Car Shop.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 6, 1 April 1909, Page 196

Car Shop.

On the way in one sees many things lying abont; ventilators of cars ready for fixing, cylinders for bending timber, by steam: templates for the shapes of the bending, such for instance as the roofs of cars, water tanks for the lavatories — these hold 118 gallons we learn; cushions, seats, panels of doors, and windows, car bodies and these arrest the attention as they stand over the pits. They are in all the stages of growth up to the last in which the finishing touch of the painters is being added. There is a pleasant odour of turpentine and resin and not a sign of the usual litter, of shavings and things pertaining to

the disorder of the ordinary workshop. Not a single machine is besmirched. Neither are there as elsewhere small armies of sweepers getting rid of plentiful litter. The bell mouths of shoots gape here and there close to the floor, shavings and litter of wood are brought close up, there is an inhaling of a mighty breath and the litter disappears on its way to the furnace, leaving behind clean floors and immaculate machines. There used to be perpetual dust fog and many men were down always with dust asthma. Now there is not a single case. Each machine in this shop is equipped with a dust collector, an exhaust fan is situated near the engine house and exhausts the sawdust, shavings, etc., through large galvanised pipes to the boiler house where it is utilised for fuel. Of course the fifty foot new car building for the Northern Trunk does not escape us. "What are these sleepers like? " is the constant query of an interested public. The

answer is before us here. Take the ordinary "bird-cage" the object of such keen competition on the part of long distance travellers. Imagine the two seats facing one another in each compartment. Realise that the back of each seat is so fashioned as to act as a bunk, provided with the means for detaching it for lifting it into position above the ordinary seat of which it forms, when off berth duty, the back, and for keeping it in position when detached. A couple of straps adjustable at the side to prevent the tenant from falling out. and there you have your upper berth. The lower seat of corresponding methods becomes the bottom berth, and the compartment becomes a sleeping room with four berths. In every new fifty foot sleeping carriage there are four four-berth compartments and two with two berths. For the latter there is much competition among the knowing ones. In the constructing division of the car shop there are fixed the usual wood working machines and beside them all the

timbers that belong to the car industry, about to fulfil their destiny in one part or another of the anatomy of the cars. Here there is the same note of British superiority, with also a good American machine in the front with the best. That is a chain morticer by the New Britain Company of America. It is like a bicycle chain with knives on the links, simple to look at and easy to go. It does not appear to cut the mortices, so much as just to blow them out. There is only one better in the world and in that one the cutter follows the work instead of as here the work following the cutter. A great English machine is the sandpapering machine of Robinson of Rochdale a machine with three rollers of sand-paper of three qualities, rough, medium, and fine, with a revolving brush. Doors, frames, all things requiring a polish pass in rough and come out smooth in an incredibly short time. Where it took a door half-a-day of old to get through the hand process