Steel Mill High Lines

1 of 16 photos posted by Rick Rowlands concerning the restoration of a blowing engine at SteelStacks
The high line before the walkway was built.

Most integrated steel mills had a high line. It was some tracks on a trestle that ran between their storage yards and their blast furnaces for hauling the raw materials of iron ore, coke and limestone. Some mills used regular locomotives and hopper cars. This Bethlehem plant is an example of the use of special self-propelled material handling cars called Larry Cars. We can see #6 still parked on the high line in Rick's photo. In fact, we can easily see that five of them have been preserved in this satellite image.

What is now a parking lot was probably the storage yard for the raw materials where they would have piles of iron ore, coke and limestone. (There is more on the location of the storage piles near the end of these notes.)

Satellite

And SteelStacks has preserved the high line along the parking lot as well as the stretch along the blast furnaces.

Street View

Sloss Blast Furnaces has preserved just the part of the high line that goes past the blast furnaces.

Street View

Likewise, the high line for the Carrie Blast Furnaces has been truncated.

3D Satellite

Here is a view of the Carrie high line on the left along with a preserved ore bridge. The equipment from a movie production helps indicate how high the tracks are.

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Here is a view of the Sloss high line from just east of the skip hoist for the eastern blast furnace.

20200218 1158

Underneath the tracks are storage bins. And underneath those bins is another track for cars to take the material from the bins to the skip hoists. This is the track under the Sloss high line.

And this is one of the cars that ran on that track.

Likewise, there are bins under the Carrie high line. The weeds are blocking a view of the track that runs under the bins.

This is a view of the "doors" under the bins that are opened when a car is under them. The tour guide spent some time describing how hellish the job was to work here.

This is a photo of the tablet that the tour guide used to show a car being loaded.

The stockpiles used less of today's parking lot than I had imagined.

EarthExplorer: Apr 20, 1972 @ 24,000, AR1VCWT00010065

So I downloaded an older photo and discovered that they didn't store anything in the parking lot area. I had noticed that the high line went east of Minsi Trail Bridge. So it appears the storage piles were much further east of the blast furnaces. That long run to the storage piles would explain why they had so many Larry cars.

EarthExplorer: Apr 10, 1955 @ 24,000, AR1VII000020072

EarthExplorer: Apr 10, 1955 @ 24,000, AR1VII000020072

While EarthExplorer started performing again, I decided to check out Sloss and Carrie as well.

Sloss, like some coal docks, must have stored the materials in hoppers in railyards rather than in storage piles. These were old blast furnaces and thus they were small. So they would not need near as much material as today's furnaces. And Alabama would not have to worry about stocking up material to last them through the winter. A steel industry started in Birmingham because iron ore, coal and limestone could be mined from the nearby mountians.

EarthExplorer: Mar 22, 1947 @ 23,600, AR1DB0000030162

Carrie+Homewood

EarthExplorer: Apr 28, 1949 @ 35,400, AR1DQ0000050078

Same photo, cropped. I included the hot-metal bridge to help correlate this image with today's satellite images.

Digitally Zoomed

I wasn't happy with the quality of the 1949 image so I downloaded a 1952 image. You can clearly see the piles of material piled up next to the high line. And some freight cars on the high line.

EarthExplorer: Apr 9, 1952 @ 23,600, AR1NZ0000020016

The tracks on the left might be part of the high line.

1 of 3 photos posted by Mark Mcdermott
FAIRLESS WORKS ...DOCKS ...ORE YARD
Albert Gresley: I don't know how anything got done at this place. Mill workers would be drinking at the bar and then start bitching that they had to leave to go and clock out, their shift was nearly over.