The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1846-10-15
Railroad Iron.

The Yarmouth Register has the following
interesting d~escriptionof the process ofmanu
featuring railroad iron at the Wareham works
The company IS now employed in the
manufacture of railroad iron, which is a new
business, and the first cargo having beer
shipped from the works on the twelfth inst
1t is thought that it can be made as cheaplv
as it can be imported. A gentleman who
has recently visited the iron works in Eng.
land, says there is no establishment in that
country at which better railroad iron can be
manufactured than at the fremont works.
There are eight furnaces now in operation
and when the works are completed there will
be thirteen. The large breast water wheel,
attached to the rolling and other machinery,
is 25 feet long and 20 feetin diameter, The
first process in the manufacture is called
puddiiag and Blooming. By these operations,
the crude pig iron is freed from the oxygen,
carbon and other foreign substances, and
changed into malleablc iron. The pig iron is
placed in a puddLing furnace, where it is
raised to a very high temperature. The
molten liquid mass is frequently stirred by the
workmen with long iron bars inserted into
a small opening in the door of the furnace,
to facilitate the combination Of the carbon
SLiNl Jay VII LAlJCl bIIl llillb lilC illlI1l
assumes the consistence of a stiff paste. The
doors Of the furnace are then opened, and
masses of two or three hundred weight are
drawn out, and subjected to the action of a
heavy tilt hammer, by which a portion of OK
yde Of iron, carbon and other Heterogeneous
substances not consumed during the fusion,
are forced out. The workmen hold and turn
the iron under the hammer with long iron
49,, -l..I. l,.a,,o ,ro11ol H. A. I,1f,..14a.
mass. This operation is called blooming, and
the iron, after being subjected to the action
of the tilt hammer, blooms.
The second process is rolling by which the
blooms are converted into bar iron. The vast
blooms are again heated, and passed several
times between a pair Of heavy cylindrical
cast iron rollers, a foot or more in diameter.
On the circumference of each of the rollers
grooves are cut of the width of the intended
bar, and the last of a series of a depth equal
to half its thickness. One heat is sufficient
to reduce the bloom to a bar. 1t is first pas
sed through the deepest groove, then passed
back over the upper roller, then through the
mex shallower grooves and so on to the last
which finishes the war. No force is neces-
sary after the end of the bar is entered the
of tnerollers draws the bar through.
For railroad iron the bars are rolled down
to one inch in thickness; one-third are six
wide, and two thirds, three inches
The bars are cut into p%eiccs four feet long by
machinery. A six inch bar of cold iron is
clipped off in an instant. These pieces are
piled into bundles consisting of three six-inch
and six three-inch pieces, one of the six-ineh
bars being iron that has been rolled twice
This forms the lower part of the rail, for the
iron must be of the best quality, or the langes
which are only one-fa,rth of an inch, are
liable to be cracked in rolling,