Tuesday, August 4, 2015

IC's Heavy-Duty Blacksmith Shop

Steel Processing and Conversion, p 384
An August, 1919, article in Steel Processing and Conversion explains that the IC Burnside Shops did all of the heavier forging for the entire IC system. Smaller shops sent their large forgings to the Burnside plant to be made or repaired. (I wonder if the IC Paducah Shops sent work here. It strikes me as a rather big shop itself.) So even though the Burnside Shops was primarily a passenger car repair and rebuild shop, the blacksmith shop handled locomotive parts in addition to car parts. This shop was unique in the country because its 20 tons of forgings a day were made of both iron and steel. That is, the shop did not specialize in iron or steel. The hammers were still powered with steam from the boiler house, but the remaining equipment was electrically driven. This is a reminder that electricity replaced line shafts and belting just a few decades before 1919. The photo on the right is the largest hammer in the shop --- a five-ton Chambersburg open frame hammer.
Steel Processing and Conversion, p 384
The days of a blacksmith swinging a hammer over an anvil are long gone. (Wrong! When I got to page 385, I read that there are 40 hand forges in the shop.) Here is a 5-inch Acme forging machine with heating furnaces on both sides. It is used "to make spring hangers, brake hangers, couple pockets, pilot braces and pilot brace pins as well as a number of other smaller types of work." The article goes on to describe 12 other smaller hammers and some other equipment such as bending machines and an eyebolt machine.


Steel Processing and Conversion, p 384
The caption for this photo is "Hilles & Jones punching and trimming machine, electrically driven." It can punch a 3-inch hole in 1.5-inch steel. The explicit mention of "electrically driven" and the shaft and pulleys near the ceiling is another reminder that electricity had been commercially significant for just a few decades in 1919.


Steel Processing and Conversion, p 385
The article describes welding as "one of the most recent developments" in railroad repair work. The Burnside Shops had two kinds --- oxy-acetylene and electric. The company has its own gas generating plant and pipes the gas to five district stations in the boiler shop, machine shop, erecting shop, roundhouse, and smith shop. Fig. 4 illustrates the welding station in the smith shop. Oxy-acetylene can also be used to cut metal.
Steel Processing and Conversion, p 385
Fig. 5 shows the electric welding station. The canvas walls around it are to protect other workers in the building from the glare of the arc. Evidently electric welding was so new in 1919 that the welding helmet had yet to be invented. "Each operator is equipped with a pair of blue glasses and a hand screen. The later is held in the hand and the operator is able to observe his results through the oblong colored glass at the apex of the shield." The axle has been turned down on a lathe to make room for the rows of welds that are being added to the axle.

The article also describes 3 new electric furnaces used to harden tools and a "carburizing" furnace, but that is beyond my understanding/interest.

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