Union Rolling Stock Co.  The capital invested in the several companies is very large, and the yearly value sent out is in proportion, more rolling stock being manufactured here than in all the other towns in the kingdom put together, not including the works of the railway companies themselves.  Many magnificent palaces on wheels have been made here for foreign potentates, Emperors, Kings, and Queens, Sultans, and Kaisers, from every clime that the iron horse has travelled in, as well as all sorts of passenger cars, from the little narrow-gauge vehicles of the Festiniog line, on which the travellers must sit back to back, to the 60ft. long sleeping-cars used on the Pacific and Buenos Ayers Railway, in each compartment of which eight individuals can find sleeping accommodation equal to that provided at many of the best hotels, or the curious-looking cars used on Indian railways, wherein the natives squat in tiers, or, as the sailor would say, with an upper and lower deck.

Ropemaking is a trade carried on in many places, but there are few establishments that can equal the Universe Works in Garrison Lane, where, in addition to hundreds of tons of twine and cord, there are manufactured all sorts of wire and hemp ropes for colliery and other purposes, ocean telegraph cables included.  Messrs. Wright introduced strain machinery early in 1853, and in the following year they patented a rope made of best hemp and galvanised wire spun together by machinery.  On a test one of these novelties, 4-1/4in. circumference, attached to two engines, drew a train of 300 tons weight.  To supply the demand for galvanised signalling and fencing cords, the machines must turn out 15,000 yards of strand per day.

Rulemaking, though formerly carried on in several places, is now almost confined to this town and the metropolis, and as with jewellery so with rules, very much of what is called “London work” is, in reality, the produce of Birmingham.  Messrs. Rabone Brothers are the principal makers, and the boxwood used is mostly obtained from Turkey and the Levant, but the firm does not confine itself solely to the manufacture of wood rules, their steel tapes, made up to 200ft in one length, without join of any sort, being a specialty highly appreciated by surveyors and others.

Saddlery.—­One of the oldest local trades, as Lelaud, in 1538, speaks of “lorimers” as being numerous then.  That there was an important leather market is certain (Hutton thought it had existed for 700 years), and we read of “leather sealers” among the local officers as well as of a “Leather Hall,” at the east end of New Street.  The trade has more than quadrupled during the last 25 years, about 3,000 hands being now engaged therein, in addition to hundreds of machines.