Crewe.

We have now reached the most important station on the London and North-Western Railway; indeed the works here are on a scale which strikingly exemplifies the magnitude of the arrangements necessary for the maintenance of an arterial railway.

The Company’s workshops at Crewe consist of a Locomotive and of a Coach department. In the manufactories of the former are constructed as well as repaired the whole of the engines and tenders required for the Northern Division, namely, from Birmingham to Liverpool; Rugby to Stafford; Crewe to Holyhead; Liverpool to Manchester; Liverpool, Manchester, and Warrington to Preston; Preston to Carlisle. The establishment also “works,” as it is termed, the Lancaster and Carlisle and Chester and Holyhead Lines. The total number of miles is at present 360, but the distance of course increases with the completion of every new branch line. In this division there are 220 engines and tenders (each averaging in value nearly 2000l.), of which at least 100 are at work every day. Besides repairing all these, the establishment has turned out a new engine and tender on every Monday morning since the 1st of January, 1848. The number of workmen employed in the above department is 1600, their wages averaging 3800l. a fortnight. The accounts of these expenses, as also a book of “casualties,” in which every accident to, as well as every delay of, a train is reported, are examined once a fortnight by a special committee of directors.

Without attempting to detail the various establishments, we will briefly describe a few of their most interesting features.

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, two lusty comrades on the outside were hammering with surprising strength and quickness. 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.

The adjoining shop contains a brass and also an iron foundry, in which were at work seven brass-moulders and five iron-moulders. In the corner of this room we stood for a few moments looking over the head and shoulders of a fine little boy who was practically exemplifying the properties of the most wonderful of the mineral productions of nature—the loadstone. Among the mass brought into this workshop to be recast are occasionally a quantity of brass shavings and other sweepings, among which there is a small proportion of iron filings, &c. The little boy’s occupation consisted in constantly stirring up the mass or mess before him with a magnet, which, as often as it came out bristling with resplendent particles of iron of various sizes, he swept clean, and then continued his work until the investigator came out of the heap as clear of iron as it went in.

Close to this shop is one in which the models and patterns of the castings are constructed. From a spacious open yard covered with stacks of old scrap-iron, much of which was of the size of common buttons, a door opens into a large shop containing twelve forges solely used for the construction of engine-wheels, which are forced on as well as off their axles by an ingenious machine of extraordinary power. Adjoining the open yard we saw in operation Nasmyth’s great steam-hammer, on the summit of which there sat perched up a man who could regulate its blow from say twenty-five tons to a little tap sufficient only to drive a common-sized nail. As soon as the furnace-door on one side of this hammer was opened, a large lump of scrap-iron at a white heat was lifted and then conducted by a crane on to the anvil beneath. At the same moment from an opposite furnace a long iron bar, heated only at one extremity, was by a gentle blow of the hammer no sooner welded to the mass than the head smith, using it as a handle, turned and re-turned the lump on the anvil so as to enable the steam-hammer to weld its contents into proper form. Of course there has been selected for this extremely heavy work the strongest man that could be obtained. He is of about the height and bulk of the celebrated Italian singer Signor Lablache, with apparently the strength of Hercules, or rather of Vulcan himself—and certainly nothing could be a finer display of muscular power than the various attitudes which this heavy man assumed, as, regardless of the sparks which flew at him, or of the white heat of the lump of iron he was forging, he turned it on one side and then on the other, until at a given signal a small smith in attendance placed a sort of heavy chisel on the iron handle, which by a single blow of the steam-hammer was at once severed from it, in order that it might be piled away and another mass lifted from the fiery furnace to the anvil.

Close to this Cyclopean scene there is a shop solely for turning wheels and axles, which, brought here rough from the smiths’ forges we have described, never leave this place until they are ready to go under the engine for which they have been made.

After passing through a grinding-shop and a coppersmith’s shop, which we must leave without comment, we entered a most important and interesting workshop, 330 feet in length, by 60 feet in breadth, termed the “fitting-shop,” because the work brought here in various states is all finally finished and fitted for its object. Besides 11 planing-machines, 36 shaping and slotting machines, and 30 turning-lathes, all working by steam-power, we observed, running nearly the whole length of the building, five sets of tables, at which were busily employed in filing, rasping, hammering, &c., eight rows of “vice-men,” only so called because they work at vices. The whole of the artificers in this room are of the best description, and the importance of their duties cannot perhaps be more briefly illustrated than by the simple fact that, besides all the requisite repairs of 200 locomotive engines, they were employed in finishing the innumerable details of 30 new ones in progress. Some were solely engaged in converting bolts into screws; some in fitting nuts; some in constructing brass whistles; in short, in this division of labour almost every “vice man” was employed in finishing some limb, joint, or other component part of a locomotive engine destined to draw trains either of goods or passengers.

After visiting a large store-room, in which all things appertaining to engines, sorted and piled in innumerable compartments, are guarded by a storekeeper, who registers in a book each item that he receives and delivers, we will now introduce our readers to the climax of the establishment, commonly called “the Erecting-shop.” Hitherto we have been occupied in following in tedious detail from the foundry to the forge, and from the anvil to the vice, the various items, such as plates, rivets, bolts, nuts, rings, stays, tubes, ferrules, steam-pipes, exhausting-pipes, chimney-pipes, safety-valves, life-guards, axle-boxes, pistons, cylinders, connecting-rods, splashers, leading and trailing wheels, &c., amounting in number to 5416 pieces, of which a locomotive engine is composed. We have at last, however, reached that portion of the establishment in which all those joints, limbs, and boilers, which have been separately forged, shaped, and finished in different localities, are assembled together for the consummation of the especial object for which, with so much labour and at so great an expense, they have been prepared: indeed, nothing, we believe, can be more true than Mr. Robert Stevenson’s well-known maxim—“A locomotive engine must be put together as carefully as a watch!”

The Erecting-shop at Crewe is a room 300 feet long by 100 feet broad, containing five sets of rails, upon three of which are erected the new engines and tenders—the other two being usually occupied by those under heavy repair. The number of artificers we found employed was 220. In this magnificent building we saw in progress of erection 20 passenger-engines, also 10 luggage-engines; and as this shop has (as we have before stated) turned out a locomotive engine and tender complete on every Monday morning for very nearly a year, and is continuing to supply them at the same rate, we had before us in review locomotive engines in almost every stage of progress; and when we reflected on the innumerable benefits, and even blessings, which resulted to mankind from their power, it was most pleasing to be enabled at one view to see—as it were in rehearsal behind the scenes—performers who were so shortly to appear upon the stage of life.

At the further 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 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 deal-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. On one of the furthest rails, among a number of engines that were undergoing serious operations, we observed “The Colonel,” which, by going off the rails at Newton Bridge, caused the death of General Baird.

Coach Department.

As our readers will no doubt feel some little selfish interest in the construction of the railway-carriages in which they travel, we shall conclude our rapid survey of the Company’s workshops at Crewe by a short inspection of the coach establishment. This department constructs and maintains for the traffic on 393 miles of rails all the requisite passenger-carriages, luggage-vans, travelling post-offices and tenders, parcel-vans and parcel-carts, milk-trucks (principally to supply Liverpool), and break-waggons.

At the Company’s “Waggon Department” at Manchester are constructed and maintained all the requisite goods-waggons, horse-boxes, coke-waggons, carriage-trucks for private carriages, cattle-waggons and timber-trucks.

The total number of carriages of all descriptions maintained at Crewe amounts to 670, of which about 100 at a time are usually in hospital. There are generally from 30 to 40 new carriages in progress: the number of workmen employed was 260. The establishment is divided into one set of workshops for the construction, and another for the repair of carriages.

1. In a large shop, 300 feet in length, warmed by steam, at night lighted by gas, and by day from lofty windows on each side, there is throughout the whole length of the building a wooden pavement containing eight sets of rails, upon which we beheld, like hackney-coaches on their stands, a variety of carriages in various stages of construction and of alteration, each surrounded by several intelligent artificers, who, instead of throwing away their time in dancing round a tree of liberty, to the tune, or, as it is poetically termed by M. Lamartine, “the dogma” of liberty, fraternity, and equality, were sedulously occupied in framing different sorts of carriages to suit the various gradations of human society. For instance, one set, with beautiful colours, were painting the outside of a “first class;” while their comrades within were padding it, and petting it, and stuffing it, as if its object were to fit every bend and hollow in the human frame. Another set were strongly varnishing the wooden oak-painted interior of a “second-class,” whose exterior had evidently received considerable attention; while another gang were “finishing off” a covered “third-class,” whose inside certainly appeared not only very hard, but what old nurses term “terribly troubled with wind.”

In another quarter a set of workmen were economically converting an old first-class into a second-class—the transmutation being effected by taking out the lining, and then converting large, fashionable, oval windows into little vulgar square ones. But though comfort, like cheese, bacon, or any other description of merchandise, was thus doled out to each class of passengers according to the amount of it which they may desire to purchase, the materials of all the carriages appeared to be of good sound quality. The panels of first, second, and third-class carriages, as well as those even of luggage-vans, are invariably made of mahogany; “the bottom-sides” of English oak; the rest of the framing of ash. The break-blocks are made of willow, and usually last about ten weeks’ work. Adjoining this congregation of carriages is a smith’s shop, containing twenty-eight forges and a tire-oven; above which we found a large store-room filled with lace-trimming, horse-hair, superfine cloth, varnished oil-cloth, nails, rugs, and, among a variety of other requirements, plateglass for windows. We observed that those for the front glasses of coupés—in order to enable them to resist the occasional pelting of hot cinders from the engine—were half an inch thick! There was also, in an adjoining store, a collection of old cushions, mercilessly indented and worn out by some description of dull heavy pressure.

2. The hospital of the Coach Department at Crewe is an enormous shed, 600 feet long by 180 broad. It is capable of holding 90 carriages, with ample room for working around them, but only 80 were under repair. Among them we observed several flying post-offices and tenders bearing the Royal arms. Adjoining is a large smith’s shop, also a spacious yard containing a heavy stock of timber piled under sheds, with an office for recording the daily amount received and delivered. On entering “the Grease house,” which, contrary to expectation, we found to be as clean as a dairy, we perceived, standing against the walls, three huge casks of Russia tallow, a quantity of yellow palm-oil, several boxes of soda, and a water-cock. On the opposite side there was a small steam-boiler for heating two open cauldrons and two wooden cooling-vats. This apparatus is constructed for the fabrication of that yellow mixture which our readers have seen bestowed so generously to the axles of the carriages of every train. We had often in vain endeavoured to ascertain its composition, which, from the grease-master, the highest possible authority on the subject, we at last discovered to be as follows:—

Besides heating the two cauldrons we have mentioned, large iron pipes pass from the steam-boiler to the immediate vicinity of two casks, each containing one ton of sperm-oil, which is thus kept constantly fluid, instead of crystallizing, as it is prone to do, during cold weather.

CHAPTER XII.