The Iron Horse, Robert Michael Ballantyne [good ebook reader .TXT] 📗

that little feller--they call him Tomtit Dorkin--earns a good deal more, I believe, and he has much need to, for he has got an old granny to support. That's the work that you are soon to be set to, lad."

"Is it?" said Bob, quite pleased at the notion of being engaged in the same employment with Tomtit; "I'm glad to 'ear it. You see, mother, when you gits to be old an' 'elpless, you'll not need to mind, 'cause _I'll_ support you."

The next place they visited was the great point of attraction to Bob. It was the forge where the heavy work was done, and where the celebrated hammer and terrific pair of scissors performed their stupendous work.

At the time the visitors entered this department the various hammers chanced to be at rest, nevertheless even Mrs Marrot's comparatively ignorant mind was impressed by the colossal size and solidity of the iron engines that surrounded her. The roof of the shed in which they stood had been made unusually high in order to contain them.

"Well, I s'pose the big 'ammer that Bob says is as 'eavy as five carts of coals must be 'ereabouts?" observed Mrs Marrot looking round.

"Yes, there it is," said Will, pointing in front of him.

"W'ere? I don't see no 'ammer."

"Why there, that big thing just before you," he said, pointing to a machine of iron, shaped something like the letter V turned upside down, with its two limbs on the earth, its stem lost in the obscurity of the root and having a sort of tongue between the two limbs, which tongue was a great square block of solid iron, apparently about five feet high and about three feet broad and deep. This tongue, Will Garvie assured his companion, was the hammer.

"No, no, Willum," said Mrs Marrot, with a smile, "you mustn't expect me for to believe that. I _may_ believe that the moon is made of green cheese, but I won't believe that that's a 'ammer."

"No: but _is_ it, Bill?" asked Bob, whose eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement.

"Indeed it is; you shall see presently."

Several stalwart workmen, with bare brawny arms, who were lounging before the closed mouth of a furnace, regarded the visitors with some amusement. One of these came forward and said--

"You'd better stand a little way back, ma'am."

Mrs Marrot obediently retreated to a safe distance. Then the stalwart men threw open the furnace door. Mrs Marrot exclaimed, almost shrieked, with surprise at the intense light which gushed forth, casting even the modified daylight of the place into the shade. The proceedings of the stalwart men thereafter were in Mrs Marrot's eyes absolutely appalling--almost overpowering,--but Mrs M was tough both in mind and body. She stood her ground. Several of the men seized something inside the furnace with huge pincers, tongs, forceps--whatever you choose to call them--and drew partly out an immense rudely shaped bar or _log_ of glowing irons thicker than a man's thigh. At the same time a great chain was put underneath it, and a crane of huge proportions thereafter sustained the weight of the glowing metal. By means of this crane it was drawn out of the furnace and swung round until its glowing head or end came close to the tongue before mentioned. Then some of the stalwart men grasped several iron handles, which were affixed to the cool end of the bar, and prepared themselves to act. A signal was given to a man who had not hitherto been noticed, he was so small in comparison with the machine on which he stood--perhaps it would be better to say to which he stuck, because he was perched on a little platform about seven or eight feet from the ground, which was reached by an iron ladder, and looked down on the men who manipulated the iron bar below.

On receiving the signal, this man moved a small lever. It cost him no effort whatever, nevertheless it raised the iron tongue about six feet in the air, revealing the fact that it had been resting on another square block of iron embedded in the earth. This latter was the anvil. On the anvil the end of the white-hot bar was immediately laid. Another signal was given, and down came the "five-carts-of-coals weight" with a thud that shook the very earth, caused the bar partially to flatten as if it had been a bit of putty, and sent a brilliant shower of sparks over the whole place. Mrs Marrot clapped both hands on her face, and capped the event with a scream. As for Bob, he fairly shouted with delight.

Blow after blow was given by this engine, and as each blow fell the stalwart men heaved on the iron handles and turned the bar this way and that way, until it was pounded nearly square. By this time Mrs Marrot had recovered so far as to separate her fingers a little, and venture to peep from behind that protecting screen. By degrees the unwieldy mass of misshapen metal was pounded into a cylindrical form, and Will Garvie informed his friends that this was the beginning of the driving-axle of a locomotive. Pointing to several of those which had been already forged, each having two enormous iron projections on it which were afterwards to become the cranks, he said--

"You'll see how these are finished, in another department."

But Mrs Marrot and Bob paid no attention to him. They were fascinated by the doings of the big hammer, and especially by the cool quiet way in which the man with the lever caused it to obey his will. When he moved the lever up or down a little, up or down went the hammer a little; when he moved it a good deal the hammer moved a good deal; when he was gentle, the hammer was gentle; when he gave a violent push, the hammer came down with a crash that shook the whole place. He could cause it to plunge like lightning to within a hair's-breadth of the anvil and check it instantaneously so that it should not touch. He could make it pat the red metal lovingly, or pound it with the violence of a fiend. Indeed, so quick and sympathetic were all the movements of that steam-hammer that it seemed as though it were gifted with intelligence, and were nervously solicitous to act in prompt obedience to its master's will. There were eleven steam-hammers of various sizes in this building, with a staff of 175 men to attend to them, half of which staff worked during the day, and half during the night--besides seven smaller steam-hammers in the smiths' shops and other departments.

With difficulty Will Garvie tore his friends away from the big hammer; but he could not again chain their attention to anything else, until he came to the pair of scissors that cut iron. With this instrument Mrs Marrot at first expressed herself disappointed. It was not like a pair of scissors at all, she said, and in this she was correct, for the square clumsy-looking blunt-like mass of iron, about five feet high and broad, which composed a large portion of it, was indeed very unlike a pair of scissors.

"Why, mother," exclaimed Bob, "you didn't surely expect to see two large holes in it for a giant's thumb and fingers, did you?"

"Well, but," said Mrs Marrot, "it ain't got no blades that I can see."

"I'll let 'ee see 'em, Missis, in a minute," said a workman who came up at that moment with a plate of iron more than a quarter of an inch thick. "Turn it on, Johnny."

A small boy turned on the steam, the machine moved, and Will Garvie pointed out to Mrs Marrot the fact that two sharp edges of steel in a certain part of it crossed each other exactly in the manner of a pair of scissors.

"Well," remarked Mrs M, after contemplating it for some time, "it don't look very like scissors, but I'm free to confess that them two bits of iron _do_ act much in the same way."

"And with the same result, Missus," observed the machine-man, putting the plate between the clippers, which, closing quietly, snipped off about a foot of iron as if it had been paper. There was, however, a crunching sound which indicated great power, and drew from Mrs Marrot an exclamation of surprise not altogether unmingled with alarm.

The man then seized a bit of iron about as thick as his own wrist--full an inch and a half in diameter--which the scissors cut up into lengths of eighteen inches or so as easily as if it had been a bar of lead or wood.

"Didn't I say it could cut through the poker, mother?" cried Bob with a look of triumph.

"The poker, boy! it could cut poker, tongs, shovel, and fender, all at once!" replied Mrs Marrot--"well, I never! can it do anything else?"

In reply to this the man took up several pieces of hard steel, which it snipped through as easily as it had cut the iron.

But if Mrs Marrot's surprise at the scissors was great, not less great was it at the punching machine, which punched little buttons the size of a sixpence out of cold iron full half-an-inch thick. This vicious implement not only punched holes all round boiler-plates so as to permit of their being riveted together, but it cut patterns out of thick iron plates by punching rows of such holes so close to each other that they formed one long cutting, straight or crooked, as might be required. In short, the punching machine acted the part of a saw, and cut the iron plates in any shape that was desired. Here also they saw the testing of engine springs--those springs which to most people appear to have no spring in them whatever--so very powerful are they. One of these was laid on an iron table, with its two ends resting against an iron plate. A man approached and measured it exactly. Then a hydraulic ram was applied; and there was something quite impressive in the easy quiet way, in which the ram shoved a spring, which the weight of a locomotive can scarcely affect, _quite_ _flat_ against the iron plate, and held it there a moment or two! Being released, the spring resumed its proper form. It was then re-measured; found not to have expanded a hair's-breadth, and, therefore,--as Will Garvie took care to explain,-- was passed as a sound well-tempered spring; whereat Bob remarked that it would need to be a good-tempered spring, to suffer such treatment without grumbling.

It seemed to Mrs Marrot now as if her capacity for surprise had reached its limit; but she little knew the wealth of capacity for creating surprise that lay in these amazing "works" of the Grand National Trunk Railway.

The next place she was ushered into was a vast apartment where iron in every shape, size, and form was being planed and turned and cut. The ceiling of the building, or rather the place where a ceiling ought in ordinary circumstances to have been, was alive with moving bands and whirling wheels. The first thing she was called on to contemplate was the turning of the tyre or rim of one of the driving-wheels of a locomotive. Often had Mrs Marrot heard her husband talk of tyres and driving-wheels, and many