. History of the city of Altoona and Blair County : including sketches of the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. . fter serving its time it is condemned,taken out and dis^posed of, and that is the end of it. At the shops ofthe Pennsylvania Railroad no spring is received from the manufac-turer that does not rigidly conform to a prepared specification, a speci-fication that calls not only for absolutely correct dimensions, but in-sists upon a soft, slow movement, regularity of action, certain qual-ity of steel, and a hundred requirements which cause the spring to beas near perfection as poss
. History of the city of Altoona and Blair County : including sketches of the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. . fter serving its time it is condemned,taken out and dis^posed of, and that is the end of it. At the shops ofthe Pennsylvania Railroad no spring is received from the manufac-turer that does not rigidly conform to a prepared specification, a speci-fication that calls not only for absolutely correct dimensions, but in-sists upon a soft, slow movement, regularity of action, certain qual-ity of steel, and a hundred requirements which cause the spring to beas near perfection as possible. Such springs, also, are not only testedbefore Ijeing placed to determine their probable performance, but aretested again after condemnation, to better ascertain the cause of failure,or, in other words, to learn just how new springs must be made toobviate what proved weakness in the old. Everything is thereforebased on a system of betterments ; on the theory of always improv-ing by correcting each discovered fault; a system of thorough eman-cipation from ])lunder, with the always sought result of ..^d^AC- ^£-Z ■^-^noi^-ia^ w^ MOTIVE POWER DEPARTMENT OR UPPER SHOPS. We have premised this much to give to the reader a faint idea ofthe spirit which pervades the upper machine shop to which we areabout to introduce him. And it must be always borne in mind thatit is entirely on the initiative of the Pennsjlvania Railroad that theexperiments to which we shall call attention have been instituted andcarried to their ])resent conclusion ; experiments that, while everyrailroad would readily acknowledge to be of inestimable value, wouldyet leave to the manufacturers to carry out. And they, for want ofbetter facilities, never could carry them out. Bearing this in mind, HISTORY OF ALTOONA AND BLAIR COUNTY. 159 we will enter the machine shops and learn about the birth, life anddeath of a railroad locomotive. As we pass over Twelfth streetbridge that arches the main line, s
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