Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/302

8, 1859.] shining, steel teeth, tearing away at the rough iron, and leaving a perfectly true, smooth surface behind their track. As the machine cannot plane more than one superficial foot per hour, we will leave the remorseless teeth eating into the solid metal, growling over their meal like some hungry angry beast, and turn to another casting which, having been through this operation, is now laid down to undergo further tortures. To hold all the several parts of the iron-work together, it is necessary to use bolts and nuts; and here the drilling-machine is at work, boring the holes required. We suppose our casting planed and drilled, and follow it once more out of the shop,—still carried on the useful rails to the gauntry,—the traveller of which lifts it to its proper position, while the “erectors” are busy bolting together the finished pieces as they arrive. All day, and every day—nay, until lately, by night as well—this work was going on. Out of the smoke of Staffordshire, castings, almost daily arriving, and being unshipped from the barges, do not lie long in the yard. A constant stream of these pieces is pouring through the fitting-shop. All day long the shining teeth gnaw and growl savagely over their prey; all day the active drills eat their way into the metal, like some new kind of “teredo;” and ever there comes the finished work, true, from the machines. But we must leave the fitting-shop, though there is a magnetism about its operations which no one who visits it for the first time escapes.

Once more out of doors, we turn our steps to that portion of the yard devoted to the wrought-iron, or smiths’ work. Here are the old accompaniments of the trade — the anvil and the sledge, the bellows and the fires. We are now among the wrought-iron girders before described as forming the crowns of the arches: they are to be seen in every stage of manufacture, from the untouched plates fresh from the mills, to the finished work. Confusion seems to reign supreme in this quarter. Plates, bars, rivets, every form of iron lies about in masses. Girders, partly completed, sprawl helplessly over the ground; here and there others stand temporarily erected in much more orderly fashion, and are receiving the necessary bearers for carrying the buckled plates of the roadway. Elsewhere all is chaos: fire, smoke, hurry, bustle, the din of rivetting hammers, and apparent disorder, mixed up with a prevailing sense of intense busy-ness. The contrast is strange between all this and the comparatively quiet working of the machinery in the shop we have just left: there, nothing could appear slower or more leisurely than its operations; here, nothing could seem more noisy or bustling. Each is good in its place. The work being different, the means are necessarily different also. Near us is the punching and shearing shed, where the metal is cut, and pierced with such holes as may be required. Gangs of three or four men bring in plates of iron for punching. Behind us are two machines—their black forms and heavy proportions looking ogre-like in the smoky atmosphere—furnished with huge jaws, which slowly close and open: they shear through the thick plates as the men place them within their power, or rapidly pierce hole after hole with a smart “bang” through the metal. Plate after plate, and bar after bar is thus punched and sheared, and as they are finished each is built up into its place, and we follow them until the ring of the rivetters’ hammers, binding all firmly together, takes unaccustomed ears by storm, and drives us into the farthest corners of the yard, to take a peep at the operation of “buckling” the plates which are to carry the roadway. This buckling consists in giving to a flat plate of iron a dished or convex form. Round a furnace are grouped some six or eight men, hot, sooty, and lightly dressed: hard by stands a frame-work of wood carrying the “dies” by which the buckling is accomplished: within this, and firmly bedded on the ground, is a heavy mass of iron (the lower die), dished out to the form the plate is required to take; into this the top “die” fits, being made with a convex surface corresponding with the dishing in the bed. The upper “die” is lifted by hoisting tackle to a height of three feet; meanwhile, one of the sooty crew opens the furnace door, while his mates draw from its red mouth a heated plate. This they place upon the bed, a catch is pulled, the top “die” falls, and on being raised again, the plate is seen dished or “buckled” to the required form; it is removed from the press, and while still hot, thoroughly oiled; there are nearly 3000 of these plates required to cover the surface of the bridge, and they are buckled at a rate of about sixty plates per day. We must take a glance before we go at the “mould loft.” Over the fitting shop is a large room; on the carefully-laid and clean white floor of which we see a full-sized drawing, showing the contour of every arch of the bridge. Spreading over the boards in every direction, these lines, coloured black, blue, red, and green, seem to a stranger too complex for definite meaning. Each colour denotes a particular arch, and to practised eyes any one set is followed without difficulty or confusion.

Piled around this and the adjoining room are many wooden models, or “patterns ” of the castings, and in a corner we remark one for the Gothic parapet. At this moment workmen are busy here making other models for the ornamental facing to the ribs of the bridge. This decorated face-work has naturally excited some public interest, and consequently has been much criticised. Perhaps in all matters relating to decoration, there is nothing so completely without law as public taste, we will not, therefore, stay to examine into the merit or demerit of work on which it is pretty certain every man will have his own opinion; but in criticising ornamental iron-work, the practical man cannot forget that a faulty moulding may be the result of difficulties in casting, as he knows that a really successful imitation of the Gothic style, so peculiarly adapted to stone, is practically almost impossible in cast iron. The verdict of the public on this question will, however, soon be challenged. The contractors have already completed the iron-work for the “first half” of the bridge; with the exception of this face-work, which will be finished somewhat later. It then only remains for the engineer to complete the road and pathway, and open the bridge for traffic.