Detroit Locomotive Works

The Detroit Locomotive Works completed and forwarded to Chicago on Friday one of the largest sized propeller boilers -- barely small enough to pass under the railroad bridges -- for the propeller Union, running between Chicago and Port Sarnia, in connection with the grand Trunk and Great Western Railways.

The boiler is of the return flue description and in plan, materials and workmanship one of the most perfect we have seen--being perfectly safe with one hundred pounds steam pressure.

The company have just commenced a pair of low-pressure boilers for the new steamer now building to take the place of the Ocean in the Cleveland line. These boilers will be the largest ever built in Detroit, with the exception of a pair of about the same size built for the steamer E. K. Collins at this establishment nine years since. The total weight of these boilers will exceed fifty tons. The dimensions are: Diameter of shell, 10 feet 4 inches; extreme length, 23 feet 8 inches. Each boiler will contain 7 leading flues 12 feet 3 inches long, and 168 return tubes 4 inches in diameter and 16 1/2 feet long. The steam chimneys will be 18 feet high above the top of the boiler.

The company exercise unusual care in the selection of stock for boilers, and in obtaining the best workmen. The superintendent of this department of the company's works has had great experience in his vocation, for many years having had charge of one of the largest shops in the city of New York, principally, and successfully, engaged in marine boiler work.

While in the office of the works we were attracted by an elegantly finished drawing of one of the most compact condensing beam engines we have ever seen. The gallows frame, etc., being of Gothic style, combining great strength with beauty of lines and proportions. We learned that within the last six months the company had put three engines of this description, and of about 200 horse power each, in operation; the first, for Messrs. Angus Smith & Co's immense elevator at Milwaukee -- of 750,000 bushels storage capacity-- completed in August last, having proved a "card" that brought orders for similar ones for mammoth elevators at Chicago, and this does not comprise the whole of Chicago patronage. The Locomotive Works have completed, and their workmen are now busy erecting, a low-pressure beam engine of forty-two inches diameter of cylinder, and eight feet stroke, for a new passenger steamer called the Sunbeam, hailing from the same "rural locality."

In addition to the usual repairs of steamers, propellers and tugboats, the company are building a powerful engine for Capt. Edward's new tug, which is intended, when completed, to compare favorably with the most successful craft of this description.