STEEL ARTIFICERS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 57, 14 April 1914, Page 6

STEEL ARTIFICERS.

MACHINE SHOPS AT ADDINGTON.

Specially written for THE SUN,

. A maze of machinery, a continuous whirl of belts, rods, and pulleys, the drone of pulsating engines, the clangour of iron, and the picture of many men who stand unconcerned in - groups amidst all this chaos, attentive on these whirring monsters. This is a first impression of the Addington Workshops, the largest: railway shops in New Zealand, and one of the most up-to-date in the world. But it is only an impression of one corner.

Outside the great machine houses locomotives fuss and shriek all day long, bearing away •, Addington's completed work for Shipment to the railways of the noi'th and south, bringing in materials or anything, from railway engines to carriage cushions, for repair. Here is a busy community of some 600 men working always to keep the railways of tire Stat# efficient in every detail—boilers, lamp reflectors, and all. One stands v inside a large shed swathed in a gloom o'f,dust and steam, on a floor of thick, blaclc sand, which seems like soot, and everywhere around one sees men on the floor moulding and putting this dust into iron boxes. Suddenly the gloom is irradiated with a fierce glare. One sees painted in vivid black and red a group of men surrounding a giant crucible from which is pouring a liquid stream of fire —it is the moulten iron being poured into the moulds, the iron -which is to become cylinders, valves, wheels—component parts of the great express engines which carry New Zealand about V its business and its pleasure. In a room apart one finds brass-

moulders and" turners ~at work upon those commonplace engine fittings which everyone knows, and here there'' is a machine which carefully cleans the brass filings that are re-smelted and transmitted into brass fittings. In another small room one finds the tinsmiths at work making tinware —from guards' lamps to the great. acetylene lamps of engines—and every sort of tinware demanded in that multiplicity of businesses called the Railway Department.

At the Forges. One emerges again* into an atmosphere of heat and noise into a great shed filled with forges, furnaces,- and pounding steam hammers. It is the blacksmiths' shop. Here goggled men stand before the open door of a furnace withdrawing a white-hot crank-bar, scrutinising its colour to see that it is perfectly annealed. In long lines down the shop men stand at the forges, heating and hammering massive pieces of steel. From one forge three men take a huge bar at white heat, the end is placed on the anvil of the steamhammer, a lever is pulled, three rapid blows of the hammer, and the metal is

shaped as an axle, for by an arrangement of dies tire steam hammer can be made to fashion metal to the shape and size required. Miraculous Machines. The men are attendants on miraculous machines. One sees L hydraulic rivetters that, by enormous pressure of compressed air, swiftly the rivets in their places with no ptiher noise than the hiss of escaping air. : There is none of that clatter and clang of the old-time hand rivetters. Once it was necessary for boiler-plate to 1)6 heated that rivet-holes might be punched by hand, but now all that is ! done by a compressedrair drill that the holes in the steel swiftly, precisely, as one would melt holes in wax With a hot needle.

There is 110 end to the. marvels of machinery. In the fitting and machine shops there are great lathes,: shaping the rough castings, shearing "off rough surfaces, and adjusting them in fractions of an inch. One man. minds the machine and the casting, and slowly the lathe goes round and ,shaves the east steel as easily as tlidu v gh it were soft wood. There are great planing machines also which trim the bulky steel engine and carriage fittings, fresh from foundry and blacksmiths' shop, to exact sizes, for the engine designer must work in exact The ponderous machines glide slowly over the bar and cranks, and the steel is "routed" off in curly shavings such as litter the floor of a joiner's shop. Building the Carsr ; '

In still another branch •> work amidst a clatter of lathes and;} emery wheels, carefully fitting together intricate small parts of great machines, and from thence oiie enters; *tlie car shop, where the carriages awe made, and there, standing on trestles,-) is the bare wooden structure of a carriage in course of construction. Even here the work of the carpenter and joiner is simplified by machines. A man takes a piece of timber, places it in the jaws of a machine, presses a lever his feet,\ and a swift drill comes'arfWh and cuts through the wood —the wonder is that the revolving bit has cut a square hole; what would have taken 5 & quarter of an hour to accomplish with the old instruments of brace and bit, .mall and chisel, is here done in a few seconds. The multiplicity of departments and complexity of crafts bewilders^—this is no : one great factory, it i 6 a conglomerate of great factories. . Leaving the car shop, one is shown a 90-ton locomotive, which is nearing completion—a monstrous cylinder On wliels, but not yet resembling the familiar railway engine. Then there. is, the shop where all the railway points are made. Here there are circular saws shearing through iron rails, machines that bite through iron plates, as one would nip a radish. Over there is a simple, squat, little pneumatic machine which pushes a short finger against a cold steel bar and bends it to the required shape without apparent effort. Nothing is Wasted.

Nothing is wasted in the railway works, because all w T aste is useful. In the upholstering shop old railway cushions are repaired and new ones made. In the tarpaulin shop men sit at great sewing machines stitching new tarpaulins, examining and patching old ones. Nothing useable is discarded. Old axle-bars are re-anneal-ed, old wheels are pressed and fitted with new tires, old furnishings are lacquered or electro-plated and returned to service as good as new. Even when a machine becomes scrap-iron, it is not beyond use; it is still good iron, and as such it goes into the smelter and comes out as bars of ' 1 pig-iron,'' which in their turn go into the. moulders ' boxes and come out as new engine fittings. The Addington Workshops generates its own power, since with such an extensive use of power it pays best to make its own gas to run its engines. There are nine engines running from seven to 140 horse-power, and the gas

generators are of a capacity sufficient' 1 to "supply the needs of a small town. j . The Eailway Department necessarily one of the most efficient of our , State services, and .the completeness,' the extent, the activities and the" man- ; ner in which Addington supplies its: own.needs make it the.great exemplar • of this general efficiency. D.H. '