The intertwined history of the technological development of the steel industry and the creation of viable railroads is losing an important milemarker. A sad epitaph that in some way seems timely as manufacturing in many examples seems to have caught the last southbound train never to return. Bethlehem Steel for many in my generation was the visible muscle in the strong independant commerce of another generation...
http://www.robertjohndavis.com/blog/
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
....It's sad to read of mammoth Bethlehem Steel structures being demolished to be gone forever.
Being originally from near the Johnstown area and old enough to have seen all that complex under full production with all the sounds and smoke and railroad action around the grounds....and so on.....It's sad to understand what it once was and what it is not now....Hard to accept. At one time, it was America at work....and during the war years it did it's part to ensure we would have the material to win the fight....Which of course we did.
The Johnstown complex is mostly silent now....Still lots of it standing to remind us that lived in that era what was once done there....Proudly done.....
Quentin
While the steel industry in the vibrancy of full production was never any beauty queen, in death with shut down facilities it has the appearance of doom on earth....returning to to the rust from which it originally rose. Having passed the rusting facilities around Steelton, Youngstown, Warren and Pittsburgh it is hard to imagine the nighttime light shows those mills produced as one passed them during their heyday.
By the same token, driving through Akron and not smelling the making of rubber tires is a sad commentary on the state of industrial America.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
rji2: You hit it exactly right.....Jobs...!! In the city of Johnstown, Pa. with the mills going full blast I see visions in my memory of hundreds of workers at shift time downtown in the city, as the mills were just at the edge of the business district...Workers arriving downtown via streetcar to head into the mills for their shift, etc...Just bustling with busyness....Middle class workers making good money....buying products....{most at that time, made in USA}....
One could see the light in the sky from the blast furnaces at night from 20 some miles distant. No the mills were not pretty....far from it, but they sure were producing wages for our workers. Powerful times for American workers. Much of it dormant, silent now, rusting away....Some one in a 3rd world country {that we no doubt help set up}, doing something similar to produce steel now and then their government "dumping" it back into our country at prices no one here can compete....
WOW another steel furnace gone .
AK Steels (Armco) Ashland ,Ky site appears to be tearing down one of their two furnaces.
I'm sure it's the Amanda furnace.This use to be called The American Rolling Company I think.I've had family work and retire at this site. Here's a link to see the Armco site in Ashland. http://www.coalcampusa.com/rustbelt/ky/ky.htm
Collin ,operator of the " Eastern Kentucky & Ohio R.R."
If we ever have to produce steel to fight I fear that we will not have the ability to meet our needs.
Ive gone into steel mills to get coil out and they are of good quality if not the best. To have foreign steel come into the USA really hurts us as a Nation although it might be cheaper to use.
I remember the facility in Sparrows. It was not much when we traveled it to learn driving big rigs 20 years ago and is probably even less if at all now.
Jock Ellis Cumming, GA US of A Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers
....I really don't know how it may effect our country in the future....That is, destroying all our steel making facilities....or not modernizing such to a point they can't even try to keep up with competitors in the world.
It looks a bit scary to me but everything is changing so much from the processes just in the late 20th century...I really don't know what to think about it all. And machinists.....That's another aspect of it all. Much of our machined products coming from overseas....??
Let's not romanticize the steel industry. In the age of open hearth furnaces, it was a dirty, smelly and dangerous operation. The industry today is cleaner, more profitable, more productive and much more efficient than it has ever been. As a native of Western PA, I can recall when the night sky glowed red over Duquesne and Braddock as steel was being made in the Mon Valley. Now the only active Blast Furnaces in all of Pennsylvania are at U.S. Steel's Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, where USS uses the furnaces, the basic oxygen process (BOP), and a Dual-strand continuous slab caster to produce slab steel for the nearby Irvin Works.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=35456
The slabs are delivered by the Union Rail Road,
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=108163
which, by the way, is one of the most photogenic shortlines in the eastern U.S.
Also, in an age of ICBMs and B-2 Bombers, the U.S. is not likely to fight another two ocean World War which required huge quantities of steel for tanks, battleships and ammunition.
We can justifiably lament the loss of jobs and the decline of steel-making communities that transpired when Big Steel disappeared from much of Rust-Belt America, but it was inevitable that most of the large, vertically-integrated manufacturers would become industrial dinosaurs as the economics favored lower-cost, i.e., nonunion, mini-mills and foreign producers and as the technology evolved.
In southwestern PA, there have been tangible economic and environmental benefits to the disappearance of heavy industry. The air and water are cleaner and we now have access to the riverfronts, where these brownfields have been and are being reclaimed by public and private monies.
Where the Homestead Works once stood, for instance, Pittsburgh now shops and dines at the Waterfront, a bustiling retail complex beside the Mon. River.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06211/709449-85.stm
Ironically, U.S. Steel returned to the site of the Homestead Works, when it moved its Research Center from Monroeville to a building at the Waterfront that Siemens had planned to use but then abandoned.
And the historic Carrie Furnace in Rankin, which served Homestead, will be preserved by Allegheny County, which acquired the property in 2005 and is seeking designation of it as a national historic site by the federal govt.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07074/769438-56.stm
Dave
...I for one am not trying to romanticize any steel industry.
It's just one piece of the economic pie in this country that is disappearing.....Sometime in the future we'll extract enough of our economy that all of a sudden we'll look around and wonder who has any sufficient employment left for the population to earn a sustaining level of living.....Who will be the ones that can afford to buy {any}, products....or something like that....
We, as a country will face the danger of depending on {others}, to make what we need in everyday life...
I'm a native of western Pennsylvania too.....and to see industry dying everywhere one travels in that area is not too encouraging. Everyone can't be employed by retail stores....We still need some kinds of industry that "makes things"....adds value, to bring money to the area for our population.
When all the steel plants are gone,and we have to buy steel from China,Russia,and.....oh wait we already are.Maybe that's what the problem is ?
If this all takes place and we have to build more bombs to wage war,then who will supply our steel if all of our former enemies are making it now ?You betcha,a war lost without shooting a single bullet because we have no bullet to shoot !
It's a shame to think or at least are brainwashed into thinking we don't need all this "dirty industry".Service type jobs *only* won't support an economy.
What do you think the railroads that we all like to railfan have thrived on for years ?Industry thats disappearing.
When all the Federal judges keep the mines from mining,what coal drags are you gonna be watching.Those on video or on your model layout.
The rails depend on these industies for business.And I have 16 years in and 22 to collect a r.r. retirement.So save our steel plants and coal mines and other plants.
Heck I want to retire and watch trains from the ground for a change .
A can of worms here Wally. Give me a bit of time to ponder my answer to that.
Safety Valve wrote: A can of worms here Wally. Give me a bit of time to ponder my answer to that.
I dont have any answers to my own observations.
Wally you really did answer it.
In other words the old folks were right.The rich get richer,and the poor get more poor.
It's amazing how this great country of ours went from the industrial gaint of the world to what it is today.An assembly line .
I bet you see Americas railraods being continental in North America in the next few years.I know they alredy have their feet in Mexico,and the Canadian r.r.'s have theirs in the US.But along with the upcoming North American Union in the near future,wait and see what I'm talking about.
I've already wrote my congressman on this "North American Union" deal.He wouldn't entirely say it won't happen,but he wouldn't deny that the three countries Mexico,America and Canada haven't talked about it.The companies of these countries will make it happen.
We ship parts made in Canada and the US to Mexico to build a car.We ship the car to the US or Canada to sell.We do the exact same process with Canada.This country has lost it's vast production type industry and have become the middle man in business.
That will keep Americas railroads going.But for how long ?
Already the autoparts boxcars have slowed down.Intermodal to Mexico,both ways have increased.And yet we are shipping still,alot of cars.
Oh this all gives me a headache !
Henry Ford needed hundreds of people to build a car in his Factory a long time ago. Now you can build a factory with robots and staff it with 100 or a few hundred repairmen and bean counters.
It appears with the recent closures of autoplants that large car makers are groaning under the stress of pension and retirement funds. Is it possible they are trying to eliminate this cost by eliminating the workers and have it all done by Robots just for assembly? I think that they are doing it while waiting the 15-30 years or so for the current costs (People) to literally die off.
I have seen housing costs go very high for tiny homes. Take California where you spend 500K or even a million for a 1000 square foot home. You cannot expect workers to maintain these homes unless they are part of our Government making adequate wages. Certainly not minimum wage workers.. oh no.
The forums fill up every day about railroad space. Rooms 9x10, 17x15 a part of a garage etc etc. I remember homes that were built just after world war two and grew up in a few that featured several floors, a full basement with fallout entrance, strong construction and large spaces for different purposes.
Today the homes in my neighborhood are half houses and half carport. The total space taken up by the properties can be swallowed up in a good sized basement of the old post war homes. Maybe Im learning how to live in the south I dont know.
The railroads are more than happy to run on the mainline and they DO have some locals operating in several areas. Hard to imagine that they may actually gather up enough cars for revenue to another part of the USA but they are able to do it.
I remember back home we had a team track where there was a lumber car parked for two days while a big flatbed truck shuttled the lumber to another town a few miles down the road that did not have rail service. I sit there at my workplace and watched this truck patiently run back and forth until all the lumber was gone. Soon after the locomotive showed up on a night train and took the flatcar away.
What happens if Big Railroad fell out of bed in the morning and stubbed it's toe over all the little towns around the usa and started to serve everyone including commuters? I bet there will be a bit of a freedom from dependance of West coast-east coast traffic. But they will face large increases of manpower, motive power (It's all pool power on leased rates anyhow...) and infrastructure to support it all.
But no. They want to run two trains manned by robots under remote control with zero cost and 100% profit. And will not stop until they reach this goal. Never mind that yard that eats into transit time or ton miles. Every effort must be made to inflate the numbers high enough to please everyone, especially the shareholders on Wall Street.
I offer to you that our Government is no longer in Washington. They are on Wall Street. I remember a steady flow of paper products that literally dried up one year when the cost of paper got too much. The locals started having other sources of thier paper shipped in bypassing the local trucking company's accounts because paper cost just went up one day on Wall Street.
Today I can sit down and type this out in a few minutes, I hardly remember what it is like to write on paper except a occasional check to the store which is being replaced by fancy "Beep" cards that might, just might make the old US Dollar in my wallet a number on someone's imagination somewhere deep in the Federal Treasury system some day.
Wally it's called CAFTA.Central American Free Trade Agreement.Bush has already done the handshake on it,and congress is pondering it.
It will undercut the NAFTA agreement.
Remember at one time some American industries relied on Brazil to manufacture small items like model trains (Gilbert)American Flyer.What's going to stop them again ?
Here's a question (sorry to throw this in to the ring).But if the American jobs are going to Mexico.Then why are the Mexicans coming here ?Looks like there would be plenty of jobs in Mexico with all of our work going there.
Heck American Standard toilet and sinks are made in Mexico instead of Pike Co.Kentucky now.
What happened to all the American pride ? Did it take the last train out ?
Now as far as how far does the trains run,I don't know that.
But does the Central American countries trains run on the same gauge as North American trains ? I think they run on a different gauge.Does anyone know for certain ?
Here's some interesting facts I just read in the April 2007 edition of the UTU newsletter.
Leradeo Texas is the busiest U.S.-Mexican rail crossing point,with 24 train daily across the International Bridge.
600,000 loads/empties go across it each year.
The UTU blocked a deal the UP tried on servicing locomotives in Mexico.And in the same deal would have gotten UP authority to operate trains up to 1,500 miles into the U.S. before they were ever inspected.
The KCS owns the International Bridge.
....On the question of "if the American jobs are going to Mexico", why are they {the Mexican workers, coming here}....My thought on that is: Min. money paid to workers in Mexico, so workers feel they can do better coming to the USA for work....{any work}.
The thing is, most of this is our own fault for example my grandfather who worked at US Steel used to tell me that it was when the steel workers went on strike in the sixties that started the down fall of the steel industry most companies in the US bought on US made steel but when the workers struck companies were forced to buy imported steel which they found was just as good if not better and cheaper, the other thing about the steel industry according to my former supervisor who had a PHD in Metallurgy, used to have lengthy conversations about the steel industry and he replied that the US steel makers never invested time and money into new technology until it was too late thats the other reason why imported steel is cheaper and better while the US steel companies were in their hayday they never thought about the future just the present while the rest of the world kept researching the US didn't do anything except rake in the bucks.
the other thing we do is allow companies to pay their CEO outragous sums of money the thing is if the CEO was only making 100,000 YEAR vs 10 MILLION well there is a lot of your workers pension money right there and thats part of the reason why companies have thier good made else where is to keep costs down but still have a high profit margin to pay for their CEO salaries
We, also make working at a factory or working unglamorous that only losers work in factories and everybody should be CEO's or lawyers which is partly why the demise of the middle class
Again until the public does anything about it it will continue to escalate if we the consumers don't demade US made goods then who will stop them from sending business overseas or to S America it won't stop
the other thing is Mexicans are willing to work while many of todays youth are too lazy to work I was talking to a co worker that has a family greenhouse he said 10-15 years ago all he hired was young kids now he can't find any that want to work for slightly above minimum wage so he was forced to hire hispanics
....I will agree of {much}, of what is in vimuke's post...Not all, but most. Had a lot of friends that worked in Bethlehem and US Steel in Johnstown plants and most of them weren't necessarly "losers", but putting that asside.....I'd add the comment of vacation time to vimuke's list above....Even right before the 60's....vacation time for qualified fellows {workers}, was as much as 13 weeks a year...!! Most of us know that wasn't sustainable in the long run for a companie's health....But it had been agreed to in contracts, etc....
One minor correction here: While my own father did not work in a steel mill, many of the fathers of my friends worked for Republic, Inland, US Steel, Youngstown, etc. The legendary thirteen weeks of vacation was for those hourly workers with lots of seniority and it definitely was not thirteen weeks per year, I believe it was every five years. Perhaps a current or retired member of the United Steel Workers of America can enlighten us further.
....Csshegewisch: Yes, you are correct....{I did say "qualified"}, it was every 5 years. But in between they still had 5 weeks on an annual basis, so it was still a far out costly venture the Co's agreed to...One that certainly didn't support their bottom line very well....
Safety Valve wrote:Henry Ford needed hundreds of people to build a car in his Factory a long time ago. Now you can build a factory with robots and staff it with 100 or a few hundred repairmen and bean counters.It appears with the recent closures of autoplants that large car makers are groaning under the stress of pension and retirement funds. Is it possible they are trying to eliminate this cost by eliminating the workers and have it all done by Robots just for assembly? I think that they are doing it while waiting the 15-30 years or so for the current costs (People) to literally die off.I have seen housing costs go very high for tiny homes. Take California where you spend 500K or even a million for a 1000 square foot home. You cannot expect workers to maintain these homes unless they are part of our Government making adequate wages. Certainly not minimum wage workers.. oh no.The forums fill up every day about railroad space. Rooms 9x10, 17x15 a part of a garage etc etc. I remember homes that were built just after world war two and grew up in a few that featured several floors, a full basement with fallout entrance, strong construction and large spaces for different purposes.Today the homes in my neighborhood are half houses and half carport. The total space taken up by the properties can be swallowed up in a good sized basement of the old post war homes. Maybe Im learning how to live in the south I dont know.The railroads are more than happy to run on the mainline and they DO have some locals operating in several areas. Hard to imagine that they may actually gather up enough cars for revenue to another part of the USA but they are able to do it.I remember back home we had a team track where there was a lumber car parked for two days while a big flatbed truck shuttled the lumber to another town a few miles down the road that did not have rail service. I sit there at my workplace and watched this truck patiently run back and forth until all the lumber was gone. Soon after the locomotive showed up on a night train and took the flatcar away.What happens if Big Railroad fell out of bed in the morning and stubbed it's toe over all the little towns around the usa and started to serve everyone including commuters? I bet there will be a bit of a freedom from dependance of West coast-east coast traffic. But they will face large increases of manpower, motive power (It's all pool power on leased rates anyhow...) and infrastructure to support it all.But no. They want to run two trains manned by robots under remote control with zero cost and 100% profit. And will not stop until they reach this goal. Never mind that yard that eats into transit time or ton miles. Every effort must be made to inflate the numbers high enough to please everyone, especially the shareholders on Wall Street.I offer to you that our Government is no longer in Washington. They are on Wall Street. I remember a steady flow of paper products that literally dried up one year when the cost of paper got too much. The locals started having other sources of thier paper shipped in bypassing the local trucking company's accounts because paper cost just went up one day on Wall Street.Today I can sit down and type this out in a few minutes, I hardly remember what it is like to write on paper except a occasional check to the store which is being replaced by fancy "Beep" cards that might, just might make the old US Dollar in my wallet a number on someone's imagination somewhere deep in the Federal Treasury system some day.
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