The Works Of Messrs. Schneider And Co.

78 MESSES. SCHNEIDER AND CO.’S WORKS. the same line with the rolling-mill building. The space covered by these stores was formerly occupied by the heavy rail-finishing machines. The shops of secondary importance are those containing the machine tools for maintaining the plant in repair; the testing shop and buildings covering the circulating pumps ; the electric station, &c. About 14 kilometres (9 miles) of normal gauge railway are laid in the shops and yards, the lines being united to the blast-furnaces and steel works throuo'h the tunnel which runs under the town ; they are besicles object for which the plant had originally been established), from the point of arrivai of the pig, until the rolied material reaches the delivery wharf, a straight line is followed forward through the puddling furnaces, the shingling hammers, the roughing rolis, the shears, the piling, the reheating furnaces, the finishing roils, the inspection plat- form, and the delivery on the railway trucks. Since 1869 steel has gradually superseded iron, and at the present time more than half of tlie products manu- facturée! at Messrs. Schneider and Co.’s rolling milis are connectée! with the other departments of the works, and also to the Paris-Lyon and Mediterranean Railway. The quantity of erude material worked, averages about 150,000 tons per annum ; the coal consumption is about the same quantity, while 120,000 to 140,000 tons of finished products are turned out annually. Four liglit locomotives and thirteen portable steam crânes serve the varions shops. The plant has been arranged so as to obtain systematic and continuons working, and to prevent the carrying back- wards and forwards of the material under treatment ; the cost of manufacture has been thus reduced considerably. For instance, as regards the manufacture of iron (the sole of steel. The ingots, as a rule, are received hot from the steel works, and are distributed among the varions milis for direct rolling ; in several cases, however, the ingots are first turned into biooms. The rolling miils occupy 3,000 workmen in day and night shifts, no work being clone on Sunday. The necessary motive power is produced by 140 steam engines of varions sizes, their total energy being 11,000 nominal horse-power. There are besicles fourteen steam hammers. The necessary steam for the whole of the plant is produced by boilers placecl near tlie puddling and reheating furnaces ; they are connected with each other, and produce 800 tons of steam every