from a brook below into filtering-beds, whence it is again raised about forty feet into a large cistern, where it is a second time filtered through charcoal for the supply of the town. On entering the great gate of the department, the office of which is up a small staircase on the left hand, the first object of attention is the great engine-stable into which the hot dusty locomotives are conducted after their journeys to be cleaned, examined, repaired, or, if sound, to be greased and otherwise prepared for their departure--the last operation being to get up their steam, which is here effected by coal, instead of coke, in about two hours. After passing through a workshop containing thirty-four planing and slotting machines in busy but almost silent operation, we entered a smith’s shop, 260 feet long, containing forty forges all at work. At several of the anvils there were three and sometimes four strikers, and the quantity of sparks that more or less were exploding from each,--the number of sledge-hammers revolving in the air, with the sinewy frames, bare throats and arms of the fine pale men who wielded them, formed altogether a scene well worthy of a few moments’ contemplation. As the heavy work of the department is principally executed in this shop, in which iron is first enlisted and then rather roughly drilled into the service of the Company, it might be conceived that the music of the forty anvils at work would altogether be rather noisy in concert. The grave itself, however, could scarcely be more silent than this workshop, in comparison with the one that adjoins it, in which the boilers of the locomotives are constructed. As for asking questions of or receiving explanations from the guide, who with motionless lips conducts the stranger through this chamber, such an effort would be utterly hopeless, for the deafening noise proceeding from the riveting of the bolts and plates of so many boilers is distracting beyond description. We almost fancied that the workmen must be aware of this effect upon a stranger, and that on seeing us enter they therefore welcomed our visit by a charivari sufficient to awaken the dead. As we hurried through the din, we could not, however, help pausing for a moment before a boiler of copper inside and iron outside, within which there sat crouched up--like a negro between the decks of a slave-ship--an intelligent-looking workman holding with both hands a hammer against a bolt, on the upper end of which, within a few inches of his ears,