LOCAL INDUSTRY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LX, Issue 6998, 3 August 1883, Page 6

LOCAL INDUSTRY.

A short distance below the Canterbury Racecourse, and nearly opposite the Hornby Bailway junction, stand* Messrs Smart and Son’s stone-crushing factory. The work# are situated in a paddock of seventeen acres In extent, formerly owned by another gentleman in this town, who first started the atonecrashing business there, but on a scale quite different to that on which it is now being carried on. Messrs Smart and Son have, during the two year# they have possessed it, added very chnsiderably to the building, providing in the first place a larger shed for the protection of the 20-horsepower engine which supplies the motive power (or doing all the werk. The three crushers at work are of different sixes, and are known as Martden's patent. At present they have been able to procure crusher# of Colonial make which they are sanguine will not give way as former ones have done. They have been procured from the firm of Messrs Scott Brother*, who have every confidence in the material used in them. The system by which the stone, when crushed, is passed through riddles worked on shafts at the top.of the building appears to the visitor a complicated one, but it it so mechanically arranged that (it is distributed according to aise into trucks or trollies on a raised platform, and those trucks are watched and ran along by one man, and are emptied direct into the railway truck* below waiting on a siding connected with the main line of railway. By this plan a vast amount of handling is obviated; indeed, so well have the works been constructed, that of the seven kinds of shingle and one of sand that are taken out, the sand and what is known as the " washed first*/' or very fine garden path shingle (of which there is a limited quantity), are the only parts that require any handling after they have paieed through the mill. The only persons who have to handle the shingle are the men who are engaged in the pit filling the tracks. At the present time there are font men engaged<at this work, and having a face of over 80 feet to work at, with a planked platform from which to shove! the shingle, they are well able to keep the machine* thoroughly supplied. The trucks are hauled out of the pit, and returned empty by means of a rope worked like the rest of the machinery, by steam. About a yard of gravel goes up the incline from the pit to the shed, and in this way over 100 yards 'are excavated, and used every working d*y- The shingle, on arriving at the top of the incline, is subjected at once to a washing process which is easily performed by a boy directing a hose on to it as it passes through one of the boxes, and it is thus that the sand is removed. At the bottom of the pit there are occasionally to bo found large logs of driftwood in an excellent state of preservation, but showing signs of having been very considerably waterwasbed at some time. This, in itself, should be a proof of the comparatively recent date when the Waimakariri disported itself in this direction. One of the principal requirement# at such a factory is a good pump; and this Messrs Smart and Bon have had some trouble with; but they now have had one specially made by Messrs Scott Brothers, which answers every purpose, and supplies all the works with tlqe required amount of good water from a depth of over SO feet, and in some seasons more. The torn out from the establishment is guided greatly by the supply of railway waggons. At this season of the year it is constant; and, as this is the busy season for supplying shingle, the greater part of the work is done now, and there is seldom a working day daring which less than eighteen are loaded and forwarded to Christchurch; this generally being done by means ef a special engine in the evening. It is needless to odd that the railway department benefits considerably by such an industry as the one now under notice.