Are there any steel mills left in the USA that are rolling rail for the US Class 1 carriers or is all rail being imported?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
According to Cleveland Cliffs (a dirty word around here), there are three mills that still roll steel in the US. The first is their own Steelton, PA works, which used to be part of Bethlehem. It has always been a rail mill. It is located just south of Harrisburg. Then there is Evraz. It's a Russian steelmaker who bought the old Colorado Fuel and Iron works in Pueblo, CO. They were in the process of building a new rail mill in 2021-22. I don't know if the Ukrainian war and sanctions and divestments have had any effect on it. The third maker seems to be Steel Dynamics, headquartered in Fort Wayne, IN. I believe it's made at their Columbia City, IN mill.
Steelton :: Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (CLF) (clevelandcliffs.com)
Pueblo's EVRAZ steel mill starts $500 million expansion project (chieftain.com)
History | Steel Dynamics
Also, there are no rail mills left in Canada. Algoma (Sault St Marie, ON), Dofasco (Hamilton, ON) and Sydney Steel (on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia) all used to produce rail but ceased decades ago. The Sydney operation closed entirely, the site is now better known as the Sydney Tar Ponds.
CN now buys new rail from Nippon in Japan. It is imported in 80 or 90 foot lengths (flatcar size) and shipped to the main welding plant at Transcona Yard in northeast Winnipeg, where it is made into 1/4 mile lengths and loaded onto the specialized welded rail trains.
There is still a lot of old Algoma and Sydney rail in use, and I've also seen some from British Steel in a few places. American made rail is rare in Canada, but I have seen a couple U.S. names on older relaid rail that was presumably salvaged from somewhere south of the 49th.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
There's a very good English industrial historian named Kenneth Warren. I've read a few of his books, which are very readable. Back in the late 1800s, rail was the main steel mill output, because the railroads were expanding and linking the country together. Then, in the first 40 years of the 20th century, it was structural steel, as infrastructure was built up. In the last 75 years, it's been light rolled steel for consumer commodities like cars, appliances, etc.
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