Great video clip. I had a job once at the US Steel Pipe Works, Geneva Plant, Utah where I took "slag temperatures" before they sprayed "devils liquor" sump water on it to cool it down. I wore wooden shoe "clogs" to protect my shoes from melting (the same kind coke oven operators wear when servicing the ovens). 24 hours after a "thimble car" dump of red-hot slag was made, I went out and traversed the dump-site, measuring congealed slag surface temperatures, sometimes up to and often exceeding 600 degrees F. I wore thick canvas over-clothes, but anywhere my body came into pointed contact with the canvas (elbows and knees) I would get "burned" because of the heat transferred from the canvas material through my regular clothes. The heat at breathing height was about 200 degrees F. I wore a face shield (clear) to protect my face from the heat and had to wear a scarf over my nose to prevent breathing in super-heated air. As it was, I still singed the hairs inside my nose if I inhaled a little too quickly. Imagine walking around inside a pizza oven, that is what it felt like. It dried me out, like desiccating me from the inside out breathing in all that super hot and very dry air. Watching the thimble cars dump slag at night was one of the most incredible visual experiences I have ever had. The second after they tip a thimble, when the splash of red hot slag boiling down the slope glows intensely red, there follows milliseconds later, a "blast" of intense infrared radiation, that hits you in the face like a gust of hot wind. The sea-gulls around dusk, would often ride the intense thermals created by the super-heated air, drawing cooler air up from below the slag pits, combining with the hot air whoosh it would go, rushing up the precipitous cliffs, man-made mini-mountains of slag, there they would fly along the thermals updraft about 100 feet up and nearly parallel to the rail car dump line. Their white underbelly's "glowing" brilliantly orange, phoenix like they hovered there almost motionless reflecting the bright yellow-orange and red hues of the cooling slag. It was like they were on fire it was so bright in the fading light of the day. It was the only beautiful sight to see in an otherwise desolate and foreboding wasteland of glassy rock-like congealed blast furnace slag. Geneva Works is now defunct. mrc109
Part of me would love to see that kind of stuff--it would fascinate me. And another part would be scared shitless, because if I have any phobia, it's burning. Thanks for the account.
The cone shaped thing falling out of the slag pot is the fire brick liner which holds all the heat. If it weren't for that, the steel slag pot would glow red/yellow hot and burn itself out. After dumping, the slag cars are taken to the skulling dept where they are re bricked. They are preheated to bake the brick B4 reloading. Then they are sprayed with a high temp parting agent to keep the slag from sticking. If not, then comes the jack hammer or oxygen lance to burn out the hardened slag
As a young child, Dad used to takes us to watch them dump slag at night. It was entertainment you got for free. It was also educational. And when all was dark and they dumped the slag it was almost as good as fireworks, at least to us,lol.
Videos like this is what TH-cam should be really about. It used to be like this, full of real people videos of real world stuff going on. Just the footage and the sounds. But TH-cam lost itself along the way, with its shorty shorts, obnoxious influencers, the craze to monetize everything. Videos like this are a breath of fresh air. Thanks for uploading it.
There's a lot of trash on YT, yes -- also a lot of controversial material people would not only find interesting, but benefit from seeing, is not allowed due to what I'll quaintly call political correctness
And you can see that most comments were pretty instructional and personal, it was not a wild field of disputes and "like chasers". However, i would say there is still lot of cool things on YT and even some cool shorts, i think it depends on how people react to those. I'm millennial, so i think it never got in to the content addiction trap os scrolling short after short. So i don't mind about it. I also subbed to thousands of channels, anything that provides something i like i give sub, so my front page only have cool videos.
That's the business model of social media .it's always funny to me that people claim to want to want hardcore capitalism and then ask why everything is about the money. Of course it's about the money. You asked for exactly this.
Worded well my friend. A breath of fresh air. Broadcasting real life and nothing else. I appreciate the modern production and work put into videos nowadays, but this content is the core of what it’s always been.
I really enjoyed watching this. Just a fascinating little snapshot of industrial processes. To me, these kind of authentic videos are some of the best content on TH-cam.
The men operating those machines were probably making good money. Putting their kids through college while making their house payments, watching football on the weekends and drinking with their buddies after work. All with their high school diplomas on the wall and their union membership in their wallet. Days lost forever.
My dad was a Bethlehem Steel shipyard worker for 36 years. I was the last of his six children. The last three of us indeed did go to college, with two of us eventually getting master's degrees. He had a third grade education. My dad told me when I was seven that when I grew up that the shipyard would probably be closed. He said I needed to get a good education if I was going to have a shot at a decent living. The man was a prophet. The Hoboken yard closed in 1984. It was torn down years later and the land that it once occupied now has luxury condos that face the Hudson River across from the skyscrapers in Manhattan.
Some of us gen x still living the dream.23 yrs Ibew, 6 figures,all the toys,beach house,living the dream.of course you have to be willing to WORK and GET DIRTY, which is basically a death sentence to these soft , brainwashed millennials
@@captainzumafishing772capta9 no offense but ive seen what hard work does and it isnt beneficial, most older men i see are basically cut off from free life by health affects by time they even reach just 50+, alot of men with hip replacements at 40+ unable to go back into work. i do renovations on empty houses so i dont sit in an office but sometimes i think the same money for keeping my body just a bit less worn might be better in the end. each to there own id rather work smarter not harder.
@@ffgdfgvhhg7191 bullshit, heroin cocaine and marijuana were rampant in the 70s. The only difference today is you can get stronger meds legally from the pharmaceutical companies. This world is truly going to shit. I rebuilt train engines for a company sub contracted by the railroads.. Got no railroad benefits, shit wages, no legal qualification.. All while we pulled in record numbers and the bosses (ex railroad) made their 6 figures and did nothing.
My Dad attended Lehigh University in the late thirties. He talked about how spectacular it looked at night. Seeing it happen years later gives me an idea of what he often talked about. Gone for Ever! Videos like this is all that's left. Thanks!
@@baileystark7629 Because Bethlehem steel was run into the ground. Failed to modernize and couldn't compete with cheaper offshore steel...plus dumping all this toxic crap in an area that is now surrounded by suburbs would not work well.
While I never saw the slag being dumped, I lived in Duquesne, PA in the late 1940s. The street I lived on dead ended at the edge of a large hollow not too far from where the slag had been dumped. I think it had been stopped some time before me, because as kids, we would see how far up the slag dump we could climb. I had to be about 8 years old when I got about 50 feet up, before I lost control when the surface started to crumble causing me to start sliding back down. I turned around into a sitting, crab-like position as I slid down the hill on my butt while the rough sandpaper-like slag tore out the seat of my pants and ground my palms to raw flesh. I'll never forget that experience as long as I live and I am currently 84.
@@TomokosEnterprize That was in the days that cap guns were legal. My cousin and I had cap guns and holsters and played cowboys and shot off roll after roll of caps. They came 5 rolls to the box, 50 shots to the roll and we would buy many boxes. We played Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Bad Baskim, Red Ryder, The Lone Ranger and more. Had to go down to the movie theater on 1st Street to see the westerns at the matinee or listen to the stories on radio. It would be another 3 years before I even laid eyes on a TV. Nowadays when I go to the range the smell of the gun smoke reminds me of my childhood.
Reading this is we grew up on the same time when bare feet, drinking from a sun heated hose and the long walk to that Saturday movie. You forgot Buck Rogers and if lucky enough to be let in Our Man Flint, Threes more of course but I thought those would spark up a couple more memories for ya. OH YEA, 3 Stooges and Dean Martin and Jerry lewis too eh, LOL. Such carefree days going back there eh. Why not throw in any thing by/of Walt Disney too.@@tem1939
I am 58. I have lived my entire life in Bethlehem and Hellertown. I like 100% of all my friends growing up had at least one relative who worked at the steel. Four people I knew had the majority of their family work at the steel and Mack. Time goes on....Bethlehem Steel made a lot of mistakes but the life and the future opport that the steel and Mack afforded those around my age was incredible and is still appreciated to this day by many in this area. Be well
@Eddie J Parsons: Bethlehem Steel went Bankrupt not long after this video was shot. There are many reasons for the demise of our domestic steel, it's not as simple as just outsourcing, or enviro-laws. Everyone had a hand in it: the companies; the unions, the government; and the consumers. Changing market factors took a big toll, too. ( the bottom pretty much dropped out of the market for heavy structural steel and seamless steel pipe, for example. No demand = no money, and thus no mill and no jobs.) Of their four big steel making plants, only one is still operational- and it isn't this one. (i'm assuming this is at Bethworks, in PA). Lackawana, NY was torn down long ago, a victim of obsolescence, non-reinvestment, and NYS wanting them to spend 10s of Billions to clean up the site of contamination going back more than 100 years. ( they bought the mill from another company) There's virtually nothing left of it but the harbor. Sparrows Point, MD was just torn down- there are vids of the demolition on here. That mill was built to supply their shipmaking ops at that site. No more Bethlehem, no more demand for ships to build = no more mill... They were bought out, too, and eventually went under. Bethlehem, PA. Much of the plant still stands, like the blast furnaces, ore bridge, and many of the old brick mill buildings. It shut down all operations by the end of the 1990's. The coke ovens, byproduct chemical plant, and other stuff is long gone. There is a small museum of sorts there, a new casino, and they have concerts and stuff there with the blast furnaces as a backdrop. I drove by there a few months back- if you've never seen one up close, the sheer scale of the place is immense!! Burns Harbor, IN. Still operational, now owned by Arcelor-Mittal. It was their newest and most modern plant. Built in the late 1960's as a replacement for the Lackawana works, which was then left to wither and die. AM has pumped a TON of money into modernizing and upgrading it, and it's still cranking out steel. They also own and operate the old Inland Steel plant in East Chicago, IN. And that's my novel for the day.
+pyroman6000 I took a defunct of the old Bethlehem works a couple years ago. The tour guides worked there years before and were retired. They said the biggest cause of the decline was unions forcing of wages.
davejase Father actually worked in coke works, some transferred 2 buffalo 2 finish out pension in mid 90's. The story of steel is long and almost everything has its boon and bust cycles. OSHA, EPA, healthcare, venture capitalist(buying and stripping assets/pensions) , cheaper steel all played a part. The mill got shut down in phases and father was lucky few ,2 last the longest. Ended up working for penndot and collected 1 pension check from both places before dying of colon cancer.
PS: Never dump slag into a pit with standing water. They did that here and the resulting steam explosion scattered red hot chunks of slag all over the plant, burning cars and some buildings. It was quite exciting at the time. They dumped the slag right at the side of the blast furnace. They had two pits and alternated, filling one while the other one was being cleaned out. It was the first pour for the new pit-and it had rained for a couple of days. Nobody thought...
I think I was working at either Republic or Inland Steel and heard a story about someone losing a thimble full of hot slag over the end of a dock a long time ago. The resulting steam explosion killed the guy who lost control of it and did extensive damage to the dock because the thimble was ejected in the explosion and I suppose smashed into the dock on the way out. It caused one helluva commotion that's for sure. Steel plants can be spooky and unnerving to work in if you dont go there and get acclimated to where everything is and how things are moved around inside the plant. There are areas I think it was inside the BOF shop that the noise was so loud you could not hear yourself think. Earplugs with a headset hearing protector didnt work because if you take away any kind of recognizable noise, there can be a Euclid backing up on top of you an you would not hear the back-up beeper. Spooky, things get unreal when the ground vibrates, your body vibrates and you can't hear anything, the mind starts playing tricks about what ifs and could it be that? It will turn you into a nervous wreck, jumpy and afraid to have your back to any open spaces behind you because they use Euclids and trains to move pig-cars and every thing else all around the plant. If the space is more than 15 feet wide just about anything could be behind you. RR tracks are everywhere crossing this way and that, and they disappear into a building and come out the other end. You never know if the next blind corner you go around you might have a train on the tracks you are crossing.
@@mrc109 a hellish place i would say... and i complain about working on a bottling line with glass bottles smashing around, pneumatic capper machine and hot juice filler :)
Boy that's no lie that happened at our foundry, it was a miracle that no one died. Loudest explosion I've ever heard so much dirt in there I couldn't see two inches in front of my face. After the dust settled and everybody was accounted for they're like well boys fire'm back up I was shaking like a leaf I was on the furnace floor when that happened
not only captured it, but years later threw up a hailmary and converted it to upload it. who the heck would think this was interesting but here i am amazed
i went to Lehigh University back in 2005-2009 Freshman used to sneak into the abandoned Bethlehem Steel for fun it is an amazing space, titanic steampunk looking facility, pipes weave across the entire structure and ancient machines of unknown function decorated the space, it was sad but very beautiful.
Slag is not excess steel. It is the melted iron ore after the iron has been extracted combined with the melted limestone which acts as a flux carrying away impurities. The iron is heavier than the slag and floats on top of the molten iron like oil on top of water It is from the blast furnace. But converter furnaces such as the Basic Oxygen Furnace & electric arc furnace can have slag too. It is put in slag cars and dumped.
Hey boss, I know this was a while ago, but I'm hoping you're still around to answer this question: Can you still extract minute amounts of steel from that molten mix they are dumping? I am wondering how efficient the process is, let's just say I'm an amateur knife maker and I want to gather up some ore to make one, could I take a hammer and chisel to a chunk of that stuff, bring it home and still get some usable steel from it?
Its used for making 'cinder' blocks combined with cement for building, different grades; mixed with brick clay to make 'grogged' clay - around Northants (England) you will find the hardest bricks you've ever drilled into; slag is also used in various ways for roadbuilding, from ballast to tarmac, foundations to top surface. Mind you, there are plenty of slags around Corby, but that's something else.
BF slag makes some of the worst road ballast. It is porous and is okay for the first few years, but then it begins to crumble into what looks like fine sand. Indiana Rt 49 between Chesterton and Valparaiso used BF slag for ballast when being built from scratch. Within 15 years, the road bead was dug up and replace with real gravel.
Very satisfying watching this so many years later in 2021; glad it popped up in the algo. My father worked at the USS Clairton works for 52 years, and my grandfather worked at that same plant 42 years; I grew up watching scenes like this all the time, I’m a senior now . Back when we used to still make stuff here in the US☹️
I briefly worked at Edgar Thompson as a temporary loader operater for Local 66. It was for a recycling outfit that was cut rate. I was running a 992 Cat loader. Euc's or Terex I can't remember would come in and dump slag. I would dump the slag into seperating screens. There were Cat Tractors hauling the slag pots to be dumped. The heat they held was really something. I wasn't there long. The dust would sparkle when the sun hit it like glitter. You'd blow your nose and it was like coal dust coming out.
@@needsaride15126 Ok , thank you for clarifying that for me . That's where he went when the Nanticoke plant shut down or was shutting down . Sorry for any confusion
This was one of two iconic things for me about Bethlehem Steel. When visiting my grandparents and crossing the Minsi Trail bridge, there was the purple flames of the blast furnaces, and you could see the glow from the slag at their house in Hellertown. There was also sulfur that could be smelled when the slag was dumped.
is there any danger to the fumes of the slag thats dumped? and is there any ecological risks to doing so? i'm just curious, but i would imagine they thought of these things before hand and picked a proper site and such
I hadn't heard the name of that bridge in a good 30+ years. My dad called it the noise bridge because it had a metal bottom in the middle that would make a noise when you drove across it. Both my grandfather and step dad worked at Bethlehem Steel for a time and my grand parents lived in Hellertown near Crossroads Pizza. Thx for the memory.
My Grandfather on my Moms side was an Engineer at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Buffalo... 1940's through 60's (my folks have pictures of him running Steam switchers). By the time I was old enough to remember him in the 70's he was retired... good man.
Several people have commented back to me that they liked my narration about a similar kind of slag dumping operation I witnessed and where I did my small part in a research project. Thank you to everyone who liked what I might have added to the sights and sounds of the Bethlehem Steel slag dumping video posted by Steelmanjules. I feel like I have almost hijacked the post now, which this is certainly not what this is supposed to be about. Like so many things about the integrated iron and steel industry, the experience of being there, seeing firsthand, what few outsiders will ever get the chance to see, and a lot of it is almost beyond description. The iron and steel making process is almost "primordial" in that the conditions required to make iron are a lot like those that happened when the Earth was in its infancy, hotter than hell and lots of it going on all the time. The process of iron and steelmaking never sleeps. The reason why I was at US Steel, Geneva Works was we were hired to get scientific information necessary for US Steel to get a certificate of compliance from the US EPA concerning the amount and kinds of different VOC's (volatile organic compounds) given off from the process of spraying Devil's Liquor sump waste onto very hot slag. This process of spraying the sump waste achieved two separate ends, it got rid of a large volume of the mill process water, which I believe was mostly a mill scale stripping/cooling liquid, contaminated with high amounts of iron oxide (which is red) plus some chemical surfactants and hydrocarbons, so hence the name "Devil's Liquor" (and it smelled kinda funky too). The other important thing about spraying the water on the hot slag (where it promptly evaporated) is that it assisted in the cool down of the red hot slag so that a huge D-9 Caterpillar equipped with a huge ripper blade mounted on the rear end of the Cat could get out on the still very hot but solidified slag and break it up for crushing and grading (sizing) by the boys at IMS (International Mill Services). It almost hurt my ears listening to that caterpillar working out on that hot slag. I can't imagine how long grease and oil lasts on all the lubricated surfaces comprising the wheels and tracks of a caterpillar working on top of 600 degree plus slag, but judging by the sounds of things, it wasn't very long. It squealed like a banshee going forwards or backwards it didn't matter. I pitied the Cat operator. Sitting on top of 6 tons of hot iron all day, working inside a probably not-to-well air-conditioned cab, it must have been pretty rough. Its hard to imagine what the engine oil temperature was inside that diesel, but those Cats sit pretty low to the ground, and the amount of radiant heat still coming off that red hot slag (in places) was ferocious. I have been to many different Integrated Iron and Steel plants throughout the United States (Burns Harbor, Granite City, Inland Steel, Gary works, LTV Steel, Republic, Armco (K.C.), AK Steel, Middletown, and an Electric Arc Furnace in Georgetown S.C.. I could go on and on about the many different sights and sounds, but this is probably not the right place to do this. I don't have any video to show (most of the Steel plants I went into would not let us take photographs, let alone video)! If anybody else has any ideas how or even if I should tell more about my iron and steel making "stories" let me know if you are interested. I also worked inside the Perry Nuclear Power Plant (Ohio). I helped to perform a pitot tube traverse on a 64 inch diameter return cooling-water line to the reactor. I also assisted in the recording of a series of wet-bulb and dry-bulb relative humidity measurements on one of those humongous circular, concrete, natural draft cooling towers. Working deep inside the bowels of a fully operational nuclear power plant is an even more rare and difficult to come by experience than working inside a steel plant. mrc109
@@cremlywelton5126 There was that period in TH-cam history where they made you use a Google+ account. Likely they made a new account rather than transferring the old one over.
I used to live in Hammond, IN 30+ years ago. Dad worked at Inland Steel and I remember seeing the sky turning orange at night when they were dumping the slag.....
My great grandfather worked in the Seattle steel mill through most of his life as an electrician! His name was Sylvester Sessions. He was an electrician who served in ww2 as a plane technician/electrician on the USS Cowpens in the pacific theatre. He was a good man who passed away a few years ago but i still hold him dear in my heart and i will always remember him and the stories he and my grandfather used to have.
@@manavshah8335 I would love to! He lived in Boise for the last chunk of his life and he had this gorgeous backyard. Rhubarb, pear trees, apple trees. Absolutely gorgeous. We visited around once a year and i was always a little shit when i was younger and extremely distractable! Well this one year, he brought us over and made us amazing pear rhubarb pie. We all sat down and usually, i would get distracted and be out playin around or reading. But this year, something about one of his stories caught my ear. Back in his navy days, they got their rations and typically werent allowed other foods (specifically heavily perishables like meats). Well one year for christmas, he and a bunch of his buddies decided to sneak a canned christmas ham onboard. One by one they passed it through their lines and lockers until it reached my grandpas at the very end. A few days pass and they all decide "screw it we're all hungry, lets eat it." So they ate it, but one of them had forgotten to notice, it had been pierced by a piece of metal in one of the lockers and had rotted. They all missed the good christmas ham so they didnt notice but a few hours later, they sure as hell did. But my grandpa, ABSOLUTELY not wanting to go to sick bay (bottom of the boat next to torpedo bullseye) toughed through it and decided to puke over the boat. Welllll his commander caught him and he was sent STRAIGHT to sick bay screaming to not go! He was a good man and im surprised he remembered after almost 80 years but ill never forget that story.
Back in the early 90's I was a patrolman for the City Of Bethlehem Police Department and on a slow night shift , which wasn't very often, I would park along side of Easton Rd. and watch the slag being dumped from on top of the slag piles, although I have never witnessed a volcanic eruption I know what it looks like! Glad I got to witness this happening.
SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, MgO, TiO2, Fe etc. Mainly the Ca, Al and Si. These are used for removing the Oxygen from the iron-stone. Mainly the Ca and Al is used to ensure, that the new Al2O3 mixed with CaO will be separated from the Fe so you get a very clear steel. The slag depends on what kind of steel you want to produce....low alloy, or high carbid etc.
Iron produced from taconite in a blast furnace is reduced using CO and/ or H2. Fluxing materials react with and/ or absorb the impurities such as S. Scrap is often fed to blast furnaces along with the taconite pellets, (hematite Fe2O3), and is a source of problematic impurities such as Zn and Pb, which can form a pinch point in the BF stack or form a clinker in the sump of the BF if not sufficiently soluble in the molten flux or iron..
My wife's gramps was a crane operator at Bethlehem steel on lake Erie in buffalo new York for 36 years. Union steelman. Interesting video. Rest on peace Carl
It’s fascinating driving some of the rural roads in the area and seeing all the derelict plants in the countryside. Highly recommend. The rolling hills and farm fields are also beyond beautiful.
@@zakiducky I think the Sands sold it to some other company. I don't know much about the mall but they added an amazing catwalk over the furnaces, an open air concert stage, and a lot of parking for events and other festivals. The casino paid for most of it so...I guess it was a net gain for the community.
My father still works at the remnants of this plant, Arcelor Mittal. You wouldn't believe the steel history they've scrapped back along those tracks and acres of land. It's a shame, but that's business.
Pretty sure this is the most interesting train video I've ever seen. Nice to see how it was done. I like that they use the dragline to bang the slag out of the cars!
I used to see this at the Park Hill, PA slag dump when I went with my father to pick up truckloads of processed slag. What a difference from those days to now...I'm so glad I got out of there when I did. The railroad that serviced the Johnstown plant was the Conemaugh & Black Lick, as I recall.
That is high risk work! I am an insurance broker, and wow what a risk it is. Great video and awesome snapshot of the great men and women that were part of Bethlehem Steel.
My dad worked for Bethlehem Steel in Johnstown PA, from 1966 to 1994. The plant actually closed in 1992, but he stayed on for two more years because he was a foreman, and dealt with the physical removal and processing of machinery.
My father was assistant GM in 75 then got transfered to Lackawanna from 76-83 then back to Johnstown for a year in 83, then retired. Such a sad time when the mills were closing
A similar thing was done at the Workington Iron & Steel Company, Workington Cumbria England. But the slag was used to build Sea Defences for the plant and the the docks on the north side of the river Derwent. The slag pile went to over 131 foot along the southern shore line. the plant is now closed and the land redeveloped and part of the slag bank has been quarried for aggregate.
As a child my uncle managed together me a ride on the slag tipping locomotive. When it got to the top of the slag bank, I was told to go to the front of the loco and watch. I was astounded when the black balls were tipped out, and broke open to reveal their red/orange inners. Must me over 60 years ago now, but a remember it vividly. Most of the slag bank has gone now, and has been grassed over. That was when Workington was a valuable industrial town
I'm 39 and my Farher used to worked for Bethlehem Steel. He was born in 52', worked there from 58', till 62'. At 8 years old, he was a foreman at local 401. He used to take me to work with him from 1972-1980. I was born in 1983 though. I miss those days..
I had a pilot buddy that domiciled out of norhthern NJ flying for UAL out of JFK for little over 3o year career. A few times on approach to the NYTCA he saw "the Steel" in Bethlehem dumping slag from perhaps 10,000 feet + - on decent into Long Island. He said it was quite the specticl even from that distance (2 miles) at night.........
Just stumbled on this video, what memories! I grew up just a few miles away from the coke works, and the blast furnaces of what used to be Bethlehem Steel (true natives would have said "Bethlum Steel") The steam plumes of quenched coke, the waft of steam overhead. Dad would take us kids down to watch the slag dumps. He started out in the coke works, at the end of the "Corporate run" he was a senior technician in Research. All gone now, nothing left but a gambling casino and show stage.
Ahhh, nothing like the smell of roasting coke ovens early in the morning. Somebody ought to write a song about it, "Nothing could be finer than to smell the burning fires in the morning"
During college I worked on a section gang on the PB and NE which is the switching railroad seen in this clip. One of the summers, in August, we were assigned to work on the tracks in this section of the plant. After dumping for a certain period of time, the tracks needed to be moved out to the edge so that the pots could continue to dump. That was our assignment, and we were there for about 3 weeks.. hot sun, heat radiating from the ground and a little metal shack that we had to stoop down to sit in for breaks . There is a reason that they put the college crew on that job! Not sure that I would last a whole day in that heat at this point in my life :)
Jason, I work for the railroad that tool over the PBNE rails... Where the Coke plants were is where our current Intermodal yard is... I'm trying to figure out where exactly they dumped the slag... in other words... How far away from the Coke works was the dump? I have a general idea of where is it was.... but looking for clarification. Thnx
just saw this post.. I looked at the area in google maps.. a lot changes in 40 years! i suspect that the area is now under some of those huge distribution buildings, but i could not say for sure. what is your role on the railroad? Generations of my family spent their careers on the PB & NE @@s.hannibal6565
I remember my parents taking me to watch these cars dump slag at night when I was very young. I'll never forget how it lit up the area when they tipped.
Nice. This takes me back. There used to be a huge slag dump near where I grew up at, then in the late '70s they shut it down and built shopping centers there.
Impressive. I remember a slag dump gone wrong in Newcastle Australia in the early 80's where the slag was dumped into a pit full of rain water. Loudest explosion I've ever heard. It scared the crap out of us kids and I bet the truck driver suffered permanent hearing loss.
I remember seeing this kind of thing as a kid growing up in Tacoma WA at the old ASARCO smelter. They dumped it right into the bay so there was the bright hot slag and clouds of steam when it hit the water. There are still hundreds of those same cone shaped shells from the slag cooling in the bucket.
That man @2:54 doing weird things, he is quadrupling his safe checks, he reiterates the process to himself so he won't forget a single step. He's not wrong. That thing is a living bomb.
Your right. The slag is tapped out of what is referred to as the "Cinder Tap. The Iron tap is located lower because the iron is on the bottom. The Blast furnace is presurized @ 18.5 PSI to 40 PSI. The molten iron& slag is suspended on the pocket of air mid furnace. The "Valve man" lowers the pressure and the slag is even with the Cinder tap. There is a brick plug that holds the iron/slag in the furnace. This is drilled out, the clay is injected with the Mud gun plugging the hole..
I live within 25 minutes of where this was shot. Across the river from their dump area is Rt.78. I was driving home one night when they dumped the slag. Looks super cool at night!!
There’s plenty of Bethlehem Steel coal mines that used metalurgic coal for steel in this area. It’s interesting to learn they mined and made steel with the same coal.
I'd never heard of 'metalurgic coal' before and when I google I'm told it's just good coal for making coke to make steel. There are mines in my part of the world that produced both coal and iron ore but as different products from different seams.
@@huw3851 yes this area has most of metallurgic coal mined. They mine “steam” coal or bituminous now. It’s used to power the remaining steam power plants.
@@83jbbentley I misunderstood what you meant by ''metallurgic coal' - I suspect it's American for coking coal. 😀 The mines are long gone in my part of the world but they used to be distinguished by their product - household/shipping/coking coal.
Never done this before, but I do work with hot tungsten steel building mining bits. Real easy to burn yourself. I've been burnt while paying attention. Never underestimate hot steel and the ambient temperature around you I make it a point to have a cooling fan and drink water to the point I'd think I'm going to float away . Sometimes I set my ice water on the work bench and not 5 minutes later it's room temperature. Much respect for the steel worker. God bless America. God bless the steel worker.
some engineer might chime in and explain why those tracks dont collapse being so close to the edge because it escapes visible reason, if the roadbed under area was water soaked would it fail sooner?
That Engineer would be Mr. King. Lived in Moon Township and is long passed. He also designed those "buckets" but more importantly, figured out a way to allow the buckets to be dumped and returned/reused. Amazing fellow. And to answer your query, once slag is cooled and settled, it forms a sort of concrete like substance that is incredibly hard and very stable. Hence the whole tracks only a little way from the edge situation!
That rail bed is probably made out of crushed slag. I don't know how they initially stabilized the face, but under a lot of slag that has congealed down the face of the dump site there are probably pilings of some sort long since covered over. There is also the scale of things you are looking at. Those thimble cars are monstrously big, I would guestimate around 18 feet tall. So that is 9 feet of space between the top lip and the edge of the pit. The tracks are normal gage wide and the cars 8 feet or more wide. I would estimate the rail closest to the edge of the slag pit was about 4 feet away.
Sort of happened in Kazakhstan; the Car broke and the Pan (or however you call it) fell onto Ice. Well, glowing hot Slag and Ice don't mix well. Nobody was hurt but Bricks were shat: th-cam.com/video/dYObrz5bF9Q/w-d-xo.html
I've wondered how they cleaned out the build up in these pots. And it seems to be the simplest and most effective way possible. It's pretty spectacular!
You have kind of a point. In high school (few years back) I would cold forge, solder, and engrave nickles and quarters in to pendents and other jewelry to make some extra money. But the slag in this video is only a small percent metal, it contains sulfides, silicons, and some metal oxides. I have smelted metal once or twice before, that slag can be some nasty stuff.
Er, I think you mean "aluminum". Because it's a superior (lighter, non-rusting) material for car bodies and has been recognized as such since literally 1974. This corresponds very well to the period of time when the world lost interest in massive steel cars and massive steel buildings, thus dooming Bethlehem Steel to two decades of painful death via old age. It's also worth mentioning that Alcoa is doing just fine and is still cranking out aerospace-grade aluminum and titanium in the state of Pennsylvania. Heavy industry is not dead in America; obsolete heavy industry died back in the 70s and will never come back.
Back when I was a kid, one of the really exciting things to do locally was to watch the slag dump at the American Smelting and Refining Company's Hayden plant. The slag tip faced highway 77 and there was a nice place you could park to watch. The slag dump was always spectacular and they always did a dump in the evening when the sun was just above the Tortillas and the tip was in shadow. Free fireworks show every time.
Idk why there’s just something incredibly erie about this video. The fact it’s hard to tell whether it’s early morning or just about to become nighttime, or the grainy footage, the lack of dialogue from anyone in the video, the rusted machinery, the dark red slag pools dripping down the dark rocky cliff side. It’s all just insanely creepy and feels like I almost wasn’t meant to stumble across this
I remember this from when I was living in Weirton and the dump was a bout a mile from the house...totally lit up the sky at night, and the Sulphur smell was horrible...one of the reasons why I did not want to be there and took the military route out of a lifetime of labor in a steel mill, a coal mine or some associated industry! And then there were the Koppers Chemical Plants in the next town a few miles south...HATED the Place!
Suzanne LeBizarre I'm from Chester. You would hardly recognize the town today. The entire hot end north of the viaduct is gone. About the only thing left is the tin mill. I also remember seeing them dumping slag at night, plus seeing the different colors of flame and coke gasses venting from the blast furnaces. I agree that it stunk, but to me the sights always had kind of a surreal beauty.
Bethlehem steel always had a magic charm for me , I will always regret never going there during the early 90,s when I was in America a lot , guess drag racing , super cross nascar and the ramones took priority . Great film .
Great video clip. I had a job once at the US Steel Pipe Works, Geneva Plant, Utah where I took "slag temperatures" before they sprayed "devils liquor" sump water on it to cool it down. I wore wooden shoe "clogs" to protect my shoes from melting (the same kind coke oven operators wear when servicing the ovens). 24 hours after a "thimble car" dump of red-hot slag was made, I went out and traversed the dump-site, measuring congealed slag surface temperatures, sometimes up to and often exceeding 600 degrees F. I wore thick canvas over-clothes, but anywhere my body came into pointed contact with the canvas (elbows and knees) I would get "burned" because of the heat transferred from the canvas material through my regular clothes. The heat at breathing height was about 200 degrees F. I wore a face shield (clear) to protect my face from the heat and had to wear a scarf over my nose to prevent breathing in super-heated air. As it was, I still singed the hairs inside my nose if I inhaled a little too quickly.
Imagine walking around inside a pizza oven, that is what it felt like. It dried me out, like desiccating me from the inside out breathing in all that super hot and very dry air.
Watching the thimble cars dump slag at night was one of the most incredible visual experiences I have ever had. The second after they tip a thimble, when the splash of red hot slag boiling down the slope glows intensely red, there follows milliseconds later, a "blast" of intense infrared radiation, that hits you in the face like a gust of hot wind.
The sea-gulls around dusk, would often ride the intense thermals created by the super-heated air, drawing cooler air up from below the slag pits, combining with the hot air whoosh it would go, rushing up the precipitous cliffs, man-made mini-mountains of slag, there they would fly along the thermals updraft about 100 feet up and nearly parallel to the rail car dump line. Their white underbelly's "glowing" brilliantly orange, phoenix like they hovered there almost motionless reflecting the bright yellow-orange and red hues of the cooling slag. It was like they were on fire it was so bright in the fading light of the day. It was the only beautiful sight to see in an otherwise desolate and foreboding wasteland of glassy rock-like congealed blast furnace slag.
Geneva Works is now defunct.
mrc109
What an awesome account. Very well written but somewhat sad at the same time.. I think I pictured it just as you saw it.
excelente relato felicitaciones y muchas gracias con cariño luis
Nice and eloquent description. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Marios Damoulianos gracias , que buen informe tan especial , un fuerte abrazo , con cariño albert felicitaciones
Part of me would love to see that kind of stuff--it would fascinate me. And another part would be scared shitless, because if I have any phobia, it's burning. Thanks for the account.
The cone shaped thing falling out of the slag pot is the fire brick liner which holds all the heat. If it weren't for that, the steel slag pot would glow red/yellow hot and burn itself out. After dumping, the slag cars are taken to the skulling dept where they are re bricked. They are preheated to bake the brick B4 reloading. Then they are sprayed with a high temp parting agent to keep the slag from sticking. If not, then comes the jack hammer or oxygen lance to burn out the hardened slag
what is it made out of beceause thats what can put a human being on the sun
@@johhnyytwotime510 😂
Thank you sir for the additional insight
It’s made of unicorn ivory.
sir are you still alive
I love how no matter how much youtube changes over time, it's always the videos like this that resurface out of nowhere lmao
Exactly, I didn't expect to see a 15 year old (technically 28 year old) video popping up on my homepage,
but I'm not complaining! :)
Lol for real
Same and everytime it pops up and see the "uploaded XX year's" I feel older
Yep, there is even temple of the TH-cam algorithm with its faithfulls
It's a classic TH-cam move
Who else is here 30 years after the event and 17 years after the video up load for no reason?
Haaaayyy
YT should have a feature to be recommended only videos of a certain time frame.
@@sophiacristinathat would be awesome
me lol
me
As a young child, Dad used to takes us to watch them dump slag at night. It was entertainment you got for free. It was also educational. And when all was dark and they dumped the slag it was almost as good as fireworks, at least to us,lol.
Same i also watched this with my dad back then
Same here in Finland! Dad took me and grandpa to watch this. I'll never forget it, it looked like a volcano. Grandpa was equally impressed.
it probably looked very cool. it's also insightful to how production functions. better than youtube.
Where was this?
@@bobsmith962 Bethlehem pa
Videos like this is what TH-cam should be really about. It used to be like this, full of real people videos of real world stuff going on. Just the footage and the sounds. But TH-cam lost itself along the way, with its shorty shorts, obnoxious influencers, the craze to monetize everything. Videos like this are a breath of fresh air. Thanks for uploading it.
There's a lot of trash on YT, yes -- also a lot of controversial material people would not only find interesting, but benefit from seeing, is not allowed due to what I'll quaintly call political correctness
And you can see that most comments were pretty instructional and personal, it was not a wild field of disputes and "like chasers".
However, i would say there is still lot of cool things on YT and even some cool shorts, i think it depends on how people react to those. I'm millennial, so i think it never got in to the content addiction trap os scrolling short after short. So i don't mind about it.
I also subbed to thousands of channels, anything that provides something i like i give sub, so my front page only have cool videos.
It's balanced out with good people live streaming sporting events.😊
That's the business model of social media .it's always funny to me that people claim to want to want hardcore capitalism and then ask why everything is about the money. Of course it's about the money. You asked for exactly this.
Worded well my friend. A breath of fresh air. Broadcasting real life and nothing else. I appreciate the modern production and work put into videos nowadays, but this content is the core of what it’s always been.
I really enjoyed watching this. Just a fascinating little snapshot of industrial processes. To me, these kind of authentic videos are some of the best content on TH-cam.
this video is old enough to be recommended to me twice now, once 8 years ago and once again today.
The men operating those machines were probably making good money. Putting their kids through college while making their house payments, watching football on the weekends and drinking with their buddies after work. All with their high school diplomas on the wall and their union membership in their wallet. Days lost forever.
My dad was a Bethlehem Steel shipyard worker for 36 years. I was the last of his six children. The last three of us indeed did go to college, with two of us eventually getting master's degrees. He had a third grade education.
My dad told me when I was seven that when I grew up that the shipyard would probably be closed. He said I needed to get a good education if I was going to have a shot at a decent living.
The man was a prophet. The Hoboken yard closed in 1984. It was torn down years later and the land that it once occupied now has luxury condos that face the Hudson River across from the skyscrapers in Manhattan.
Some of us gen x still living the dream.23 yrs Ibew, 6 figures,all the toys,beach house,living the dream.of course you have to be willing to WORK and GET DIRTY, which is basically a death sentence to these soft , brainwashed millennials
@@captainzumafishing772capta9 no offense but ive seen what hard work does and it isnt beneficial, most older men i see are basically cut off from free life by health affects by time they even reach just 50+, alot of men with hip replacements at 40+ unable to go back into work. i do renovations on empty houses so i dont sit in an office but sometimes i think the same money for keeping my body just a bit less worn might be better in the end. each to there own id rather work smarter not harder.
@@ffgdfgvhhg7191 bullshit, heroin cocaine and marijuana were rampant in the 70s. The only difference today is you can get stronger meds legally from the pharmaceutical companies. This world is truly going to shit.
I rebuilt train engines for a company sub contracted by the railroads.. Got no railroad benefits, shit wages, no legal qualification.. All while we pulled in record numbers and the bosses (ex railroad) made their 6 figures and did nothing.
There’s still money like this to be made, kids just have to be lucky to find the opportunity
My Dad attended Lehigh University in the late thirties. He talked about how spectacular it looked at night. Seeing it happen years later gives me an idea of what he often talked about. Gone for Ever! Videos like this is all that's left. Thanks!
Why do people not do this anymore?
@@baileystark7629 they do it in poorer countries now where they can do the same job with no safety or environmental laws for pennies on the dollar
Hhi
@@baileystark7629 Because Bethlehem steel was run into the ground. Failed to modernize and couldn't compete with cheaper offshore steel...plus dumping all this toxic crap in an area that is now surrounded by suburbs would not work well.
While I never saw the slag being dumped, I lived in Duquesne, PA in the late 1940s. The street I lived on dead ended at the edge of a large hollow not too far from where the slag had been dumped. I think it had been stopped some time before me, because as kids, we would see how far up the slag dump we could climb. I had to be about 8 years old when I got about 50 feet up, before I lost control when the surface started to crumble causing me to start sliding back down. I turned around into a sitting, crab-like position as I slid down the hill on my butt while the rough sandpaper-like slag tore out the seat of my pants and ground my palms to raw flesh. I'll never forget that experience as long as I live and I am currently 84.
Duquesne is rougher than that slag pile now, the crime.
It was soooo much fun being 8 and without fear eh.
@@TomokosEnterprize
That was in the days that cap guns were legal. My cousin and I had cap guns and holsters and played cowboys and shot off roll after roll of caps. They came 5 rolls to the box, 50 shots to the roll and we would buy many boxes. We played Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Bad Baskim, Red Ryder, The Lone Ranger and more. Had to go down to the movie theater on 1st Street to see the westerns at the matinee or listen to the stories on radio. It would be another 3 years before I even laid eyes on a TV.
Nowadays when I go to the range the smell of the gun smoke reminds me of my childhood.
Reading this is we grew up on the same time when bare feet, drinking from a sun heated hose and the long walk to that Saturday movie. You forgot Buck Rogers and if lucky enough to be let in Our Man Flint, Threes more of course but I thought those would spark up a couple more memories for ya. OH YEA, 3 Stooges and Dean Martin and Jerry lewis too eh, LOL. Such carefree days going back there eh. Why not throw in any thing by/of Walt Disney too.@@tem1939
@@tem1939would you consider those times better compared to now?
I am 58. I have lived my entire life in Bethlehem and Hellertown. I like 100% of all my friends growing up had at least one relative who worked at the steel. Four people I knew had the majority of their family work at the steel and Mack.
Time goes on....Bethlehem Steel made a lot of mistakes but the life and the future opport that the steel and Mack afforded those around my age was incredible and is still appreciated to this day by many in this area.
Be well
@Eddie J Parsons: Bethlehem Steel went Bankrupt not long after this video was shot. There are many reasons for the demise of our domestic steel, it's not as simple as just outsourcing, or enviro-laws. Everyone had a hand in it: the companies; the unions, the government; and the consumers. Changing market factors took a big toll, too. ( the bottom pretty much dropped out of the market for heavy structural steel and seamless steel pipe, for example. No demand = no money, and thus no mill and no jobs.)
Of their four big steel making plants, only one is still operational- and it isn't this one. (i'm assuming this is at Bethworks, in PA). Lackawana, NY was torn down long ago, a victim of obsolescence, non-reinvestment, and NYS wanting them to spend 10s of Billions to clean up the site of contamination going back more than 100 years. ( they bought the mill from another company) There's virtually nothing left of it but the harbor.
Sparrows Point, MD was just torn down- there are vids of the demolition on here. That mill was built to supply their shipmaking ops at that site. No more Bethlehem, no more demand for ships to build = no more mill... They were bought out, too, and eventually went under.
Bethlehem, PA. Much of the plant still stands, like the blast furnaces, ore bridge, and many of the old brick mill buildings. It shut down all operations by the end of the 1990's. The coke ovens, byproduct chemical plant, and other stuff is long gone.
There is a small museum of sorts there, a new casino, and they have concerts and stuff there with the blast furnaces as a backdrop. I drove by there a few months back- if you've never seen one up close, the sheer scale of the place is immense!!
Burns Harbor, IN. Still operational, now owned by Arcelor-Mittal. It was their newest and most modern plant. Built in the late 1960's as a replacement for the Lackawana works, which was then left to wither and die. AM has pumped a TON of money into modernizing and upgrading it, and it's still cranking out steel. They also own and operate the old Inland Steel plant in East Chicago, IN.
And that's my novel for the day.
+pyroman6000 I took a defunct of the old Bethlehem works a couple years ago. The tour guides worked there years before and were retired. They said the biggest cause of the decline was unions forcing of wages.
Union greed had more to do with the demise of US steel than any politician ever did.
pyroman6000 thiers also a steel mill buy Pittsburgh pa with two operational blast furnaces. Only have about 9000 people left though.
davejase Father actually worked in coke works, some transferred 2 buffalo 2 finish out pension in mid 90's. The story of steel is long and almost everything has its boon and bust cycles. OSHA, EPA, healthcare, venture capitalist(buying and stripping assets/pensions) , cheaper steel all played a part. The mill got shut down in phases and father was lucky few ,2 last the longest. Ended up working for penndot and collected 1 pension check from both places before dying of colon cancer.
pyroman dropped
knowledge
PS: Never dump slag into a pit with standing water. They did that here and the resulting steam explosion scattered red hot chunks of slag all over the plant, burning cars and some buildings. It was quite exciting at the time. They dumped the slag right at the side of the blast furnace. They had two pits and alternated, filling one while the other one was being cleaned out. It was the first pour for the new pit-and it had rained for a couple of days. Nobody thought...
Ok i wont next time. Thanks for that
I Hate when that happens. Lol
I think I was working at either Republic or Inland Steel and heard a story about someone losing a thimble full of hot slag over the end of a dock a long time ago. The resulting steam explosion killed the guy who lost control of it and did extensive damage to the dock because the thimble was ejected in the explosion and I suppose smashed into the dock on the way out. It caused one helluva commotion that's for sure.
Steel plants can be spooky and unnerving to work in if you dont go there and get acclimated to where everything is and how things are moved around inside the plant. There are areas I think it was inside the BOF shop that the noise was so loud you could not hear yourself think. Earplugs with a headset hearing protector didnt work because if you take away any kind of recognizable noise, there can be a Euclid backing up on top of you an you would not hear the back-up beeper. Spooky, things get unreal when the ground vibrates, your body vibrates and you can't hear anything, the mind starts playing tricks about what ifs and could it be that? It will turn you into a nervous wreck, jumpy and afraid to have your back to any open spaces behind you because they use Euclids and trains to move pig-cars and every thing else all around the plant. If the space is more than 15 feet wide just about anything could be behind you. RR tracks are everywhere crossing this way and that, and they disappear into a building and come out the other end. You never know if the next blind corner you go around you might have a train on the tracks you are crossing.
@@mrc109 a hellish place i would say...
and i complain about working on a bottling line with glass bottles smashing around, pneumatic capper machine and hot juice filler :)
Boy that's no lie that happened at our foundry, it was a miracle that no one died. Loudest explosion I've ever heard so much dirt in there I couldn't see two inches in front of my face. After the dust settled and everybody was accounted for they're like well boys fire'm back up I was shaking like a leaf I was on the furnace floor when that happened
The fact that someone captured this on film is great.
Yeah, in Israel back then
Uh, Bethlehem Steel is in Pennsylvania.
not only captured it, but years later threw up a hailmary and converted it to upload it. who the heck would think this was interesting but here i am amazed
@@oreziopancrazio3685 you dumb lmao
tape, actually
i went to Lehigh University back in 2005-2009
Freshman used to sneak into the abandoned Bethlehem Steel for fun
it is an amazing space, titanic steampunk looking facility, pipes weave across the entire structure and ancient machines of unknown function decorated the space, it was sad but very beautiful.
Slag is not excess steel. It is the melted iron ore after the iron has been extracted combined with the melted limestone which acts as a flux carrying away impurities. The iron is heavier than the slag and floats on top of the molten iron like oil on top of water It is from the blast furnace. But converter furnaces such as the Basic Oxygen Furnace & electric arc furnace can have slag too. It is put in slag cars and dumped.
You have been awarded then honor of: Super Hero for a day!
Ah cool! Always wondered how it worked. Just last week was gold panning in a river and found a chunk of slag and seems like youtube read my mind!
Hey boss, I know this was a while ago, but I'm hoping you're still around to answer this question: Can you still extract minute amounts of steel from that molten mix they are dumping? I am wondering how efficient the process is, let's just say I'm an amateur knife maker and I want to gather up some ore to make one, could I take a hammer and chisel to a chunk of that stuff, bring it home and still get some usable steel from it?
Thank you for saving me 2 minutes on Google.
Thank you ! Was curious as to what I was watching
Its used for making 'cinder' blocks combined with cement for building, different grades; mixed with brick clay to make 'grogged' clay - around Northants (England) you will find the hardest bricks you've ever drilled into; slag is also used in various ways for roadbuilding, from ballast to tarmac, foundations to top surface.
Mind you, there are plenty of slags around Corby, but that's something else.
BF slag makes some of the worst road ballast. It is porous and is okay for the first few years, but then it begins to crumble into what looks like fine sand. Indiana Rt 49 between Chesterton and Valparaiso used BF slag for ballast when being built from scratch. Within 15 years, the road bead was dug up and replace with real gravel.
@@somaday2595 sounds like the issue we've had in Nashville. Good shit though guys thanks for your comments.
Lol, slags and chavs, love 'em!
Very satisfying watching this so many years later in 2021; glad it popped up in the algo. My father worked at the USS Clairton works for 52 years, and my grandfather worked at that same plant 42 years; I grew up watching scenes like this all the time, I’m a senior now . Back when we used to still make stuff here in the US☹️
I briefly worked at Edgar Thompson as a temporary loader operater for Local 66. It was for a recycling outfit that was cut rate. I was running a 992 Cat loader. Euc's or Terex I can't remember would come in and dump slag. I would dump the slag into seperating screens. There were Cat Tractors hauling the slag pots to be dumped. The heat they held was really something. I wasn't there long. The dust would sparkle when the sun hit it like glitter. You'd blow your nose and it was like coal dust coming out.
One day, USA will produce things again. Will be a hell of a goood time when it happens.
My Dad retired from Clairton works I believe . Wasn't that in Croydon , PA . If that's the one that's where he retired from
@@johnwells2177 Clairton coke works along the Mon river outside of Pittsburgh. Edgar Thompson Works is in Braddock also near Pittsburgh Pa.
@@needsaride15126 Ok , thank you for clarifying that for me . That's where he went when the Nanticoke plant shut down or was shutting down . Sorry for any confusion
This was one of two iconic things for me about Bethlehem Steel. When visiting my grandparents and crossing the Minsi Trail bridge, there was the purple flames of the blast furnaces, and you could see the glow from the slag at their house in Hellertown. There was also sulfur that could be smelled when the slag was dumped.
oh yummy the smell of rotten eggs, how iconic. Stop trying to romanticize BS.
@@jerrynadler2883 I didn't like the smell but I did like the glow. It was fascinating.
is there any danger to the fumes of the slag thats dumped? and is there any ecological risks to doing so? i'm just curious, but i would imagine they thought of these things before hand and picked a proper site and such
@@glizzygulper8948 LOL! proper site, im dying, your a funny guy
I hadn't heard the name of that bridge in a good 30+ years. My dad called it the noise bridge because it had a metal bottom in the middle that would make a noise when you drove across it. Both my grandfather and step dad worked at Bethlehem Steel for a time and my grand parents lived in Hellertown near Crossroads Pizza. Thx for the memory.
My Grandfather on my Moms side was an Engineer at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Buffalo... 1940's through 60's (my folks have pictures of him running Steam switchers). By the time I was old enough to remember him in the 70's he was retired... good man.
Several people have commented back to me that they liked my narration about a similar kind of slag dumping operation I witnessed and where I did my small part in a research project.
Thank you to everyone who liked what I might have added to the sights and sounds of the Bethlehem Steel slag dumping video posted by Steelmanjules. I feel like I have almost hijacked the post now, which this is certainly not what this is supposed to be about.
Like so many things about the integrated iron and steel industry, the experience of being there, seeing firsthand, what few outsiders will ever get the chance to see, and a lot of it is almost beyond description. The iron and steel making process is almost "primordial" in that the conditions required to make iron are a lot like those that happened when the Earth was in its infancy, hotter than hell and lots of it going on all the time. The process of iron and steelmaking never sleeps.
The reason why I was at US Steel, Geneva Works was we were hired to get scientific information necessary for US Steel to get a certificate of compliance from the US EPA concerning the amount and kinds of different VOC's (volatile organic compounds) given off from the process of spraying Devil's Liquor sump waste onto very hot slag. This process of spraying the sump waste achieved two separate ends, it got rid of a large volume of the mill process water, which I believe was mostly a mill scale stripping/cooling liquid, contaminated with high amounts of iron oxide (which is red) plus some chemical surfactants and hydrocarbons, so hence the name "Devil's Liquor" (and it smelled kinda funky too). The other important thing about spraying the water on the hot slag (where it promptly evaporated) is that it assisted in the cool down of the red hot slag so that a huge D-9 Caterpillar equipped with a huge ripper blade mounted on the rear end of the Cat could get out on the still very hot but solidified slag and break it up for crushing and grading (sizing) by the boys at IMS (International Mill Services).
It almost hurt my ears listening to that caterpillar working out on that hot slag. I can't imagine how long grease and oil lasts on all the lubricated surfaces comprising the wheels and tracks of a caterpillar working on top of 600 degree plus slag, but judging by the sounds of things, it wasn't very long. It squealed like a banshee going forwards or backwards it didn't matter. I pitied the Cat operator. Sitting on top of 6 tons of hot iron all day, working inside a probably not-to-well air-conditioned cab, it must have been pretty rough. Its hard to imagine what the engine oil temperature was inside that diesel, but those Cats sit pretty low to the ground, and the amount of radiant heat still coming off that red hot slag (in places) was ferocious.
I have been to many different Integrated Iron and Steel plants throughout the United States (Burns Harbor, Granite City, Inland Steel, Gary works, LTV Steel, Republic, Armco (K.C.), AK Steel, Middletown, and an Electric Arc Furnace in Georgetown S.C.. I could go on and on about the many different sights and sounds, but this is probably not the right place to do this. I don't have any video to show (most of the Steel plants I went into would not let us take photographs, let alone video)!
If anybody else has any ideas how or even if I should tell more about my iron and steel making "stories" let me know if you are interested. I also worked inside the Perry Nuclear Power Plant (Ohio). I helped to perform a pitot tube traverse on a 64 inch diameter return cooling-water line to the reactor. I also assisted in the recording of a series of wet-bulb and dry-bulb relative humidity measurements on one of those humongous circular, concrete, natural draft cooling towers.
Working deep inside the bowels of a fully operational nuclear power plant is an even more rare and difficult to come by experience than working inside a steel plant.
mrc109
did you not see the face at the top of the right piller
Nice stores mate.. It's a good read.. You should send some of these storeys to a magazine or something..:-)
Steve Cummins
I would be interested in your steel plant stories. Do you have them online anywhere, or a book perhaps?
Thank you!
what is going on between you and mrc109? Why are your pics the same?
@@cremlywelton5126 There was that period in TH-cam history where they made you use a Google+ account. Likely they made a new account rather than transferring the old one over.
I used to live in Hammond, IN 30+ years ago. Dad worked at Inland Steel and I remember seeing the sky turning orange at night when they were dumping the slag.....
fiberman45 there is still a few videos of this floating around TH-cam. Definitely a sight to see
My Grandfather and Grandmother lived in Hammond. Grandad worked his whole life in the oil refinery in whiting. Eventually ended up running the place.
@@Joe-Mamasixtyninefourtwenty Back when it was called Standard Oil I bet?
I'm from Calumet city.
My great grandfather worked in the Seattle steel mill through most of his life as an electrician! His name was Sylvester Sessions. He was an electrician who served in ww2 as a plane technician/electrician on the USS Cowpens in the pacific theatre. He was a good man who passed away a few years ago but i still hold him dear in my heart and i will always remember him and the stories he and my grandfather used to have.
Sorry for your loss mate, would you care to share a story of your grandfather's?
@@manavshah8335 I would love to! He lived in Boise for the last chunk of his life and he had this gorgeous backyard. Rhubarb, pear trees, apple trees. Absolutely gorgeous. We visited around once a year and i was always a little shit when i was younger and extremely distractable! Well this one year, he brought us over and made us amazing pear rhubarb pie. We all sat down and usually, i would get distracted and be out playin around or reading. But this year, something about one of his stories caught my ear. Back in his navy days, they got their rations and typically werent allowed other foods (specifically heavily perishables like meats). Well one year for christmas, he and a bunch of his buddies decided to sneak a canned christmas ham onboard. One by one they passed it through their lines and lockers until it reached my grandpas at the very end. A few days pass and they all decide "screw it we're all hungry, lets eat it." So they ate it, but one of them had forgotten to notice, it had been pierced by a piece of metal in one of the lockers and had rotted. They all missed the good christmas ham so they didnt notice but a few hours later, they sure as hell did. But my grandpa, ABSOLUTELY not wanting to go to sick bay (bottom of the boat next to torpedo bullseye) toughed through it and decided to puke over the boat. Welllll his commander caught him and he was sent STRAIGHT to sick bay screaming to not go! He was a good man and im surprised he remembered after almost 80 years but ill never forget that story.
@@sethgokey8161 Oh well that's humourous. thank you so much for sharing this memory with me, enjoyed it immensely :)
This is making a comeback thanks to recommendations.
Back in the early 90's I was a patrolman for the City Of Bethlehem Police Department and on a slow night shift , which wasn't very often, I would park along side of Easton Rd. and watch the slag being dumped from on top of the slag piles, although I have never witnessed a volcanic eruption I know what it looks like! Glad I got to witness this happening.
ain't nothing changed, beth'lem still crime ridden
SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, MgO, TiO2, Fe etc. Mainly the Ca, Al and Si. These are used for removing the Oxygen from the iron-stone. Mainly the Ca and Al is used to ensure, that the new Al2O3 mixed with CaO will be separated from the Fe so you get a very clear steel. The slag depends on what kind of steel you want to produce....low alloy, or high carbid etc.
Iron produced from taconite in a blast furnace is reduced using CO and/ or H2. Fluxing materials react with and/ or absorb the impurities such as S. Scrap is often fed to blast furnaces along with the taconite pellets, (hematite Fe2O3), and is a source of problematic impurities such as Zn and Pb, which can form a pinch point in the BF stack or form a clinker in the sump of the BF if not sufficiently soluble in the molten flux or iron..
Absolutely incredible. Thank you to the brave men who pioneered this and who have kept it going since.
My wife's gramps was a crane operator at Bethlehem steel on lake Erie in buffalo new York for 36 years. Union steelman. Interesting video. Rest on peace Carl
It’s fascinating driving some of the rural roads in the area and seeing all the derelict plants in the countryside. Highly recommend. The rolling hills and farm fields are also beyond beautiful.
This plant became a casino and arts center :)
@@cmdrls212 Yeah, this one is the Sands Casino now iirc? I’ve been there long ago, nice place. Big but empty mall though lol
@@zakiducky I think the Sands sold it to some other company. I don't know much about the mall but they added an amazing catwalk over the furnaces, an open air concert stage, and a lot of parking for events and other festivals. The casino paid for most of it so...I guess it was a net gain for the community.
Even more beautiful when covered in layer of molten metal
You don't feel safe around true nature do you?
My father still works at the remnants of this plant, Arcelor Mittal. You wouldn't believe the steel history they've scrapped back along those tracks and acres of land. It's a shame, but that's business.
I’d love to hear more. If you wouldn’t mind.
youtube algo: now is the right time to recommend this in people's timelines
very satisfying when the crusted shells fall out
😂
just like the devil picking his nose
Was gonna comment the same thing but ummm u beat me to it 5 years ago lol
They call them “skulls” which makes it even more metal.
Yes, like taking a good Dump you've been holding in.
Pretty sure this is the most interesting train video I've ever seen. Nice to see how it was done. I like that they use the dragline to bang the slag out of the cars!
Look up the "Loram Rail Grinder at night".
Here from mr ballens retelling of the TECO accident in Tampa. To know those men died experiencing pain from this type of material is heart wrenching.
This is the most metal thing I’ve seen all day
1994 was closer to when this video was uploaded than when this video was uploaded to today.
Don't
@@idrinkmilk282 🤷
😮
@@idrinkmilk282?
I used to see this at the Park Hill, PA slag dump when I went with my father to pick up truckloads of processed slag. What a difference from those days to now...I'm so glad I got out of there when I did.
The railroad that serviced the Johnstown plant was the Conemaugh & Black Lick, as I recall.
That is high risk work! I am an insurance broker, and wow what a risk it is. Great video and awesome snapshot of the great men and women that were part of Bethlehem Steel.
I've seen this video so many times as a kid! I miss those days!
Cuz you were a kid.
For someone that has visited the steel works in bethleham a lot, this video is amazing.
I wonder if Jimmy Hoffa's somewhere underneath that slag pile.
This video title sounded like the greatest heavy metal concert in history... Never been so disappointed with a videos content in my life!
3 of my fam have worked at Bethlehem steel. I was able to see the place once most of it was shut down. Just an enormous rusty beauty of a plant.
When you’re still on your phone at 1 in the morning and you find yourself on this side of youtube again.
I'll never forget dumping my first slag
How a 16 year old video of something that happened 30 years ago lands in my feed, I'll never know. But, thank you anyway!
My dad worked for Bethlehem Steel in Johnstown PA, from 1966 to 1994. The plant actually closed in 1992, but he stayed on for two more years because he was a foreman, and dealt with the physical removal and processing of machinery.
Must have been sad the last 2 years
@@bobsmith962 If it was, he never showed it.
My father was assistant GM in 75 then got transfered to Lackawanna from 76-83 then back to Johnstown for a year in 83, then retired. Such a sad time when the mills were closing
@@jeffdaggett7761 Yeah. Thanks for replying to my comment. Makes me feel less isolated in my family history.
Mordor??
Hey your here, I’m just 6 years late.
@@johnnyrocket6588 He needs to read up on this before he comments again: th-cam.com/video/RtlCPgmTbiY/w-d-xo.html
@@Woodlands_View_Guest this link is to a video about the orange haired fox. 😂 is that the get educated you mean??
A similar thing was done at the Workington Iron & Steel Company, Workington Cumbria England. But the slag was used to build Sea Defences for the plant and the the docks on the north side of the river Derwent. The slag pile went to over 131 foot along the southern shore line. the plant is now closed and the land redeveloped and part of the slag bank has been quarried for aggregate.
As a child my uncle managed together me a ride on the slag tipping locomotive.
When it got to the top of the slag bank, I was told to go to the front of the loco and watch. I was astounded when the black balls were tipped out, and broke open to reveal their red/orange inners. Must me over 60 years ago now, but a remember it vividly. Most of the slag bank has gone now, and has been grassed over. That was when Workington was a valuable industrial town
I'm 39 and my Farher used to worked for Bethlehem Steel. He was born in 52', worked there from 58', till 62'. At 8 years old, he was a foreman at local 401. He used to take me to work with him from 1972-1980. I was born in 1983 though. I miss those days..
I had a pilot buddy that domiciled out of norhthern NJ flying for UAL out of JFK for little over 3o year career. A few times on approach to the NYTCA he saw "the Steel" in Bethlehem dumping slag from perhaps 10,000 feet + - on decent into Long Island. He said it was quite the specticl even from that distance (2 miles) at night.........
domiciled wow
Fun fact: in England, “slag” is a derogatory term sometimes applied to a promiscuous woman.
The same applies here in Australia.
@rats arsed That's just sad.
And the French word for slag is "ordure" which is slang for bastard .
Gives dumping slag a new meaning
My great-grandma and my grandpa worked there. He mentioned plenty of people who never finished their shift. Really dangerous work back when
"plenty of people"
🙄
“Dumping a slag in 1994” that’s probably how my father would describe his divorce from my mother.
Just stumbled on this video, what memories!
I grew up just a few miles away from the coke works, and the blast furnaces of what used to be Bethlehem Steel (true natives would have said "Bethlum Steel")
The steam plumes of quenched coke, the waft of steam overhead.
Dad would take us kids down to watch the slag dumps. He started out in the coke works, at the end of the "Corporate run" he was a senior technician in Research.
All gone now, nothing left but a gambling casino and show stage.
Ahhh, nothing like the smell of roasting coke ovens early in the morning. Somebody ought to write a song about it, "Nothing could be finer than to smell the burning fires in the morning"
During college I worked on a section gang on the PB and NE which is the switching railroad seen in this clip. One of the summers, in August, we were assigned to work on the tracks in this section of the plant. After dumping for a certain period of time, the tracks needed to be moved out to the edge so that the pots could continue to dump. That was our assignment, and we were there for about 3 weeks.. hot sun, heat radiating from the ground and a little metal shack that we had to stoop down to sit in for breaks . There is a reason that they put the college crew on that job! Not sure that I would last a whole day in that heat at this point in my life :)
Jason, I work for the railroad that tool over the PBNE rails... Where the Coke plants were is where our current Intermodal yard is... I'm trying to figure out where exactly they dumped the slag... in other words... How far away from the Coke works was the dump? I have a general idea of where is it was.... but looking for clarification. Thnx
just saw this post.. I looked at the area in google maps.. a lot changes in 40 years! i suspect that the area is now under some of those huge distribution buildings, but i could not say for sure. what is your role on the railroad? Generations of my family spent their careers on the PB & NE @@s.hannibal6565
Mr Norris, Your baths is now ready
Hahaha lmaoo
What the hell...
Underrated comment 👏 lol
Yeah, the elderly are always cold and need a shawl, or a slag dump.
I remember my parents taking me to watch these cars dump slag at night when I was very young. I'll never forget how it lit up the area when they tipped.
TH-cam algorithm: "Hey you might like this."
Me, a man of culture and slag: "Ah yes, yes interesting, interesting."
Nice. This takes me back. There used to be a huge slag dump near where I grew up at, then in the late '70s they shut it down and built shopping centers there.
"9 rings were given to the men"
9 rings to mortal men, doomed to die...
Albert Wesker 🤣
"...whom above all things desire power..."
'Puild me an army worthy of Mordor'
But they were all of them deceived
Impressive. I remember a slag dump gone wrong in Newcastle Australia in the early 80's where the slag was dumped into a pit full of rain water. Loudest explosion I've ever heard. It scared the crap out of us kids and I bet the truck driver suffered permanent hearing loss.
13 years after it was posted and it showed up in my recommended videos...
Same here. That's the algorithm for ya.
@@go_rizzo_grow and nothing. Go put on Undertow and smoke another one. That's my plan for the the next hour also.
yeh just like the US mail!!!
Ahh, back in the days when America used to make things. A distant memory.
Yeah, it is very sad.
A not so distant vision.
lol this was the mid 90s? Lol not exactly that long ago
everyone says this....but mo one wanted to pay workers AND pay for the increased cost of goods. Well. there ya go.
@Vend Master ...sure did and now Biladen, I mean Biden will make it much worse
I dumped a slag the other day. And about time after having 20 years and 3 kids together!
hahahaha quality :)
Like that carriage in the video. Moving on.
hahaha love it :)
British humor
15yrs old and it just popped up in my recommended videos 💯THANK YOU, YT ALGORITHM....HERE IS A ‘W’!!
I remember seeing this kind of thing as a kid growing up in Tacoma WA at the old ASARCO smelter.
They dumped it right into the bay so there was the bright hot slag and clouds of steam when it hit the water.
There are still hundreds of those same cone shaped shells from the slag cooling in the bucket.
Yeah
its now on the nation worst toxic waste site
Damn, they really out here dumping slag at Bethlehem Steel in 1994.
That man @2:54 doing weird things, he is quadrupling his safe checks, he reiterates the process to himself so he won't forget a single step. He's not wrong. That thing is a living bomb.
Your right. The slag is tapped out of what is referred to as the "Cinder Tap. The Iron tap is located lower because the iron is on the bottom. The Blast furnace is presurized @ 18.5 PSI to 40 PSI. The molten iron& slag is suspended on the pocket of air mid furnace. The "Valve man" lowers the pressure and the slag is even with the Cinder tap. There is a brick plug that holds the iron/slag in the furnace. This is drilled out, the clay is injected with the Mud gun plugging the hole..
I live within 25 minutes of where this was shot. Across the river from their dump area is Rt.78. I was driving home one night when they dumped the slag. Looks super cool at night!!
There’s plenty of Bethlehem Steel coal mines that used metalurgic coal for steel in this area. It’s interesting to learn they mined and made steel with the same coal.
I'd never heard of 'metalurgic coal' before and when I google I'm told it's just good coal for making coke to make steel. There are mines in my part of the world that produced both coal and iron ore but as different products from different seams.
@@huw3851 yes this area has most of metallurgic coal mined. They mine “steam” coal or bituminous now. It’s used to power the remaining steam power plants.
@@83jbbentley I misunderstood what you meant by ''metallurgic coal' - I suspect it's American for coking coal. 😀 The mines are long gone in my part of the world but they used to be distinguished by their product - household/shipping/coking coal.
This video is closer to when it was originally filmed in 94 , than we are to watching it when it was originally posted here.
This brings me back to '94 when I dumped slag at Bethlehem Steel
Thank u sir 🫡
See that beautiful Bethlehem steel build every day I’m only 12 but I love that place
holy 2007 is 15 years ago. Those were the time I've just started learning shuffling
I don’t know why this got recommended to me but thanks TH-cam.
If you drop your keys in a river of molten slag, let them go, because man, they're gone.
thanks captain obvious!
ramonda snellgrove Philosophy at his highest... hahahahaha
Nirky is that a joke about women? xD
Thug life this guy... ^
+Nirky Thanks Mr Handy
Never done this before, but I do work with hot tungsten steel building mining bits. Real easy to burn yourself. I've been burnt while paying attention. Never underestimate hot steel and the ambient temperature around you I make it a point to have a cooling fan and drink water to the point I'd think I'm going to float away . Sometimes I set my ice water on the work bench and not 5 minutes later it's room temperature. Much respect for the steel worker. God bless America. God bless the steel worker.
some engineer might chime in and explain why those tracks dont collapse being so close to the edge because it escapes visible reason, if the roadbed under area was water soaked would it fail sooner?
That Engineer would be Mr. King. Lived in Moon Township and is long passed. He also designed those "buckets" but more importantly, figured out a way to allow the buckets to be dumped and returned/reused. Amazing fellow. And to answer your query, once slag is cooled and settled, it forms a sort of concrete like substance that is incredibly hard and very stable. Hence the whole tracks only a little way from the edge situation!
That rail bed is probably made out of crushed slag. I don't know how they initially stabilized the face, but under a lot of slag that has congealed down the face of the dump site there are probably pilings of some sort long since covered over. There is also the scale of things you are looking at. Those thimble cars are monstrously big, I would guestimate around 18 feet tall. So that is 9 feet of space between the top lip and the edge of the pit. The tracks are normal gage wide and the cars 8 feet or more wide. I would estimate the rail closest to the edge of the slag pit was about 4 feet away.
Damn 2007 TH-cam hit me in my feels
I read a twitter thread about this, then it shows up in my recommended 🤔
TH-cam keep feeding me with old ass industrial videos I'll watch them all
I wonder how many time a Slag Car was accidently dumped down the side.
Sort of happened in Kazakhstan; the Car broke and the Pan (or however you call it) fell onto Ice. Well, glowing hot Slag and Ice don't mix well. Nobody was hurt but Bricks were shat:
th-cam.com/video/dYObrz5bF9Q/w-d-xo.html
@@Genius_at_Work < WOW ,Just watched it.
@@Genius_at_Work Only bricks? 😉 That´s a BIG bang to close to comfort...
@@klasandersson7522 th-cam.com/video/_CYmhqVsgpk/w-d-xo.html&pbjreload=101
@@Genius_at_Work ROFLMAO 🤣
Idk why this is recommended to me after 15 years
This is the TH-cam I knew and loved before Susan became CEO
I've wondered how they cleaned out the build up in these pots. And it seems to be the simplest and most effective way possible. It's pretty spectacular!
You have kind of a point. In high school (few years back) I would cold forge, solder, and engrave nickles and quarters in to pendents and other jewelry to make some extra money.
But the slag in this video is only a small percent metal, it contains sulfides, silicons, and some metal oxides. I have smelted metal once or twice before, that slag can be some nasty stuff.
I love how day instantly turned into night when the thing starteg going out.
Looks like a landscape from another Planet.
Is the slag going into umm the precious water of Chesapeake bay ?
We all forget how much the car manufacturers used steel for cars, before they started using plastics
Er, I think you mean "aluminum". Because it's a superior (lighter, non-rusting) material for car bodies and has been recognized as such since literally 1974. This corresponds very well to the period of time when the world lost interest in massive steel cars and massive steel buildings, thus dooming Bethlehem Steel to two decades of painful death via old age.
It's also worth mentioning that Alcoa is doing just fine and is still cranking out aerospace-grade aluminum and titanium in the state of Pennsylvania. Heavy industry is not dead in America; obsolete heavy industry died back in the 70s and will never come back.
Most modern cars are still made out of steel
@@gastonbell108 Is this man really disavowing steel
Thank you youtube algoritmh for showing me this 15 year old video, it was worth it.
17 year old video now
I dumped my slag in 2007
Hope your doing well Amy 😆
Back when I was a kid, one of the really exciting things to do locally was to watch the slag dump at the American Smelting and Refining Company's Hayden plant. The slag tip faced highway 77 and there was a nice place you could park to watch. The slag dump was always spectacular and they always did a dump in the evening when the sun was just above the Tortillas and the tip was in shadow. Free fireworks show every time.
This is...satisfying to watch, especially when the skull comes out.
Idk why there’s just something incredibly erie about this video. The fact it’s hard to tell whether it’s early morning or just about to become nighttime, or the grainy footage, the lack of dialogue from anyone in the video, the rusted machinery, the dark red slag pools dripping down the dark rocky cliff side. It’s all just insanely creepy and feels like I almost wasn’t meant to stumble across this
Can't disagree, also I feel like the entire railcar was going to fall.
It's a video of a steel factory taking a shit.
@@RIMESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS yes but a morning shit? An evening shit? In 1994 in the middle of nowhere? Still creepy af
I remember this from when I was living in Weirton and the dump was a bout a mile from the house...totally lit up the sky at night, and the Sulphur smell was horrible...one of the reasons why I did not want to be there and took the military route out of a lifetime of labor in a steel mill, a coal mine or some associated industry! And then there were the Koppers Chemical Plants in the next town a few miles south...HATED the Place!
Suzanne LeBizarre
I'm from Chester. You would hardly recognize the town today. The entire hot end north of the viaduct is gone. About the only thing left is the tin mill.
I also remember seeing them dumping slag at night, plus seeing the different colors of flame and coke gasses venting from the blast furnaces. I agree that it stunk, but to me the sights always had kind of a surreal beauty.
so now where are you since your out of the military ??? Wal Mart???
Bethlehem steel always had a magic charm for me , I will always regret never going there during the early 90,s when I was in America a lot , guess drag racing , super cross nascar and the ramones took priority . Great film .