above the chimneys
throws a reflection upon the sky, which is visible miles away, like
that of a conflagration.

Stepping out of this pandemonium, there are rows upon rows of
gleaming forges, each with its appointed smiths, whose hammers rise
and fall in rhythmic strokes, and who manufacture the minor portions
of the incipient locomotive. Here is a machine the central part of
which resembles a great corkscrew or spiral constantly revolving. A
weight is affixed to its inclined plane, and is carried up to the
required height by the revolution of the screw, to be let fall upon
a piece of red-hot iron, which in that moment becomes a bolt, with
its projecting head or cap. Though they do not properly belong to
our subject, the great marine boilers in course of construction in
the adjoining department cannot be overlooked, even if only for
their size--vast cylinders of twelve feet diameter. Next comes the
erecting shop, where the various parts of the locomotive are fitted
together, and it is built up much as a ship from the keel. These
semi-completed engines have a singularly helpless look--out of
proportion, without limbs, and many mere skeletons. Close by is the
department where engines out of repair are made good. Some American
engineer started the idea of a railway thirty feet wide, an idea
which in this place is partially realized. The engine to be repaired
is run on to what may be described as a turn-table resting upon
wheels, and this turn-table is bodily rolled along, like a truck,
with the engine on it, to the place where tools and cranes and all
the necessary gear are ready for the work upon it. Now by a yard,
which seems one vast assemblage of wheels of all kinds--big wheels,
little wheels, wheels of all sizes, nothing but wheels; past great
mounds of iron, shapeless heaps of scrap, and then, perhaps, the
most interesting shop of all, though the least capable of
description, is entered. It is where the endless pieces of metal of
which the locomotive is composed are filed and planed and smoothed
into an accurate fit; an immense building, with shafting overhead
and shafting below in endless revolution, yielding an incessant hum
like the sound of armies of bees--a building which may be said to
have a score of aisles, up which one may walk with machinery upon
either side. Hundreds of lathes of every conceivable pattern are
planing the solid steel and the solid iron as if it were wood,
cutting off with each revolution