My dad worked here. He came home and said get your butt over to the mill and get a job. That was in 1973. I worked 30 years in this mill. Retired at 48 and got another job in a steel mill for till i retired again at 65. In all that time i was only laid off once. I worked hundreds of doubles and made good money. On the other side ofthat wall was a giant twin tandem reversing steam engine that drove the rougher mill. Hard to believe its all gone!
Fascinating. Nothing left of Weirton today. What a shame. We've lost so much of our industrial capacity in this country. These guys are skilled people who knew how to operate that machinery.
I also was a motor Inspector in a blooming mill and bar mill, serviced the soaking pit cranes, mill cranes and slab yard plus all the electrical equipment associated with the area. The plant that I work at also had a Allis Chambers 36" steam powered mill rated at 3000 hp and a General Electric twin drive 44" electrical powered mill rate at 8000 hp with short loads to 10,000 hp. Funny my father-in-Law was a Soaking Pit Crane Operator.
My late father-in-law worked there for 32 years. He was a motor inspector on those pit cranes- heard many a tale out of there! My dad and a couple of his friends tried to get me in there as a scarfer (last job pictured). It fell through, and took my last shot at the mill with it. Went to the pottery for a few years, now I'm a truck driver.
I wish he was still alive to see this video. He likely knew at least half the guys pictured. His name was Paul Sherman, but everyone knew him as "Shorty", since he stood 6'8". 😄
My uncle was a chemist at this plant. Its a shame of what has happened to the steel industry in this country! China and other foreign companies would like to thank you very much for having them buying up U.S. plants just to close them down. Oh, and let us not forget U.S. companies ,as well, for relocating or letting this happen in the first place.
Yes, my uncle was a metallurgist at Crucible. He pretty much saw the writing on the wall as early as 1975. That's why he refused to help my cousins get in the mill. He told them in so many words that the mills weren't going to be around much longer, and to get out of the valley while they could.
I worked at Weirton Steel for 32 years 8 months. Worked almost 20 years on the Soaking Pits. I mostly ran the cover crane, thats the one that opened and moved the covers. Took a bid to the Tin Mill Dept my last 12+ years when they decided to close the Blooming Mill.
My father in law, Paul "Shorty" Sherman took his retirement when they closed the bloomer. He was having some health issues that kept him from climbing.
in the summer of 1990 i worked in the blooming mill. I was bumped up to production line as tally man, learned the turn around and shearman only to get as much overtime as possible, I was putting myself through college. I was the only college kid on production. I enjoyed the blooming mill. In the morning go to the office shanty pick up coffee, copies of morning paper crossword puzzles and cryptoquips. It was a lot of fun.
I spent a month as a sales trainee at Northwestern Steel & Wire in the blooming mill recording temperatures of the ingots coming out of the reheat furnace/soaking pit. In the cold Illinois winter
I have to re-watch this every once in a while just to realize how massive things used to be and to see the steam engines running like swiss watches. No steam spewing there: all going to making power.
Most of my family worked in the mills in Weirton when I was a kid up into the late 70's, As an adult I always wanted to sneak in and roam around in them before they got torn down. Perhaps just pick up a scrap or two of metal. But too late, its all gone now....and its not coming back, ever So look forward now....
I’m looking forward and from the looks of it, it will be back. It was a pretty stupid idea to become dependent on communist dictatorship and build them into a world superpower. 60 percent of the world is looking to unplug from our dollar and if our money is worthless to the rest of the world, we won’t be able to buy it anywhere else. No other country could get away with offshoring industry and printing money to cover the debt the offshoring caused and at some point, neither will we.
@@Golfing422 I doubt they ever build a new blast furnace and BOP plant again. Perhaps they might add more capability to melt scrap steel and form it. But the days of making steel from scratch with iron ore and coke is long gone.
@@robertsole9970 Yeah, who knows. If they want to make virgin steel, that’s what they’ll have to do. There was talk of Nucor building one in Louisiana about 8 years ago. Not sure what happened. The world is changing and what people said would happen, is happening. 60 percent of the world isn’t going along with what the west wants and we are dependent on a country that within a few months will be an enemy. My feeling is that the politicians and the media will justify a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The American oligarchs that control most of our government have too much invested over there, although I don’t think it matters in the long run because China doesn’t need us the way they used to. At some point, they’re gonna lose their asses.
@@robertsole9970 60 percent of the world, the sources of all this imported product despise the west and nato. We may not have a choice if we want steel. Russia has a larger capacity and China about 12 times the capacity. They’re to the point where they don’t care about our money because there’s nothing they need from us besides our dollars which they are working on unplugging. China is the Soviet Union on steroids. Pretty shocking that the USSR didn’t think to just buy our elected officials the way China did.
From the blooming mill to scarfer and to a crop shear I did all of those jobs including hand scarfing though out a 45 year career in two different steel mills
My kinda feller…my ol man worked in eastern Ky underground mines and grandpa worked for inland steel at price tipple in price Ky…love seein you boys do real work
My name is Tom Bennett and I grew up in weirton my dad was general superintendent of weirton steel I moved to Florida in 1962 and been back to weirton once
I think its still 23% for single people, but, family men always get close to double the tax break. I'll bet with the wages he made and possibly owned an Alpaca farm, he'd probably a millionaire today! UAW and USS workers are not hurting unless they drank they're money away! I don't support companies that allow relatives (ITS WHO YOU KNOW) to be hired without proper credentials.
The (YOU KNOW WHOS) have always done this. Politicks all over the place and that's no typo. POLI in Latin means many and we all know what ticks are. Very fitting, don't you think!!!
My uncle worked in a mill near Detroit. He was making 18.00 an hour in 1978. That’s 78.00 an hour in todays money. People lived much better back then but people elected globalist and less is what they got, in fact, still haven’t learned and still voting globalist. I’m done trying to tell people. I work a lot and I’ve gotten fairly rich. If they want to be poor, that’s they’re problem. You can’t help morons.
How are the pinchers on the crane able to lift those massive blocks of glowing steel without any slippage? Wicked hot , looks like the devil's workshop. 🤔🏗♨️
The tongs closed in under pressure. On the bottom of each tong where the ingot was gripped, there was a "tong bit" made of high alloy steel, they were shaped like a Christmas tree but blunter like an ice cream cone. The ingots were heated most likely to 2150 to 2350 degrees Fahrenheit. So the tong bits, bit into the ingots under pressure and the vast majority of them made it to there destination with out falling. As the tong bits wore down from heat and load, they were changed out and the Millwrights welded them back to the original shape with hi alloy welding rod and they were returned to service until they became unable to be repaired.
Nice look back, sadly it seems another section of the Weirton Steel Mill is being torn down. The town is slowly destroying it's most iconic buildings because they think it's an eyesore.
Thanks. Nice shot of the Heat Soaking Pit. My SLI&S steelmill burned down in house fire last year. I had a "Blooming Mlll. If I ever rebuild. I'll incorporsated this into the building.. When was this taken?
There are 121 steel mills in the U.S. today, the process has become so automated that the Mills today employee maybe a few dozen people each, when they used to employee hundreds.
@@centurion1945no they employ usually in the hundreds, the integrated ones over a thousand maybe a couple thousand at Gary or Burns harbor. Back in the day most mills employed thousands at least.
Back before we were dependent on China who’s pretty much raised all the prices to the point we could have been doing it here. Who knew that’s how it would work?
It's rolled into what is called a slab of a certain thickness, width and length. Then it would go to the rolling mill. It would be reheated and ran through the rolling mill, where a slab, say 9 inches x 48 inches x 25 feet (not all where the same. Depending on the plant, equipment and final product) were rolled into coils of steel.
wow soaking pits everything continuous cast now. My father in law was head rolled slab mill. Plant I worked in had a 44in blooming mill. Plant shutdown got job stripping overheads all resalable machinery. Was strange dismantling place once worked in. Cut up rolls half with oxygen lance that drop crack them half big rolls 44in mill. That hot scarfer cool men used to scarf billets I used wear leather chaps. Funny or Ironic we put it all in barges sent it to Tokyo 56,000 ton order 3 blast furnaces 2 coke plants a B.O.F. blooming mill 4 rolling mills was fun cutting it up. It was first to shutdown then all the rest followed. This river used have blast furnaces steel mills all down it. Like a dream now went to south works cut up locomotives. Gary works coke plant tube works blast furnace broke bones Gary works one rotten old place. Rust bad did not compensate or realize how deteriorated the steel structure was. So many years ago been in mills after blast furnaces mostly. l Last steel job processed steel bars that even shut down. The first mill most machinery sold stripped over head cranes motors drives switch gear place was fully functional when shut down was working cradle on shear biggest bar mill. Cut that shear in half to get it out there. Cut out all transformer loaded on rail cars to be buried in desert. 4 generations in steel industry. Look video of this think back it was all like a bad movie
I was a pit crane man for 22 yrs at republic steel in Youngstown Ohio Then it became the LIKES CORP. It was closed by the clean air act FED AND STATE GOVERNMENT ORDER
And what a mess they made of the bop. They way they took that mill apart and left Mingo with only the eaf. Anyone think something shady at work there? Just asking
Why didn't they get refinancing for the Equipment .. From the Small Business Administration.. That is what I thought Small Business Loans was for things like this old equipment getting new equipment......
Weirton steel is mostly a scrap heap now. They don't make steel they roll out slabs and still operate the largest tin mill in the world. They just had a hiring boom. They wanted to hire 30 people. Around a 130 was interviewed and literally no one pasted the drug test. It's sad they thought that mill would go forever and never let any other business come in, now they don't have anything. If you go a little south of Weirton to Follansbee WV you find Wheeling Nissan steel mill and it's still doing good. Alot of people say it was the union that kill this mill. They went employee owned in 74 and it was a down hill slide ever sense.
That's not correct. I've been studying the history of Weirton Steel. It was the only well-capitalized and profitable asset of National Steel in 1982 when they wanted to sell it or close it down and diversify. The independent union sacrificed 30% of income in wages and benefits to purchase it through a tax-favored trust called an Employee Stock-Ownership Trust. The cash was financed by a loan from Wall Street financiers and the government. Board member Philip Smith's "Board Betrayal" and I.T. manager Tom Zielensky's "The Last Days of Weirton Steel" show a pretty complex story with both heroes and villains at every level.
Yeah. It was the union that killed this place. I lived in Weirton for 40+ years. Most workers wanted to live upper-class on what in reality were middle-class jobs.
Here too but it was really from being bled dry by different buyers with nothing being put back in for modernizing. Now it's all gone and the county thinks it can make it on tourism. What a joke.
***** That's the way it was here years ago when logging was going strong Ernie Ford's 16 tons rang true but the timber got cut and the plants moved in. Folks had to work somewhere and the pay was good. I worked outside but never inside those plants for contractors and I could see both sides to the money issue. But it's all gone now, grass where the plants stood and nothing to take their places, just like a lot of places all over the country. We have been sold out. No places to work and no jobs to be had. Just so many greeters at wally world.
I've always wanted to go through a steel mill. The raw power just blows me away. You can watch videos of them operating but they're nothing to the real thing. Like the Todd engine Rick Rowlands is trying to restore and it was just one of many and it was HUGE! The blowers and all things connected. It'd take a month to even scratch the surface. And the Union/non Union IS a hoot. You've got a pile of good memories there. GBWYou TOO, CIA!
My dad worked here. He came home and said get your butt over to the mill and get a job. That was in 1973. I worked 30 years in this mill. Retired at 48 and got another job in a steel mill for till i retired again at 65. In all that time i was only laid off once. I worked hundreds of doubles and made good money. On the other side ofthat wall was a giant twin tandem reversing steam engine that drove the rougher mill. Hard to believe its all gone!
I worked there and watch the last slab go thru the mill. A part of the Ohio Valleys real heart.
Fascinating. Nothing left of Weirton today. What a shame. We've lost so much of our industrial capacity in this country. These guys are skilled people who knew how to operate that machinery.
My mom, dad, grand parent, uncle, step mom and my Husband used to work there... it a shame that it'll all be gone soon.
An allucinant process , just images of the golden ages..the bloomings worlds biggest motors .....
I also was a motor Inspector in a blooming mill and bar mill, serviced the soaking pit cranes, mill cranes and slab yard plus all the electrical equipment associated with the area. The plant that I work at also had a Allis Chambers 36" steam powered mill rated at 3000 hp and a General Electric twin drive 44" electrical powered mill rate at 8000 hp with short loads to 10,000 hp. Funny my father-in-Law was a Soaking Pit Crane Operator.
Those machines probably needed constant maintenance huh? Weirton had a continuous cast slab also.
What type of material is that picker made out of to *not melt* picking up that hot ingot???
My late father-in-law worked there for 32 years. He was a motor inspector on those pit cranes- heard many a tale out of there!
My dad and a couple of his friends tried to get me in there as a scarfer (last job pictured). It fell through, and took my last shot at the mill with it. Went to the pottery for a few years, now I'm a truck driver.
Keep on swapping cogs. Doing it right may not be in a mill but it's still doing it right!
I wish he was still alive to see this video. He likely knew at least half the guys pictured. His name was Paul Sherman, but everyone knew him as "Shorty", since he stood 6'8". 😄
My uncle was a chemist at this plant. Its a shame of what has happened to the steel industry in this country! China and other foreign companies would like to thank you very much for having them buying up U.S. plants just to close them down. Oh, and let us not forget U.S. companies ,as well, for relocating or letting this happen in the first place.
Yes, my uncle was a metallurgist at Crucible. He pretty much saw the writing on the wall as early as 1975. That's why he refused to help my cousins get in the mill. He told them in so many words that the mills weren't going to be around much longer, and to get out of the valley while they could.
I worked at Weirton Steel for 32 years 8 months. Worked almost 20 years on the Soaking Pits. I mostly ran the cover crane, thats the one that opened and moved the covers. Took a bid to the Tin Mill Dept my last 12+ years when they decided to close the Blooming Mill.
My father in law, Paul "Shorty" Sherman took his retirement when they closed the bloomer. He was having some health issues that kept him from climbing.
@@leehuff2330 Do you remember which year Mr. Shorman retired? I am trying to figure out the time period of this video.
Old connors Steel, now Steel of West Virginia had this exact Blooming mill set up.
Wow! Absolutely amazing. I hope there is more like this for viewing. Thanks for sharing.
in the summer of 1990 i worked in the blooming mill. I was bumped up to production line as tally man, learned the turn around and shearman only to get as much overtime as possible, I was putting myself through college. I was the only college kid on production. I enjoyed the blooming mill. In the morning go to the office shanty pick up coffee, copies of morning paper crossword puzzles and cryptoquips. It was a lot of fun.
I spent a month as a sales trainee at Northwestern Steel & Wire in the blooming mill recording temperatures of the ingots coming out of the reheat furnace/soaking pit. In the cold Illinois winter
I was a boiler operator for many years in the boiler house next door that supplied steam to the blooming mill.
I have to re-watch this every once in a while just to realize how massive things used to be and to see the steam engines running like swiss watches. No steam spewing there: all going to making power.
Most of my family worked in the mills in Weirton when I was a kid up into the late 70's, As an adult I always wanted to sneak in and roam around in them before they got torn down. Perhaps just pick up a scrap or two of metal. But too late, its all gone now....and its not coming back, ever So look forward now....
I’m looking forward and from the looks of it, it will be back. It was a pretty stupid idea to become dependent on communist dictatorship and build them into a world superpower. 60 percent of the world is looking to unplug from our dollar and if our money is worthless to the rest of the world, we won’t be able to buy it anywhere else. No other country could get away with offshoring industry and printing money to cover the debt the offshoring caused and at some point, neither will we.
@@Golfing422 I doubt they ever build a new blast furnace and BOP plant again. Perhaps they might add more capability to melt scrap steel and form it. But the days of making steel from scratch with iron ore and coke is long gone.
@@robertsole9970 Yeah, who knows. If they want to make virgin steel, that’s what they’ll have to do. There was talk of Nucor building one in Louisiana about 8 years ago. Not sure what happened. The world is changing and what people said would happen, is happening. 60 percent of the world isn’t going along with what the west wants and we are dependent on a country that within a few months will be an enemy. My feeling is that the politicians and the media will justify a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The American oligarchs that control most of our government have too much invested over there, although I don’t think it matters in the long run because China doesn’t need us the way they used to. At some point, they’re gonna lose their asses.
@@robertsole9970 60 percent of the world, the sources of all this imported product despise the west and nato. We may not have a choice if we want steel. Russia has a larger capacity and China about 12 times the capacity. They’re to the point where they don’t care about our money because there’s nothing they need from us besides our dollars which they are working on unplugging. China is the Soviet Union on steroids. Pretty shocking that the USSR didn’t think to just buy our elected officials the way China did.
From the blooming mill to scarfer and to a crop shear I did all of those jobs including hand scarfing though out a 45 year career in two different steel mills
My kinda feller…my ol man worked in eastern Ky underground mines and grandpa worked for inland steel at price tipple in price Ky…love seein you boys do real work
Wow. They sure don't do it that way anymore. Very interesting to see all these parts to the process. Great shots of the different jobs.
My name is Tom Bennett and I grew up in weirton my dad was general superintendent of weirton steel I moved to Florida in 1962 and been back to weirton once
@@johnbenet5394 Did you dad work in steel production down there as well?
Grew up across the street from this.
My father was a leverman in the Blooming Mill. He retired out of there.
I was a soaking pit crane operator from 1970 till 1980 . USS Ensley works , ALABAMA
My hope is the standards are addheard to for quality sake especially with the I-beams No cutting corners allowed..
Alliance Machine soaking pit crane? Or Morgan Engineering?
Holy Crap how did they make money before automation and PLC's. Very interesting video.
Nasty looking job, but, I wonder how many people would kill to have the wages he made!
How many people NOW would just settle for the taxes he paid out!
I think its still 23% for single people, but, family men always get close to double the tax break. I'll bet with the wages he made and possibly owned an Alpaca farm, he'd probably a millionaire today! UAW and USS workers are not hurting unless they drank they're money away! I don't support companies that allow relatives (ITS WHO YOU KNOW) to be hired without proper credentials.
The (YOU KNOW WHOS) have always done this. Politicks all over the place and that's no typo. POLI in Latin means many and we all know what ticks are. Very fitting, don't you think!!!
YEP!
My uncle worked in a mill near Detroit. He was making 18.00 an hour in 1978. That’s 78.00 an hour in todays money. People lived much better back then but people elected globalist and less is what they got, in fact, still haven’t learned and still voting globalist. I’m done trying to tell people. I work a lot and I’ve gotten fairly rich. If they want to be poor, that’s they’re problem. You can’t help morons.
I have a question do the molds and kettles have to be made at a higher tolerance to withstand the heat of the molten steel?
Yes, very thick and of the correct grade of metal to endure the heat.
How are the pinchers on the crane able to lift those massive blocks of glowing steel without any slippage? Wicked hot , looks like the devil's workshop. 🤔🏗♨️
The tongs closed in under pressure.
On the bottom of each tong where the ingot was gripped, there was a "tong bit" made of high alloy steel, they were shaped like a Christmas tree but blunter like an ice cream cone.
The ingots were heated most likely to 2150 to 2350 degrees Fahrenheit.
So the tong bits, bit into the ingots under pressure and the vast majority of them made it to there destination with out falling.
As the tong bits wore down from heat and load, they were changed out and the Millwrights welded them back to the original shape with hi alloy welding rod and they were returned to service until they became unable to be repaired.
Nice look back, sadly it seems another section of the Weirton Steel Mill is being torn down. The town is slowly destroying it's most iconic buildings because they think it's an eyesore.
It is a trip when one of those explode. I was crossing the bridge going over where the ingot was traveling when one popped. Thought I shit myself.
Thanks. Nice shot of the Heat Soaking Pit. My SLI&S steelmill burned down in house fire last year. I had a "Blooming Mlll. If I ever rebuild. I'll incorporsated this into the building.. When was this taken?
My question, too.
How many remaining active steel mills do we have in the U.S today?
There are 121 steel mills in the U.S. today, the process has become so automated that the Mills today employee maybe a few dozen people each, when they used to employee hundreds.
@@centurion1945no they employ usually in the hundreds, the integrated ones over a thousand maybe a couple thousand at Gary or Burns harbor. Back in the day most mills employed thousands at least.
Back before we were dependent on China who’s pretty much raised all the prices to the point we could have been doing it here. Who knew that’s how it would work?
So a bloom is an ingot that is rolled into the shape of like a piece of Wrigley's gum basically?
That's roughly how it was explained to me.
It's rolled into what is called a slab of a certain thickness, width and length. Then it would go to the rolling mill.
It would be reheated and ran through the rolling mill, where a slab, say 9 inches x 48 inches x 25 feet (not all where the same. Depending on the plant, equipment and final product) were rolled into coils of steel.
Steel mills = a Healthy America... very sad.....
so true
wow soaking pits everything continuous cast now. My father in law was head rolled slab mill. Plant I worked in had a 44in blooming mill. Plant shutdown got job stripping overheads all resalable machinery. Was strange dismantling place once worked in. Cut up rolls half with oxygen lance that drop crack them half big rolls 44in mill. That hot scarfer cool men used to scarf billets I used wear leather chaps. Funny or Ironic we put it all in barges sent it to Tokyo 56,000 ton order 3 blast furnaces 2 coke plants a B.O.F. blooming mill 4 rolling mills was fun cutting it up. It was first to shutdown then all the rest followed. This river used have blast furnaces steel mills all down it. Like a dream now went to south works cut up locomotives. Gary works coke plant tube works blast furnace broke bones Gary works one rotten old place. Rust bad did not compensate or realize how deteriorated the steel structure was. So many years ago been in mills after blast furnaces mostly. l Last steel job processed steel bars that even shut down. The first mill most machinery sold stripped over head cranes motors drives switch gear place was fully functional when shut down was working cradle on shear biggest bar mill. Cut that shear in half to get it out there. Cut out all transformer loaded on rail cars to be buried in desert. 4 generations in steel industry. Look video of this think back it was all like a bad movie
When is this from? Early 90s?
WindowsBreakerG4 it's old footage because what you are seeing is being scrapped and torn down right now.
what year was this?
1990
@@AluminumOxide How do we know that? I just want to make sure.
I was a pit crane man for 22 yrs at republic steel in Youngstown Ohio Then it became the LIKES CORP. It was closed by the clean air act FED AND STATE GOVERNMENT ORDER
Because the products are called Blooms.
Worked there from 2000-2003 (ISG Takeover). All gone now. Furnaces and BOP are next......
It's Saturday, March 9, 2019.
Sadly, they imploded the BOP this morning. 😢
And what a mess they made of the bop. They way they took that mill apart and left Mingo with only the eaf. Anyone think something shady at work there? Just asking
Why didn't they get refinancing for the Equipment .. From the Small Business Administration.. That is what I thought Small Business Loans was for things like this old equipment getting new equipment......
What keeps the slabs from melting together?
Scale? They've cooled off enough that they aren't molten anymore. They throw flux in between them?
They aren't hot enough to forge weld together
my uncle's worked at that steel plant
Why do they call them Blooming Mill?
Bloom is the term given to the steel as it begins to be rolled from a hot ingot into the slab.
I used to drive a skid loader......so I know how to move levers like that.
Great!
!!! que tiempos. Aquellos. $$$$ .. Ronald Reagan y Milton freidman ., hicieron grande a EEUU,
😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😜😜🤘🤘🤘
Owners had either cut the cleanup staff or else no-one cared about working in filthy conditions and couldn't be bothered to use a brush and rags?
Yup.
Probably both.
When America had jobs.
This is what American industrial might use to look like. Before people became too soft and cheap.
video game
Was this Video made before the first World War?
are you fucking kidding?
No!. He's really that fucking stupid.....
Don't you have some shopping at Walmart to do?
Weirton steel is mostly a scrap heap now. They don't make steel they roll out slabs and still operate the largest tin mill in the world.
They just had a hiring boom. They wanted to hire 30 people. Around a 130 was interviewed and literally no one pasted the drug test. It's sad they thought that mill would go forever and never let any other business come in, now they don't have anything.
If you go a little south of Weirton to Follansbee WV you find Wheeling Nissan steel mill and it's still doing good. Alot of people say it was the union that kill this mill. They went employee owned in 74 and it was a down hill slide ever sense.
That's not correct. I've been studying the history of Weirton Steel. It was the only well-capitalized and profitable asset of National Steel in 1982 when they wanted to sell it or close it down and diversify. The independent union sacrificed 30% of income in wages and benefits to purchase it through a tax-favored trust called an Employee Stock-Ownership Trust. The cash was financed by a loan from Wall Street financiers and the government. Board member Philip Smith's "Board Betrayal" and I.T. manager Tom Zielensky's "The Last Days of Weirton Steel" show a pretty complex story with both heroes and villains at every level.
@@hartdocs I can prove everything I said.
@@erichuff6945 I thought I agreed with most of what you said. I was just glad to find people interested in this history.
Yeah. It was the union that killed this place. I lived in Weirton for 40+ years. Most workers wanted to live upper-class on what in reality were middle-class jobs.
Here too but it was really from being bled dry by different buyers with nothing being put back in for modernizing. Now it's all gone and the county thinks it can make it on tourism. What a joke.
***** That's the way it was here years ago when logging was going strong Ernie Ford's 16 tons rang true but the timber got cut and the plants moved in. Folks had to work somewhere and the pay was good. I worked outside but never inside those plants for contractors and I could see both sides to the money issue. But it's all gone now, grass where the plants stood and nothing to take their places, just like a lot of places all over the country. We have been sold out. No places to work and no jobs to be had. Just so many greeters at wally world.
I've always wanted to go through a steel mill. The raw power just blows me away. You can watch videos of them operating but they're nothing to the real thing. Like the Todd engine Rick Rowlands is trying to restore and it was just one of many and it was HUGE! The blowers and all things connected. It'd take a month to even scratch the surface. And the Union/non Union IS a hoot. You've got a pile of good memories there. GBWYou TOO, CIA!
I actually just started as an electrician at Weirton steel mill in April. it's not as huge as it used to be and like 13000 less workers. But I love it
sweatyteddytaco It's still going then?
TOM PIPPS .FOAM - BATON ROUGE LOUISIANA USA . HI HELLO . I LINK YOU WORK .
NE KADAR ZOR İŞ
Sad to watch this.