Volume One - Into the Victorian Age - Activity at the docks . . .

The visit to local industrial undertakings included a trip to the Taff Vale Locomotive shops nearby the Bute Dock at Cardiff:

Taff Vale Railway Loco Shops - "The locomotive and repairing shops of the Taff Vale Railway are situated close to the Bute Docks. The erecting shop is in the middle of the yard, and contains eleven pits; and there is room also for four boilers to come in for having their mountings fitted on.

Under a lean-to roof seven other boilers can also be fitted. Thus eleven boilers can be prepared and eleven engines erected at the same time. The pits lie across the shop; and there are traversers at each end of the shop, running the entire length. Over any pit can also be placed a portable gantry, driven by belt from the shop shafting.

Around the yard are various machine-shops, with the necessary tools for turning out locomotive and hydraulic work, a good deal of the latter being for use at Penarth dock and harbour, for the hydraulic cranes and coal machinery. A tube-drawing apparatus is used for working up old brass boiler-tubes that have become defective at the ends, instead of cutting the ends off and piecing them; the tube is drawn cold through a pair of dies tapering slightly smaller than the tube; the diameter of the tube is thereby very slightly diminished but the thickness is rather increased, and the length is increased sufficiently to allow of cutting off the defective end.

In the yard is a gas furnace for heating tyres by means of two semicircular gas and air pipes pierced with holes. In the boiler shop are hydraulic riveters with compound accumulator: the stationary machine has a 7 ft. gap, so as to rivet up a whole boiler-barrel, and it will also take in work 20 ins. wide for girders; the portable machine is for riveting foundation and fire-hole rings. In the smiths' shop are two small steam hammers, and two of Allen's steam strikers, which latter have to a great extent superseded the spring oliver previously used."

• 1884 - The Taff Vale Railway Company have purchased in the North of England a large dredger for the purpose of deepening the Channel to the Penarth Dock. - The Shipping World [703] [499] February 1884.