HOSPITAL BUILT IN AN HOUR.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 February 1923, Page 11

HOSPITAL BUILT IN AN HOUR.

MIRACULOUS FEATS OF SWIFT WORK. In Austria a few years ago a complete hospital was built and was made ready to receive patients within an hour, a feat which seems almost impossible, even when we know that all the component parts of the building -were at hand. Tt was in Austria, too, that the seemingly miraculous task of converting trees into newspaper, 'within two and a half hours was accomplished. At twenty-six minutes to eight o’clock in the morning three trees were cut down at Elsenthal.

At twenty-six minutes to ten the trees had been stripped of bark, cut up and converted into pulp, made into paper, and passed from the factory to the press, from which printed newspapers were issued at ten o’clock. New York claims a publishing performance even more astonishing than this. An advance copy of one of Zola s works had been secured in Paris by the agent of the American firm, who posted it to New York. On its arrival it was translated into English, put into type, printed and bound, and was actually on sale within twenty-four hours. Not long ago an English boot factory turned out a pair of men’s shoes in the amazingly short space of twenty minutes. The shoes included, among other parts, two sewed pieces, two inner soles, two stiffenings, two pieces of steel to give a spring to the instep, two rands, two sole linings, twelve heel pieces, twenty upper pieces, thirty tacks, twelve nails in the heels and twenty buttons. Remarkable feats of swift work are accomplished by those who have to do with moving railway bridges and building railroads and locomotives. The bridge for the Great Northern Railway at Finsbury Park was substituted for the old one in the short space of four hours. The work started at three o’clock in the afternoon, when powerful cranes were set to work to remove the ten ton girders of the old bridge. The new steel bridge, weighing more than two thousand tons, which was resting near at hand on six small carriages, was hauled into position by steel crabs; it was rapidly made secure, the rails were connected, and within four hours trains were running over it.

A feat still more surprising was that of substituting a new bridge for the old one near Hatfield. Within fifty-two minutes the old structure, with its four lines of rails, had disappeared, and in its place was a new iron girder bridge carrying six lines of rails, ready for traffic. A complete locomotive engine was put together for the Great Eastern Railway at the Stratford works in ten hours. The work began early in the morning, the engine being photographed at the different stages of its construction, and the same evening it was actually at work pulling a luggage train.