THE ANATOMY OF A STEEL RAIL 57 



ning Express" and people are hurled to destruction; yet 

 chemical analysis alone of the defective metals used showed 

 them to have been apparently reputable ; they had the 

 requisite amounts of carbon, manganese, and silicon, and 

 not too much sulphur or phosphorus, but just like many a 

 person who mingles with his associates for years, and some 

 day suddenly is found to be "bad," so did these metals 

 outwardly and inwardly, as far as the chemist was con- 

 cerned, appear to be fulfilling their duties as respectable 

 adjuncts to our civilization. 



But take the bad boiler-plate or the defective rail and 

 prepare it for examination under the microscope, and the 

 whole reason for its failure to do its duty becomes as clear 

 to the trained metallurgist as that the arsenic which the 

 chemist finds in the stomach of the lifeless patient was the 

 cause of his death. 



To elaborate a little farther, let us take a steel rail, a 

 plain every-day steel rail such as is used on all our rail- 

 roads to hold up the daily loads of human beings and 

 freight transported from one place to another. This rail 

 is the band which joins one state to another, the East with 

 the West, and one country with its neighbor. This rail 

 was shaped from a huge white-hot piece of steel by being 

 passed successively through properly shaped rolls. Sup- 

 pose we saw out of the center of this rail a small specimen, 

 about a one-half inch cube, and explain how it may be 

 treated to bring forth its internal skeleton. 



After cutting out our specimen with a steel saw, the 

 piece must be ground to a plane surface on an emery 

 wheel, given a second and smoother finish on another wheel 

 fed with flour-emery, lastly receiving its final polish on two 

 wooden wheels covered with the finest and smoothest broad- 

 cloth and fed respectively with a paste of tripoli and rouge 

 powder. This whole operation of polishing, when done by 

 an expert, occupies only about fifteen minutes. 



Emerging from the rouge treatment, the metal stands 

 forth in its best clothes, with not a spot or scratch to mar 



