A favorite industry on model railroads is a blast furnace. This video shows what it looks like from the workman's view point. Bing Videos
Bessemer furnaces are long gone replaced by basic oxygen furnaces with serious pollution controls that Bessemer never had. BOFs have been around since the late 60s.
I KNOW - but guess what, they weren't around in the most popular time period for model rauilroading - the transition era.
The steel mills in the Cleveland flats ran coal and coke into the late seventies and some into the eighties. One of my first jobs was for White Industries. We had five furnaces with three running 24/7 while 2 were down for maintenance. Not a steel mill but iron. We would have 200 ton pores sometimes. But most were 100 to 150 ton. Credit the ladel guys. They could hit the holes without missing every time. You don't want to make the sand pounders do it twice. Ever see what happens when water turns to steam in a mold? It's not nice and very dangerous.
Pete.