Lewis war diary, August 1917-March 1919 / James Ray Lewis - Page 57
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[Page 57]
the station is as big as Euston in London. A few days later I went through the works which are some of the largest railway works in England. There you can see the iron ore going in and the finished engine coming out. The workshops if put end to end would be 3 miles in length, and they employ 8000 men.
In no 1 shop they were making steel; as I entered, it had all been run out of the vats into moulds which stood on miniature railway trucks, which were pulled wherever they were wanted by miniature railway engines.
At no 2 shop, steel rails and lengths were being made. A piece of steel about a yard long and a foot thick were and red hot were run through rollers, actuated by a large engine and gradually drawn into shape till it produced a rail some 50 feet in length which was afterwards straightened. Here also one could see the machine that bit the iron into lengths, red hot iron up to a foot thick was bitten through like putty.
In the next shop one could see carriage and engine wheels being