Omaha daily bee., 1912-07-21

greatest industrial exposition
the world has to offer. 1t is
I@8N now in operation on the canal
~ zone. 1t IS not dead mass
of silent machinery, but a great, noisy,
whirling combination, drilling. digging
and blasting a gorge through the longest
mountain chain upon earth 1t includes
mighty dredges which are conquering the
ocean, and a myrad Of trains which are
moving material faster than the widest
creations of the dreams Of Aladdin.
Much Of the exposition has already been
pictured, but the parts ] shall show you
today are outside the great ditch. They
are not engaged in the work itself, but in
keeping the mighty forces in good order.
] refer to the repair shops of the isthmus.
There are tens Of acres Of them, rooted
with galvanized iron and inhabited by
thousands of mechanics, who are creating
new machinery and repairing and
Strengthening that now in use. There are
vast warehouses filled with all kinds OF
supplies from bits Of steel as fine as a
needle to the mighty arms which lift the
steam shovels, from the finest silk thread
Fto cables as thick as your leg and from
1.-THE hard bits of wood used In the patterns
Pto the log-like planks for repairing the
FLidgerwood cars.
Right here at Gorgona are more than
ftwenty-one acres Of machinery engaged
f'in making repairs, and at Empire, only
*about six miles away. are other great
kshops where steam shovels are erected,
locomotives mended and broken heavy
machinery of all kinds made new. There
are smaller repair shops at Pedro Miguel
and Gatun, devoted to the construction
equipment Of the locks near by, and. at
fCristobal and Balboa. still others de-
voted to keeping the big dredges In order.
The variety of work is beyond conception.
but you can learn something Of 1t by the
STORY Of what saw today.
Machine shops at Gorgona.
Take. for instance, Gcrgona- This Is
THE biggest repairing establishment Uncle
Sam has on the isthmus. 1t was begun
by the French, and when I was here In
f1sO5, 1t had just been cut out Of the
Jungle. When We bought the canal the
engineers did not know of its existence
ut was hidden in a dense vegetation, and
they were surprised when they found q
building covering a half dozen acres,
containing a complete equipment OF ma
chine tools, including stationary engines
and over 100 carloads of foundry and
machine shop supplies. The works were
at once renovated and put to repairing
the French machinery for use on the
canal At the time l first saw them,
they had already repaired 1000 dump
cars, thirty or forty locomotives and
large number of cranes, excavators and
drills Among these was an old French
excavator, which was put into service
lin the Culebra cut, and used nearly
eighteen months, until replaced by a
steam shovel.
Shortly after that time the government
decided to make this its chief shop, and
since then it has been doing the most OF
the repairs with the exception of that on
the steam shovels and some of that on
the dredges. During this trip / saw men
at work on the heaviest of the canal
equipment, handling the masses OF iron
and steel which weigh many tons and
can only be lifted by steam cranes. /
saw them also working on clocks,
watches, adding machines, typewriters
and water gauges, and doing the finest
Of jewelry repairing under the same
roof. In addition to fixing the old tools
of the canal they were making new Ones
and were also adding to the strength OK
the machinery just sent down from the
states.
Inventing New Machinery.
I went through the works with the
superintendent. Mr. A. L. Robinson, who
has under him something like 5000 me-
chancs He talked with me as to the
strengthening of the machines. Said he
Nearly every part OF these big tools
sent to the isthmus has had to be remade
or strengthened, as the most OF them
are not strong enough to do the heavy
work here. Take, for instance, the
spreaders, which smooth out the dumps,
each doing the work of hundreds of men.
We ordered the strongest, but those
which came were not sufficiently strong
for the work We then brought down
the inventors, and they stayed for two
months on the isthmus studying the
problem and trying to make new ma
chimes One of these men designed a
spreader, which looked all right upon
paper, and we ordered eight. When they
came, we found that they were still
too weak, and we had to bring them into
the shops and strengthen most Of the
parts" -
"As a result Of this kind of work" con-
tinued Mr.. Robinson, 'we have here on
the isthmus machinery which had never
been used, before we began building the
canal. A, great part of the excavation
is rock, and the wear and tear is enor-
smous. Take our steel cables which are
used on the. Lidgerwood cars. The first
we had would unload only about 800 trains
and then break. We then got the manu-
facturers at work developing better ones,
and We have now a wire cable that will
unload 1880 trains, or six times as many
oHg&M