"TURNING OUT ONE COMPLETE TRAIN A DAY," Winnipeg Tribune. December 4, 1913. Page 13. ---- Shops at Angus Largest of Their Kind in the Dominion-C.P.R. Building Cars of Steel ---- The Canadian Pacific railway's shops at Angus, in the extreme northeast of Montreal, are the largest of their kind in the Dominion. Here pig iron is turned into monster locomotives with shiny fittings, and when roughhewn logs are not employed made into palace parlor cars. Angus shopmen boast that the plant is capable of turning out a complete train a day. When the entire force is working an army of 6.000 men are employed at the works.
From the boy who deftly catches bucket of red-hot bolts tossed to him from a forge twenty feet away, to the expert engaged in tuning and testing the bells and sirens which are to clangs and whistle in Saskatchewan or Austria, every person at Angus fits into his niche of the intricate organization and there is no confusion and no de-ay.
When the Pennsylvania railroad system completed its tunnel into New York, it made a regulation that no wooden cars were to make use of its lines. This led the railway companies of Canada to construct steel cars, for which the public had been agitating for some time, as they constituted less risk to the tray.... So that now wooden cars are gradually disappearing and will soon be 3 thing of the past.
The decision on the part of the Canadian Pacific to build its cars of steel instead of using wooden bodies, while not exactly a new step in Industrial activity, will probably be taken up on a larger scale than ever before on this continent. The capacity of the new steel shops which have just been completed is ten cars a day, and this department of the works is now running full blast.
Assembling a Steel Car. When the trucks are delivered from the trucks shop, steel girders, punched for bolts and rivets, are hoisted on cranes and held in position while a workman with a hydraulic drill drives the fasteners into place. The assembling of a steel car is much more speedy than the old method of building wooden coaches, using the trucks as foundation. A large amount of the old equipment which was used in the construction of the wooden cars 14 being reconverted and adapted for the making of the new carriers.
This department of the Angus shops is now in the course of transposition and will be much condensed, as wooden parts required will be much less numerous. The wooden box which forms the exterior of the freight car is fastened outside of the girders and can be replaced on the same car when it wears out.
Comfort and Luxury. Although the project of making all cars, passenger and freight alike, with steel frames, has been proposed, and is now under serious consideration by the C. P. R., no move has been made at Angus towards installing a steel plant for passenger coaches. The general plan of assembling a passenger car is that used in other train work, the component parts being added to the trucks, which are set in the erecting pits to be built upon.
The finished parlor car is in itself an achievement, for here not only safety and utility are to be considered but comfort and luxury for the passengers.
Coaling Up Real Test of Engine. Coaling up is the real test of an engine's worth. Parts may have been perfect and preliminary inspection may have found no defect in the whole, but engines are made to run, and if this one will not, back it goes through a long series of tests and examinations to discover where is its weak point. As with ships at their first launching, the constructing engineer who has planned the whole is never certain that his locomotive will run without mishap.
To the east of the Angus shop is a side track where the monster engines are first tried with coal in the bunkers and steam in the boiler.
A little group always gathers around the new engine. Fires have been laid, the smoke pours through the exhaust pipe and the fireman gives a preliminary tug at the bell rope Then the grisled engineer, who is the only one who does not appear excited. throws open a throttle, opens the siren into hideous shriek, and the leviathan chugs along the track, as if this were no new feat and it had been chugging along tracks for years.
The little group of foremen and inspectors give a weak hurrah, as they have done for hundreds of new locomotives since the first was turned out In a few minutes the big engine has steamed backwards into its place at the end of the erecting pits, and stands all ready to go on the "main line."
