Respectfully Yours
Homer Baldwin
With the preparation of this catalogue my part in the development and introduction of the high-speed engine seems to have ended.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Fall and Rise of the Southwark Foundry and Machine Company. Popular Appreciation of the High-speed Engine.
The reader may be amused by some examples which came to my knowledge of the achievements of the new management. The expensive new vice president was of course a mere figurehead, as he knew nothing of the engine or the business or my system of work, so Mr. Merrick’s superintendent had a free hand.
He adhered to his long pistons, and obtained silent running by an enormous compression of the exhaust steam, commencing soon after the middle of the return stroke and rising to initial. This involved a corresponding premature release of the steam during the expansion. Between the two, about one-third of the power of the engine was sacrificed, and they were in continual trouble from the failure of the engines to give their guaranteed power.
I had always advocated giving our attention as much as possible to large engines, where all the profit lay. My views had so much weight that, unknown to me, Mr. Merrick and his superintendent were, before I left, planning a smaller engine, to be called the “Southwark Engine,” intended to drive isolated incandescent lighting plants. As soon as I had been gotten rid of the manufacture of this engine proceeded actively. It was largely exhibited and advertised, much to the neglect of anything else. This was pursued persistently until over twenty thousand dollars had been sunk in it, when it was abandoned.
They had an order from the Pennsylvania Steel Company for an engine to drive a rolling mill which they were about to establish at Sparrow’s Point on the Chesapeake Bay below Baltimore, for the manufacture of steel rails from Cuban ores, which were found to be especially adapted to the Bessemer process, and where the then new method of rolling was to be employed, the method by which rails are rolled direct from the ingot without reheating, which is now in universal use. This engine was to be much larger than any previously made, and so requiring new drawings. In making the cylinder drawings the draftsman omitted the internal ribs, which are necessary to connect and stiffen the walls of the square steam chest. The consequence of this almost incredible oversight soon appeared. The engine had been running but a few days when the steam chest blew up.
The Porter-Allen valve-gear required in its joints eleven hardened steel bushings, which had to be finished inside and out. These we had always made from cast steel bars. This process was extremely wasteful of both material and time. Shortly before I left I had ascertained experimentally that I could import from England solid drawn steel tubing of any size and thickness, sufficiently high in carbon to harden perfectly well. The new management undertook to carry out my plans. For this purpose a list was prepared of all sizes that would be required, with the finished dimensions external and internal. From this another list was prepared, giving the additional material required for finishing. A large lot of the tubing was ordered. When it arrived they discovered they had sent the wrong list, the tubes were too thin to be finished and were useless for any purpose.