Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/230

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AN ENGLISH RAILWAY.

eight hand cranes used for special purposes, and one 5-ton and one lo-ton hydraulic crane in the yard, for dealing with exceptionally heavy articles.

A goods station of the London and North-Western Company, which has excited the attention, and, to some extent the admiration, of foreign engineers and railway managers who have visited this country for the purpose of comparing their own methods and appliances with ours, is Holyhead. The Company have devoted a great amount of attention to cultivating and encouraging the trade between England and Ireland, and one means to this end has been the provision of very complete and admirably adapted accommodation at Holyhead, for the transfer of traffic between the railway waggons and the fleet of steamers belonging to the Company, seventeen in number, and having a gross tonnage of 6,128 tons, by means of which a daily service is established between Holyhead and the North Wall, Dublin.

Holyhead Harbour, the entire quay frontage of which is about 3,760 feet, has an area of twenty-four acres, and an average depth at high and low water of thirty feet and twelve and a half feet respectively, the transhipment of the goods being carried on in two large warehouses, each about 750 feet in length, erected on the quays on the east and west sides of the harbour, of which the one on the east side is devoted exclusively to the export traffic, or traffic going from England to Ireland, and the one on the west side to the traffic from Ireland to England. Lines of rails, conveniently connected with the railway, run right through both warehouses, with a platform or loading deck, fifteen feet wide, running throughout between the lines of rails and the quay. In each warehouse there are six hydraulic cranes, having a rake of