The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

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HARTFORD, JUNE 15, 1893.
J. M. Allen, Editor. A. D. Risteex, Associate Editor.
The Locomotive can he obtaiiud free by calling at any of the company's agencies.
Subscription price 50 cents per year when mailed from this office.
Bound volumes one dollar each. (Any volume, except 1881. can he supplied.)
Papers that borrow cuts from us will do us a favor if they will mark them plainly in returning
so that we may give proper credit on our books.
By an unfortunate typographical error in our May issue, the date of Mr. H. D. P.
Bigelow's death was stated to be February 3d. It should have been February 25th.
The American Mechanic, an engineers' paper published in Chicago, recently printed
a photo-engraving of an -'inspector ready for -work." The engraving was a good one.
It would have been courteous, however, for the Mechanic to say that we furnished it.
Inspector Dodge, of our Northwestern department, repeats what he said in a
recent issue about washing out boilers from beneath the tubes. "I find,"' he says, "that
encrineers out this way are inclined to neglect opening their boilers on top. They do
most of their washing from the lower man-hole, under the tubes; and in my opinion this-
is a very bad practice, for when the stream of wash-water turns to come back over the
top of the tubes its force is pretty well spent, and it is of little account for removing the
dirt and scale that remain above and between the tubes; a boiler treated in this way
may look fine when viewed from the lower man-hole, and yet it may be badly incrusted
between the tubes, and a large amount of sediment and dirt may remain above ; whereaa
if they would do most of their washing from the top, they would have no trouble, in
most cases, in keeping their boilers clean. For they would then have the force of water
above the dirt and scale, where it would do the most good.''
The First Casting" Made in America.
The first iron casting made in America was a kettle or three-legged pot, weighing-
2 lbs. 4 oz., and holding nearly one quart. It was produced in 1642 at the Saugus Iron
Works, and was claimed, as part of the purchase consideration, by the land-owner who^
furnished the site for the undertaking. He appears to have valued it, and for several
generations it descended from father to son as an heirloom; then it passed for two gen-
erations through the female line, and lastly into a collateral branch of the family. It
has recently been purchased by Mr. John E. Hudson, a lineal descendant of the first
owner, and presented by him to the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, which is in part built
upon the ground originally occupied by the works. Several other of the citizens com-
bined to add a case containing a tablet, w-hich should be an example of the state of iron-