in order that he might record it in his "time-bill." | ities. For instance, at Stafford, the mail takes up Then again a strong smell of burning sealing-wax a bag made up for Birmingham, Wolverhampton, announced that he was sealing up and stamping and intermediate places, the letters for which, bewith the post-office seal, bags, three or four of ing intermixed, are sorted by the way, and left at which he then firmly strapped together for deliv- the several stations. ery. All of a sudden, the flying chamber re- The bags have also to be stowed away in comceived a hard, sharp blow, which resounded ex-partments according to their respective destinations. actly as if a cannon-shot had struck it. This One lot for Manchester, Liverpool, and Dublin; one noise, however, merely announced that a station- for Chester; a bundle of bags for Newcastle-underpost we were at that moment passing, but which Lyne, Market-Drayton, Eccleshall, Stone, Crewe, was already far behind us, had just been safely Rhuabon; a quantity of empty bags to be filled delivered of four leather letter-bags, which on put- coming back; a lot for Edinburgh, Glasgow, and ting our head out of the window we saw quietly Carlisle; and one great open bag contained all the lying in the far end of a large, strong iron-bound letter-bags for Dublin taken upon the road. sort of landing-net or cradle, which the guard a few minutes before had by a simple movement lowered on purpose to receive them. But not only had we received four bags, but at the same moment, and apparently by the same blow, we had, as we flew by, dropped at the same station three bags which a post-office authority had been waiting there to receive. The blow that the pendent bag of letters, moving at the rate say of forty miles an hour, receives in being suddenly snatched away, must be rather greater than that which the flying one receives on being suddenly at that rate dropped on the road. Both operations, however, are effected by a projecting apparatus from the fly-men, at the same moment chucked the sorting clerks ing post-office coming suddenly into contact with that protruding from the post. The minute arrangements necessary for the transaction of all this important business at midnight, while the train is flying through the dark, it would be quite impossible to describe. The occupation is not only highly confidential, but it requires unceasing attention, exhausting to body and mind. Some time ago, while the three clerks, with their right elbows moving in all directions, were vigorously engaged in sorting their letters, and while the guard, with the light of his lamp shining on the gilt buttons and gold lace which emblazoned the pockets of his waistcoat, was busily sealing a letter-bag, a collision took place, which, besides killing four from their pigeon-holes to the letter-bags in the guard's compartment. In due time the chief clerk As fast as the clerks could fill the pigeon-holes recovered from the shock; but what had happened before them, the letters were quickly taken there--why he was lying on the letter-bags-why nofrom, tied up into a bundle, and then by the guard body was sorting-until he recovered from his studeposited into the leather bag to which they be- por he could not imagine! longed. On very closely observing the clerks as they worked, we discovered that instead of sorting their letters into the pigeon-holes according to their superscriptions, they placed them into compartments of their own arrangement, and which were only correctly labelled in their own minds; but as every | arterial railway. clerk is held answerable for the accuracy of his The company's workshops at Crewe consist of assortment, he is very properly allowed to execute it in whatever way may be most convenient to his mind or hand. Besides lame writing and awkward spelling, it was curious to observe what a quantity of irrelevant nonsense is superscribed upon many letters, as if the writer's object was purposely to conceal from the sorting clerk the only fact he ever cares to ascertain, namely, the post town. Their patience and intelligence, however, are really beyond all praise; and although sometimes they stand for eight or ten seconds holding a letter close to their lamp, turning sometimes their head and then it, yet it rarely happens that they fail to decipher it. In opening one bag, a lady's pasteboard work-box appeared all in shivers. It had been packed in the thinnest description of whity-brown paper. The clerk spent nearly two minutes in searching among the fragments for the direction, which he at last discovered in very pale ink, written apparently through a microscope with the point of a needle. The letters sorted in the flying post-office are, excepting a few "late letters," principally cross-post letters, which, although packed into one bag, are for various local CREWE.-We have now reached the most important station on the London and North-Western Railway; indeed, the works here are on a scale which strikingly exemplifies the magnitude of the arrangements necessary for the maintenance of an a locomotive and a coach department. In the manufactories of the former are constructed as well as repaired the whole of the engines and tenders required for the northern division, namely. from Birmingham to Liverpool; Rugby to Stafford; Crewe to Holyhead; Liverpool to Manchester; Liverpool, Manchester, and Warrington to Preston; Preston to Carlisle. The total number of miles is at present 360, but the distance of course increases with the completion of every new branch line. In this division there are 220 engines and tenders, (each averaging in value nearly £2000,) of which at least 100 are at work every day. Besides repairing all these, the establishment has turned out a new engine and tender on every Monday morning since the 1st of January, 1848. The number of workmen employed in the above department is 1600, their wages averaging £3800 a fortnight. The accounts of these expenses, as also a book of “casualties," in which every accident to, as well as every delay of, a train is reported, are examined once a fortnight by a special committee of directors. Without attempting to detail the various estab lishments, we will briefly describe a few of their noise which reverberated within this boiler, in admost interesting features. dition to that which was resounding without, formed altogether a dose which it is astonishing the tympanum of the human ear can receive uninjured; at all events we could not help thinking that if there should happen to exist on earth any man ungallant enough to complain of the occasional admonition of a female tongue, if he will only go by rail to Crewe and sit in that boiler for half an hour, he will most surely never again complain of that "cricket on his hearth”—the whispering curtain lectures of his dulce domum. The adjoining shop contains a brass and also an iron foundry, in which were at work seven brassmoulders and five iron-moulders. In the corner of this room we stood for a few moments looking over the head and shoulders of a fine little boy, who was practically exemplifying the properties of the most wonderful of the mineral productions of nature-the loadstone. Among the mass brought into this workshop to be recast are occasionally a quantity of brass shavings and other sweepings, among which there is a small proportion of iron filings, &c. The little boy's occupation consisted in constantly stirring up the mass or mess before him with a magnet, which, as often as it came out bristling with resplendent particles of iron of various sizes, he swept clean, and then continued his work until the investigator came out of the heap as clear of iron as it went in. Close to this shop is one in which the models and patterns of the castings are constructed. From a spacious open yard covered with stacks of old scrap-iron, much of which was of the size of common buttons, a door opens into a large shop containing twelve forges solely used for the construction of engine-wheels, which are forced on as well as off their axles by an ingenious machine of extraordinary power. Adjoining the open yard we saw in operation Nasmyth's great steam-hammer, on the summit of which there sat perched up a man who could regulate its blow from say twenty-five tons, to a little tap sufficient only to drive a commonsized nail. As soon as the furnace-door on one side of this hammer was opened, a large lump of scrap iron at a white heat was lifted and then conducted by a crane on to the anvil beneath. At the same moment from an opposite furnace a long Close to the entrance of the locomotive department stands as its primum mobile the tall chimney of a steam-pump, which, besides supplying the engine that propels the machinery of the workshops, gives an abundance of water to the locomotives at the station, as also to the new railway town of Crewe, containing at present about 8000 inhabitants. This pump lifts about eighty or ninety thousand gallons of water per day from a brook below into filtering beds, whence it is again raised about forty feet into a large cistern, where it is a second time filtered through charcoal for the supply of the town. On entering the great gate of the department, the office of which is up a small staircase on the left hand, the first object of attention is the great engine-stable into which the hot dusty locomotives are conducted after their journeys to be cleaned, examined, repaired, or if sound to be greased and otherwise prepared for their departure the last operation being to get up their steam, which is here effected by coal, instead of coke, in about two hours. After passing through a workshop containing thirty-four planing and slotting machines in busy but almost silent operation, we entered a smith's shop, 260 feet long, containing forty forges all at work. At several of the anvils there were three and sometimes four strikers, and the quantity of sparks that more or less were exploding from each-the number of sledge-hammers revolving in the air, with the sinewy frames, bare throats and arms of the fine pale men who wielded them, formed altogether a scene well worthy of a few moments' contemplation. As the heavy work of the department is principally executed in this shop, in which iron is first enlisted and then rather roughly drilled into the service of the company, it might be conceived that the music of the forty anvils at work would altogether be rather noisy in concert. The grave itself, however, could scarcely be more silent than this workshop, in comparison with the one that adjoins it, in which the boilers of the locomotives are constructed. As for asking questions of, or receiving explanations from, the guide, who with motionless lips conducts the stranger through this chamber, such an effort would be utterly hopeless, for the deafening noise proceeding from the rivet-iron bar, heated only at one extremity, was by a ing of the bolts and plates of so many boilers is distracting beyond description. We almost fancied that the workmen must be aware of this effect upon a stranger, and that on seeing us enter they therefore welcomed our visit by a charivari sufficient to awaken the dead. As we hurried through the din we could not, however, help pausing for a moment before a boiler of copper inside and iron outside, within which there sat crouched up-like a negro between the decks of a slave-ship-an intelligent-looking workman holding with both hands a hammer against a bolt, on the upper end of which, within a few inches of his ears, two lusty comrades on the outside were hammering with surprising strength and quickness. The gentle blow of the hammer no sooner welded to the mass than the head smith, using it as a handle, turned and re-turned the lump on the anvil so as to enable the steam-hammer to weld its contents into proper form. Of course there has been selected for this extremely heavy work the strongest man that could be obtained. He is of about the height and bulk of the celebrated Italian singer Signor Lablache, with apparently the strength of Hercules, or rather of Vulcan himself-and certainly nothing could be a finer display of muscular power than the various attitudes which this heavy man assumed, as, regardless of the sparks which flew at him, or of the white heat of the lump of iron he was forging, he turned it on one side and then on the other, until at a given signal a small smith in attendance placed a sort of heavy chisel on the iron handle, which by a single blow of the hammer was at once severed from it, in order that it might be piled away and another mass lifted from the fiery furnace to the anvil. comotive engine must be put together as carefully as a watch!" The Erecting-shop at Crewe is a room 300 feet long by 100 feet broad, containing five sets of rails, upon three of which are erected the new engines and tenders-the other two being usually Close to this Cyclopean scene there is a shop occupied by those under heavy repair. The numsolely for turning wheels and axles, which, brought | ber of artificers we found employed was 220. here rough from the smiths' forges we have described, never leave this place until they are ready to go under the engine for which they have been | made. In this magnificent building we saw in progress of erection 20 passenger-engines, also 10 luggageengines; and as this shop has (as we have before stated) turned out a locomotive engine and tender complete on every Monday morning for very nearly a year, and is continuing to supply them at the same rate, we had before us in review locomotive engines in almost every stage of progress; and when we reflected on the innumerable benefits, and even blessings, which resulted to mankind from their power, it was most pleasing to be enabled at one view to see as it were in rehearsal behind the scenes-performers who were so shortly to appear upon the stage of life. After passing through a grinding-shop and a coppersmith's shop, which we must leave without comment, we entered a most important and interesting workshop, 330 feet in length by 60 feet in breadth, termed "the fitting-shop," because the work brought here in various states is all finally finished and fitted for its object. Besides 11 planing-machines, 36 shaping and slotting machines, and 30 turning-lathes, all working by steam-power, we observed, running nearly the whole length of the building, five sets of tables, At the further end of the line of rails close to at which were busily employed in filing, rasping, the north wall there appeared a long low tortuous hammering, &c., eight rows of "vice-men," so mass of black iron-work, without superstructure or called because they work at vices. The whole of wheels, in which the form of an engine-bed in the artificers in this room are of the best descrip- embryo could but very faintly be traced; a little tion, and the importance of their duties cannot nearer was a similar mass, in which the outline perhaps be more briefly illustrated than by the appeared, from some cause or other, to be more simple fact that, besides all the requisite repairs distinctly marked; nearer still the same outline of 200 locomotive engines, they were employed in appeared upon wheels; to the next there had been finishing the innumerable details of 30 new ones added a boiler and fire-box, without dome, steamin progress. Some were solely engaged in con- escape, or funnel-pipe; nearer still the locomotiveverting bolts into screws; some in fitting nuts; engine in its naked state appeared, in point of some in constructing brass whistles: in short, in form, complete :—and workmen were here busily this division of labor almost every "vice-man" engaged in covering the boiler with a garment was employed in finishing some limb, joint, or about half an inch thick of hair-felt, upon which other component part of a locomotive engine des- others were affixing a covering of inch deal-plank, tined to draw trains either of goods or passengers. over which was to be tightly bound a tarpaulin, After visiting a large storeroom, in which all the whole to be secured by iron hoops. In the things appertaining to engines, sorted and piled in next case the dome of the engine was undergoing innumerable compartments, are guarded by a store- a similar toilette, excepting that, instead of a keeper, who registers in a book each item that he wooden upper garment, it was receiving one of receives and delivers, we will now introduce our copper. Lastly-(it was on a Saturday that we readers to the climax of the establishment, com- chanced to visit the establishment)—there stood at monly called "the Erecting-shop." Hitherto we the head of this list of recruits a splendid branhave been occupied in following in tedious detail new locomotive engine, completely finished, painted from the foundry to the forge, and from the anvil bright-green-the varnish was scarcely dry-and to the vice, the various items, such as plates, riv-in every respect perfectly ready to be delivered ets, bolts, nuts, rings, stays, tubes, ferrules, steampipes, exhausting-pipes, chimney-pipes, safetyvalves, life-guards, axle-boxes, pistons, cylinders, connecting-rods, splashers, leading and trailing wheels, &c., amounting in number to 5416 pieces, of which a locomotive engine is composed. We have at last, however, reached that portion of the establishment in which all those joints, limbs, and boilers which have been separately forged, shaped and finished in different localities, are assembled together for the consummation of the especial object for which, with so much labor and at so great an expense, they have been prepared: indeed, nothing, we believe, can be more true than Mr. Robert Stephenson's well-known maxim--"A lo over on Monday morning to run its gigantic course. On other rails within the building were tenders in similar states of progress; and, as the eye rapidly glanced down these iron rails, the finished engine and tender immediately before it seemed gradually and almost imperceptibly to dissolve, in proportion to its distance, until nothing was left of each but an indistinct and almost unintelligible dreamy vision of black iron-work. On one of the furthest rails, among a number of engines that were undergoing serious operations, we observed "The Colonel," which, by going off the rails at Newton Bridge, caused the death of General Baird. Coach Department.-As our readers will no doubt feel some little selfish interest in the con struction of the railway carriages in which they made of willow, and usually last about ten weeks' travel, we shall conclude our rapid survey of the company's workshops at Crewe by a short inspection of the coach establishment. This department constructs and maintains for the traffic on 393 miles of rails all the requisite passenger-carriages, luggage-vans, travelling post-offices and tenders, parcel-vans and parcel-carts, milk-trucks, (principally to supply Liverpool,) and break-wagons. At the company's "Wagon Department" at Manchester-which is about to be transferred to Liverpool-are constructed and maintained all the requisite goods-wagons, horse-boxes, coke-wagons, carriage-trucks for private carriages, cattle-wagons, and timber-trucks. The total number of carriages of all descriptions maintained at Crewe amounts to 670, of which about 100 at a time are usually in hospital. There are generally from 30 to 40 new carriages in progress; the number of workmen employed was 260. The establishment is divided into one set of workshops for the construction, and another for the repair of carriages. work. Adjoining this congregation of carriages is a smith's shop, containing twenty-eight forges and a tire-oven; above which we found a large store-room filled with lace-trimming, horse-hair, superfine cloth, varnished oil-cloth, nails, rugs, and, among a variety of other requirements, plate-glass for windows. We observed that those for the front glasses of coupés-in order to enable them to resist the occasional pelting of hot cinders from the engine-were half an inch thick! There was also, in an adjoining store, a collection of old cushions, mercilessly indented and worn out by some description of dull heavy pressure. On On 2. The hospital of the Coach Department at Crewe is an enormous shed, 600 feet long by 180 broad. It is capable of holding 90 carriages, with ample room for working around them, but only 80 were under repair. Among them we observed several flying post-offices and tenders bearing the royal arms. Adjoining is a large smith's shop, also a spacious yard containing a heavy stock of timber piled under sheds, with an office for record1. In a large shop, 300 feet in length, warmed ing the daily amount received and delivered. by steam, at night lighted by gas, and by day from entering the "Grease House," which, contrary to lofty windows on each side, there is throughout expectation, we found to be as clean as a dairy, we the whole length of the building a wooden pave- perceived standing against the walls, three huge ment containing eight sets of rails, upon which we casks of Russia tallow, a quantity of yellow palmbeheld, like hackney-coaches on their stands, a oil, several boxes of soda, and a water-cock. variety of carriages in various stages of construc- the opposite side there was a small steam-boiler for tion and of alteration, each surrounded by several heating two open cauldrons and two wooden coolintelligent artificers, who, instead of throwing away ing-vats. This apparatus is constructed for the their time in dancing round a tree of liberty, to the fabrication of that yellow mixture which our readtune, or, as it is poetically termed by M. Lamar-ers have seen bestowed so generously to the axles tine," the dogma" of liberty, fraternity, and equali- of the carriages of every train. We had often in ty, were sedulously occupied in framing different vain endeavored to ascertain its composition, which, sorts of carriages to suit the various gradations of from the grease-master, the highest possible authorbuman society. For instance, one set, with beau-ity on the subject, we at last discovered to be as tiful colors, were painting the outside of a first- follows::class;" while their comrades within were padding it, and petting it, and stuffing it, as if its object were to fit every bend and hollow in the human frame. Another set were strongly varnishing the wooden oak-painted interior of a "second-class," whose exterior had evidently received considerable attention; while another gang were "finishing off" a covered "third-class," whose inside certainly appeared not only very hard, but what monthnurses term "terribly troubled with wind." 66 In another quarter, a set of workmen were economically converting an old first-class into a second-class the transmutation being effected by taking out the lining, and then converting large, fashionable, oval windows into little vulgar square ones. 200 lbs. of Russia tallow. 20 lbs. of soda. 50 gallons of water. Besides heating the two caldrons we have mentioned, large iron pipes pass from the steam-boiler to the immediate vicinity of two casks, each containing one ton of sperm-oil, which is thus kept constantly fluid, instead of crystallizing, as it is prone to do, during cold weather. A Railway Town.-Having now concluded our rough sketch of the workshops of the locomotive and coach departments at Crewe-in both of which the company's artificers and workmen toil both winter and summer from six in the morning till half-past five in the evening, excepting on Saturdays, when they leave off at four-our readers will, But though comfort, like cheese, bacon, or we hope, feel sufficiently interested in their welfare any other description of merchandise, was thus to inquire, as we anxiously did, a little into their doled out to each class of passengers according to domestic history and comforts. About a hundred the amount of it which they may desire to pur-yards from the two establishments we have just chase, the materials of all the carriages appeared left, there stands a plain neat building, erected to be of good sound quality. The panels of first, second, and third-class carriages, as well as those even of luggage-vans, are invariably made of mahogany; "the bottom-sides" of English oak; the rest of the framing of ash. The break-blocks are by the company, containing baths, hot, cold, and shower, for the workmen, as well as for their wives and daughters, the hours allotted for each sex being stated on a board, which bluntly enough explains that the women may wash while the men are working, and vice versa. For this wholesome It would of course be quite irregular for 8000 luxury the charge for each person is 1d.; and persons to live together without the luxury of bealthough we do not just at present recollect the ing enabled occasionally to bite and tickle each exact price of yellow soap per bar, of sharp white other with the sharp teeth and talons of the law, sand per bushel, of stout dowlas-towelling per and accordingly we observed, appropriately inyard, or the cost of warming a few hundred gal-scribed in large letters on the door of a very relons of water, yet, as we stood gazing into one of spectable-looking house, these baths, we could not help thinking that, if that Hercules who works the steam-hammer can, GRIFFIN, ATtorney. though they themselves are fully competent to enjoy Fanny Kemble's readings from Shakspeare, such a mental luxury would be altogether out of on Saturday night after his week's toil, be scrubbed Mankind are so prone to draw distinctions where perfectly clean and white for three half-pence, he no real differences exist, that among our readers can have no very great reason to complain, for there are probably many who conceive that alsurely, except by machinery, the operation could scarcely be effected much cheaper! To a medical man the company gives a house and a surgery, in addition to which he receives from every unmarried character at New Crewe! In short, that shops workman 1d. per week; if married, but with no full of smiths, and other varieties of workmen, family, 1d. per week; if married, and with a (particularly him of the steam-hammer, and most family, 2d. per week; for which he undertakes to especially the artificer we saw squatted in the give attendance and medicine to whatever men, boiler,) although all exceedingly useful in their women, children, or babies of the establishment ways, could not possibly appreciate the delicate may require them. A clergyman, with an adeintonations of voice, or the poetical beauties to quate salary from the company, superintends three which we have alluded. Now, without the large day-schools for about 300 boys, girls, and smallest desire to oppose this theory, we will siminfants. There is also a library and mechanics' ply state, that while, during the men's dinnerinstitute, supported by a subscription of about 10s. hour, we were strolling through the streets of a year, at which a number of very respectable artifi-Crewe, we observed on the walls of a temporary attend at night to learn ab initio, reading, writing, cers, whose education when young was neglected, and arithmetic. There is likewise a vocal and instrumental class, attended by a number of workmen, with their wives and daughters. The town of Crewe contains 514 houses, one church, three schools, and one town-hall, all belonging to the company; and as the birth, growth, and progress of a railway town is of novel interest, our readers will, we think, be anxious to learn at what speed our railway stations are now turning into towns, just as many of our ancient post-houses formerly grew into post-towns. Although the new houses at Crewe were originally built solely for railway servants, yet it was soon found necessary to construct a considerable number for the many shopkeepers and others who were desirous to join the new settlement, and accordingly, of the present population of 8000, about one half are strangers. Not only are the streets, which are well lighted by gas, much broader than those of Wolverton, but the houses are, generally speaking, of a superior description, and, although all are new, yet it is curious to observe how insidiously old customs, old fashions, old wants, and even old luxuries, have become domiciled. Many of the shops have large windows, which eagerly attempt to look like plateglass. In the shoemakers' shops, contrasted with thick railway boots and broad railway shoes, there hang narrow-soled Wellingtons and Bluchers, as usual scarcely half the gauge or breadth of the human foot. The company's workmen began by having a cheap stout dancing-master of their own; but, the aristocracy of Crewe very naturally requiring higher kicks, we found a superior and more elegant artist giving lessons in the town-hall -a splendid room capable of containing 1000 per sons. of which the following is a copy:- BY PARTICULAR DESIRE. MR. JONES WILL REPEAT The Scene from Macbeth and Cato's So= liloquy : LIKEWISE Imitations of Charles Kemble, Edmund Kean, and Mr. Cooper. The town and shops of Crewe are well lighted by gas from the company's works, which create about 30,000 cubic feet per day-the foot-paths of the streets being of asphalt, composed of the company's coal-tar mixed up with gravel and ashes from the workshops. The town is governed by a council of fifteen members, two thirds of whom are nominated by the workmen and inhabitants, and one third by the directors. Their regulations are all duly promulgated "by order of the council." Although our limits do not allow us to enter into many statistical details, we may mention that the number of persons employed on account of the London and North-Western Railway Company, including those occupied in the collection and delivery of goods, is as follows: 2 Secretaries. 1 Manager. 2 Superintendents. 966 Clerks. 3054 Porters. 701 Police-constables. 738 Engine and firemen. 3347 Artificers. 1452 Laborers. Total number 10,263 |