El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-07-20


eeption, but YOU can learn something
of it by the story of what J saw today.
Uncle Sans Machine Steps.
Take, for instance, Gorgona. This is
the biggest repairing establishment Uncle
Sam has on the isthmus. 1t was begun
by the French, and when l was here IN
1905 it had lust been cut out of the
Jungle When we bought the canal the
engineers did not know Of its existence.
1t was hidden in a dense vegetation and
they were surprised when they found
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,
thew had already repaired a thousand
dump cars. thirty or forty locomotives
and a large number Of cranes. eXca-
vators and drills. Among these was an
old French excavatOT which was put into
service in 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 repair 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
ca nOnlv be lifted by steam cranes l
saw them also working on clocks.
watches. adding machines. tNDewTiters
and waite rgages, and doing the finest
of iewelry 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 of
the machinery lust sent down from the
states.
Inventing New Machinery.
I went through the works with the
superintendent, A L. Robinson. who
has under him something ike 5000 me-
chanics. 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
o strengthened. as the most of them are
not strong enough to do the heavy work
here. Take, for instance, the spreaders
which smoth 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 is
thmus studying the problem and irving
to make new machines. One of these
men designed a spreader, which looked
all right upon paper. and we ordered
eight When they came, we found htaJ
they were still too weak. and we had to
bring them into the shops and
strengthen most of the parts"
CAS- a result of this kind of work"
continued Mr. Robinson. eve have here
on the isthmus machinery which had
never been used before we began build
ing the canal A great part of the eX-
cavation Is rock. and the wear and tear
is enormous. 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 manufacturers at work to develop
ing better ones. and we have now a wire
cable that will unload 1900 trains. or
six times as MANY as used at the start.
This last cable Is expensive. 1t costs US
A cents a foot. but it does the work.
Repairing Lidgerwood Cars.
We were walking through the car-re-
pairing shop when the above conversation
occurred and Mr.. Robinson stopped me
to show me one of the new LidgerwoOd
cars. Those now used are a creation of
Panama. The first sent down to the
istAmus were like the common flat cars !