ffin hour has ended. The buzzer blows, and with a roar, a rattle,
and a clang the shops take up their toil. The hubbub that followed on
the Prince's kiss to the sleeping beauty was not so loud or sudden.
Experience, with a foot-rule in his pocket, authority in his port, and a
merry twinkle in his eye, comes up and catches Ignorance walking
gingerly round No. 25. "That's one of the best we have," says
Experience, "a four-wheeled coupled bogie they call her. She's by Dobbs.
She's done her hundred and fifty miles to-day; and she'll run in to
Rampore Haut this afternoon; then she'll rest a day and be cleaned up.
Roughly, she does her three hundred miles in the four-and-twenty hours.
She's a beauty. She's out from home, but we can build our own
engines--all except the wheels. We're building ten locos. now, and we've
got a dozen boilers ready if you care to look at them. How long does a
loco. last? That's just as may be. She will do as much as her driver
lets her. Some men play the mischief with a loco. and some handle 'em
properly. Our drivers prefer Hawthorne's old four-wheeled coupled
engines because they give the least bother. There is one in that shed,
and it's a good 'un to travel. But eighty thousand miles generally sees
the gloss off an engine, and she goes into the shops to be overhauled
and refitted and replaned, and a lot of things that you wouldn't
understand if I told you about them. No. 1, the first loco. on the line,
is running still, but very little of the original engine must be left by
this time. That one there, came out in the Mutiny year. She's by
Slaughter and Grunning, and she's built for speed in front of a light
load. French-looking sort of thing, isn't she? That's because her
cylinders are on a tilt. We used her for the Mail once, but the Mail has
grown heavier and heavier, and now we use six-wheeled coupled
eighteen-inch, inside cylinder, 45-ton locos. to shift thousand-ton
trains. _No!_ All locos. aren't alike. It isn't merely pulling a lever.
The Company likes its drivers to know their locos., and a man will keep
his Hawthorne for two or three years. The more mileage he gets out of
her before she has to be overhauled the better man he is. It pays to let
a man have his fancy engine. A man must take an interest in his loco.,
and that means she must belong to him. Some locos. won't do anything,
even if you coax and humour them. I don't think there are any unlucky
ones now, but some years ago No. 31 wasn