As I rambled around the repair shops belonging to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa F'e during a recent visit to Topeka, Kans., I received the impression that there was a curious want of fitness between the railroad company as a property and the provision for keeping the machinery in running order. There was a time when this company was noted for the lavish expenditures on everything that seemed necessary, and many that were not necessary, for first-class railroad equipment, but by omitting to provide first-class repair shops, the management of the day of luxury neglected a very important element in the forces that work prosperity for a railroad company. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa F'e, with its proprietary lines, is the longest railroad in the world - a road not only great in mileage but great in all that contributes to make a lucrative carrying business. It extends from the lakes to the Pacific Ocean by two arms, while another stretches southeast to the Gulf of Mexico. The trunk and branches of this great railroad traverse regions where originate nearly every species of merchandise or produce which this continent offers for transportation. All that business can do to secure prosperity appears to be assured, and it seems strange to find the principal repair and manufactoring establishment of such a system crowded into small, badly arranged, dark buildings that provide the worst facilities for doing work economically. The machine shops were originally designed for a bridge building factory, and the intention was that it should be temporarily used for locomotive purposses; but that is twenty years ago, and other makeshift buildings have been added. Entirely new works are one of the most urgently needed improvements contemplated by the present management, and I should think no line of enterprise would bring better returns.
The motive power of this system is of a charater that for some years may be depended upon to keep steadily employed the men working on repairs. Mr. Strong, who was, under different titles, so long general manager of road, provided plenty of work for men who earn a livelihood by repairing locomotives. Mr. Strong had a mission to make men happy, and he worked for the good of the greatest number, which did not happen to be the stockholders of the company he ran. They were indifferent about who built locomotives, but there were others who looked upon this as being more important even than the question of who shall get the best rooms at the convention. In following the policy of being beneficent all round, Mr. Strong habitually divided up the orders for rolling stock among as many firms as possible. this warmed the hearts of a great many people, and helped divers struggling manufactures to make a living, but it brought a bad legacy for future managers of the Santa F'e. I have for years been preaching with some persistency the gospel of uniformity in railroad rolling stock, as the only means of reducing the cost of repairs to its lowest terms. Those who doubt the wisdom of my doctrines can find on the Santa F's system a good illustration of the results of the opposite policy. The company appears to be owners of all kinds of locomotives built in the last twenty years, and no builder who has put engines together in that time has failed to effect sales at Topeka. Besides that, a visitor can examine side by side in the round-house a Strong locomotive, and that engine built to hold the Walker smoke consumer. There is no place that I know of better than Topeka where a thoughtful man may observe dreadful examples of the results that come from the head of a railroad company considering hemself the best judge of the rolling stock required. The diverse nature of its motive power is going for years to defeat the efforts of the men now struggling to keep the cost of operating at a low figure, and the blame of this rests on those who were a law unto themselves on the placing of orders for new engines.
WIth all the disadvantage and drawbacks that the inferior shop accommodation presents, the men in charge turn out a wonderful quantity of work. The experience that Mr. John Player, superintendent of machinery, previously had on roads with no facilities worth speaking of for doing repairs to rolling stock, has stood of high value to this company, for he has merely carried out old practices on a larger scale. The guiding principle in doing work on the rolling stock is, attend merely to essentials. To produce good results it is necessary that bearings and rubbing parts should be well finished, but parts that are generally polished to look well are non-essentials. These receive little attention here. With locomotives the policy apppears to be, keep the tires, dods, journals and bearings in good order, keep the cylinders round and the valves flat, the boilers clean and the heating surfaces free from leaks. When these conditions are preserved the engines are in good working order and can haul trains as well as those that have been the object of much more laborious attention to details. The same common sensepractice is adopted in the repair of all other members of the rolling stock family.
The policy of leaving alone all superfluities enables men and tolls to turn out what seems to be an extraordinary volume of work, but the efforts of bothe are aided by the very best kind of shop management. The shop tools are arranged with a view of making it convenient for one man to attend to more than one machine, and numerous special methods are employed for doing work quickly. They use an attachment to a planer which makes the tool cut in a cicular form. This is utilized to great advantage in finishing driving axle box bearings. Instead of putting each box on the slotter to have the bearings finished, they put as many of them on the table of a big lathe as it will hold, and the tool finihes them al uniformly. Emery wheel planers are employed very successfully on a variety of finishing operations, all flat surfaces that can be reached being trued in this way. Few shops make better use ofthe emery wheel in its various forms.
The great amount of work to be done in the shops enables the foremen to keep men constantly on recurring operations, and the dexterity acquired materially increases production. They have one latheman who will turn out a full set of consolidation engine crank pins in a day. Great attention is bestowed upon keeping crank pins true. A journal that is 1/32 inch out of round has to be trued up. In the month before my visit they put in 84 new crank pins. In the same time they turned 140 driving-wheel tires on three lathes. Two small Bement wheel lathes turn three pairs of wheels a day. Some older lathes are kept busy finishing one pair of wheels a day, but the company feel too poor to use them at present The air brake and the injector repairing departments of this shop are each run by one man and a boy, and the amount of work done is surprising. They use a boring mill that was not stiff enough for rapid wheel work to bore out axle boxes, face steam chest stuffing boxes, turn up piston packing, and do a great many other things usually performed on the lathe. In this tool a young man bored and faced six driving-boxes in four and a half hours.
Although repairing is done under the demand to rush the work, unusually strict attention is bestowed to the inspection and testing of parts seemingly in good order, and liable to have hidden defects that might cause failure on the road. The whole of the running-gear is subjected to the most searching examination, and the slightest flaw in a vital part leads to rejection. Cylinders with all attachments and the studs and bolts, steam pipes, dry pipe, are all carefully gone over and defects remedied. They have a novel way of banding crank pin hub also, and face the crank down. The holes for both the hubs are then bored in a forging 1-1/4" inch thick, and this is shrunk on. It is a stronger plan than the single band, and it prevents throwing the pin out of quarter. Mr. Geo W. Smith the master mechanic in charge here, is an excellent shop manager, and is full of resources for carrying on the work to the best advantage.
An expriment in car lighting with electricity was tried by this company, and after a time was abandoned. The dynamos used were sent to the shops, and Mr. Smith is utilizing them to good advantage in dispelling some of the obscurity in the shops. They are run all day. The work men felt no inclination to resist the change that gave electric light in place of the malodorous torch. The small Brotherhood engines that were used for driving the dynamos in the cars are utilized in the shop as portable power for drilling, boring, planing, etc.
A plain cast-iron stack is used here with chimney and base cast together. It is finished ready to put on for $13. This stack has a plain top without even a rim. The steam passing out causes a slight musical note with the suggestion of a whistle. Quite a number of the engines have been equipped with the concentric expanding nozzle, which we illustrated in October last. The engines have a remarkably soft exhaust, and are said to steam well with a great reduction of fuel.
I remember once hearing in England some sailors dilating on the attractions of the different countries they had visited. One of them said, "America is the greatest country on the ocean. You can get more kinds of drinks there than in all other countries I have been to." If America is the ne plus ultra of mixed drinks for the human palate, the Santa F'e railroad sukpplies the most diverse mixture of beverages for the stomcach of the iron horse. They have on that line all varieties of water known to nature or art. There are in some regions the pure H2O that falls from the coulds and passes over insoluble primary rocks that part with no impurity and convey it untainted to the storage tank. That is the exception, for the plains and mountains traversed by the road are rich in minerals that dissolve readily in water, and commoner than the pure product the clouds is an alkaline - charged mixture nearly as full of solids as the contents of a soda-water fountain. Between the best and the worst there are acid and alkaline waters in great variety, each having its own peculiarity, and the different kinds harmonizing only in the evil effects which they produce on the heating surfaces of locomotive boilers.
Owing to this the boiler shop of these works is of unusually great importance. The extent of the work called for may be inferred from the fact that during the first three months of this year they put in 20 new fireboxes, cut, welded and reset 14,350 flues, made one entiely new boiler, and had sixteen other new fireboxes partly made, besides keeping up the current work of patching, caulking and putting in new stay - bolts. Besides this a great deal of work was done in repairing iron car trucks. This was all done with 135 men working eight hours a day. Mr. Archie Baird, the boiler - shop foreman here, is an exceptionally good man in his line, and there is full scope for all his energy. There are few places where a foreman boiler - maker of intelligence, energy and good judgment is more needed. Owing to theravages taht some kinds of feed - water make on the sheets vigilant and rigid inspections are necessary to prevent explosions. The best of judgment and ingenuity in searching for defects are called for to prevent boilers from being passed as sound whenthey are decayed beyond the limit of safety. From what I saw of fireboxes removed and lying in the scrap heap, an ordinary inspector might go over the surfaces exposed to view and find nothing the matter, when the whole of sheets exposed to the water were eaten away in big spots, like huge smallpox pts, till the thickness of the metal was often less than 1/16 inch. A great many attempts have been made on this road to neutralize the effects of impure water by mechanical separators and chemical reagents, but nothing is used now but the washout hose. Systematic means have been employed to make washing out as effective as possible, and plugs are located so the boiler and firebox, where mud or scale usually accumulates. The tubes in the boilers are set with unusually large clearance space, and in vertical rows. A great many locomotives belonging to this company have the fireboxcrowns supported by radial stay - bolts, but there is talk of abandoning the practice owing to the cracking of back flue sheets.
The remarks about the inferior buildings that serve as machine shops do not apply to the car shops where our old and popular friend Mr. John Hodge holds forth. He has got modern shops well arranged, and a particularly good planing mill. Mr. Hodge had just finished the rebuilding of a Pullman palace car which had beenhammered into fragments in a wreck, and the work done appeared to compare favorable with the best performance of the Pullman shops. There is little or no work going on in the car shops except repairs. An exception is the building of some cabooses for freight service, or rather for stock trains. Each car is made with eight sleeping berths for the accommodation of stock men, and the extra comfort thus provided is highly appreciated. The berths entail little extra expense, as the upper berth is merely a folding shelf which holds mattress and can be put up during the day.
The standard freight car truck of this road is a swing center iron truck of the pattern recommended to the M.C.B Association several years ago. It is considered a good truck of its kind, but expensive to repair and very often in need of repairs. They are changing it and making the center rigid. The iron trucks are repaired in the boiler shop, and the foreman declares that it occupies his men half the time. When a truck made of channel iron goes into a wreck, it generally comes out ready for the shop but it is all there, as the darky said when he explained why he preferred getting mashed in a railroad assident than being droned at sea.
Mr. W. T. Hogan, foreman of hte paint shop, keeps the cleanest and most orderly establishment I have ever seen and his system of doing work appears to be as nearly perfect as it can be made. They were turning out about thirty newly painted passenger cars a month when I was there besides a very large amount of locomotive and freight work, and the force of men is abnormally small, but thepainting is done all the same. The secret of the success in this shop appears to be that the work is moved along in such an orderly fashion that no stroke is lost and no time is wasted between jobs. They have an exceptionally well arranged storeroom and mixing - room. All brushes are cleaned here and stored at night ready for work in the morning.
They have lately chnaged the color of the passenger equipment from yello to tuscan red, and are pushing the work of getting over them all to secure uniformity. A plan of uniform lettering has been worked out by Mr. Hogan, and blue prints are kept showing sizes, form, position and color of all letters and numbers for the whole rolling stock. These are sent out to all division points, and must be adhered to in doing work. When there is time to go over all the equipment this road will have as uniform style of painting and lettering as the Pennsylvania system.
Not only is the lettering and finish required to be done with uniformity, but all painting operations are controlled according to "rules and instructions," posted in the shop for the information of all concerned. I qoute two items taken from the instructions for painting locomotives;
"All coats of paint applied on tank, dome, cab, cylinders etc., should be well brushed out and laid off with a light touch of the brush. This will add greatly to the drying qualities and make paint free from brush marks all the way through the various coats, giving a good surface they can go over in a short time and do not brush paint out properly. Work of this kind will dry on the outside and not next to the iron, with the result that the paint does not "clinch" itself and is a very poor foundation for subsequent coats.
In setting head - light glass in frame, place between ground and plain glass a piece of thin tim, L-shaped, 4 inches long, at both ends of frame, and bore two 1/8 inch holes 9 inches apart in bottom of frame. The tim will prevent the glass rubbing together and the holes will prevent moisture from settling."
They have a very expeditious way of removing old paint from tanks and other iron surfaces which is thus described in Mr. Hogan's rules:
"When it is necessary to remove old paint from cylinders, tank, steam chest, driving wheels, rods, etc., use a preparation of 25 pounds potash, 5 pounds sal soda, 1 quart light liquid ammonia, 25 gallons water, made still with dry slaked lime and applied with bricklayer's trowel. Let the coat stand from three to six hours, when the old paint can be removed with a wide scraping - knife. Then wash off thoroughly with water and a stiff broom. Dry off with rags and go over surface freely with two parts linseed oil and one part benzine, and scournicely with wire brush, removing all rust and scale. Then wash clean with benzine and rags, sandpaper lighltly, dust off and prime."
Mr. John Player is making a very decided success in his management of the machinery department of this company, and I should like to direct attention to one feature of the policy he has followed. He has made the best use of the personnel he found on the road. Some men, when they go to take charge of a new road, think that to insure success it is necessary to take with them a host of folloers and friends to fill the leading positions of trust and responsiblilty. That invariably arouses jealousy and discontentment among the men who have been working faithfully for the company previously, and the new officers is soon surrounded by covert enemies, where friends are urgently needed. Mr. Player took no followers. He asked for the support and cooperation of the men in the company's service and received it heartily. The only conditions that he ezacted were competency and desire to work for the best interest of the company. His success ought to give a lesson to men who pursue the other course.
A.S.
This portion The National Car and Locomotive Builder transcribed in altered form by Russell L. Crump
Established 04/22/96-Updated 08/26/2008
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