Omaha daily bee., 1902-11-09
GENESIS OF The STEEL RAIL
Process of FabriCating the Bands Which
Form the Highways Of Commerce,
MILLS OF THE CAPTAINS IN ACTION
Psndemonium Around the Rolls and
Warm Blasts ut the Furnaces
Modern Version of "a
DeviI's smithy."

btNAAs sHAthN
This Is no chronicle Of journeyings, senti-
mental or otherwise. 1t is the unfolding
Of the life-story Of a railway rail, a %prosaic-
looking thing, yet instinct with the strange,
new poetry OF this era. the wonder era Of
the machine. American steel rails glisten
across the bleak wastes Of Siberia and
through leafy African forests. They climb
the steep passes OF the Andes and thread
the Scandinavian peninsula In short, they
girdle the earth. 1t behooves good Ameri-
cans, therefore, to make much Of the
American steel rail.
1t matters little where you go to watch
the genesis Of the rails. Steel plants differ
from one another in magnitude rather than
in kind. Take, for type, the great steel
works down the bay from Baltimore. From
here went out the rails that make the track
Of the great Trans-s Siberian railway. Some
1900 tons OF completed rails slide out from
the rolling mill every twenty-four hours
and take ship at the company's dock for
Europe, Africa, South America and the far
east. Quite half of this plants output goes
over seas.
Get you a pass, admitting your person
to the mills lat owners risk" and a guide,
= NAe yNA am ~ AoAA INV eSAASNAAIet
and set out toward the group OF low mills
and tall chimneys that make up the plant.
Rolling clouds OF smoke. sooty black and
shot through with silvery spurts Of bright,
white steam, stand up against the sky. A
mighty eddying wave Of scarlet flares out
against the somber cloud. "A DEVILS
smithy," you find yourself muttering.
Crossing a desert of hard, gray Stag,
the waste Of the furnaces usurping the
place Of a time-honored marsh, you come
fairly into the hurry. the throb and beat
and rumble Of the mills. Your guide pulls
you out OF the way Of a huge travelling
crane, straddling across four separate
tracks and carrying to the shipyards a
ponderous iron boiler. He draws you
from before a little electric engine, plung-
ing across the yards with a trainload Of
fiery molds. All this before you get fairly
into the mills.
The Realm of Pandemonium.
At a door marked plainly mo admit
tance," he stops and ushers you directly
into Pandemonium Eight high power
blowing engines, driving at mad speed, fill
the place with a crash and roar as Of
heavy artillery. Thu guide stoops and
shouts into your ear that these whizzing
engines are manufacturing cold blasts;
that is. they are delivering air at a pres
sure OF twenty-five pounds to the square
inch. Stoves Of titanic size turn the
rushing air from the engines into a scorch-
ing hot blast and send 1t along through
a fat, brown pipe to feed the flames Of
the great blast furnace over the way.
A blast furnace is not unlike a high
shouldered bottle, set up on its neck, with
an opening in the bottom. which Is now
on top. To get the picture right It is
necessary to build your bottle Of brick
and to build it some eighty or 100 feet
high. This sort Of furnace you don't
stoke from below. Its mouth is up atop.
The narrow neck of the bottle is supplied
with entrance holes for the hot blast pipes,
kept from melting by a perpetual bath Of
cold water and a tapping hole to let out
the melted iron.
How the Stocking IL Done.
To see the stocking you go up a hoist.
You step on the grimy platform of the
Cage or openwork elevator, along with
a pair Of ponderous buggies of coke and
dull iron ore. You clutch the cold side Of
an ore car with one hand, your hat with
the other. A signal sounds and you rise
slowly into the air through an uncom-
fortably openwork iron hoist. Arrived at
the top, you wait politely for the heavy
l DuRRle8 10 leave the Dll. n hOEhHldh
touches a lever and the iron track they
rest on rises sharply at one end and the
buggies run easily Town the incline and
out over the very mouth of the furnace.
Another touch disrupts me bottom of the
ore car and the load crashes into the iron
mouth of the monster. Stepping to the
edge of the platform. you see that the load
has fallen, not into a pit OF roaring flame,
but onto the sloping sides OF a great iron
cone. But when the last load Is dumped
the cone, in obedience to the laws of it's
mechanism, sinks slowly into the furnace,
the ore and fuel slide into the fire and a
believing flame rolls superbly skyward.
A moment and the cone comes evenly back
to place and the demonstration ceases.
Within that inferno is a lake burning
with perpetual fire. Some thirteen years
ago tina furnace was blown in,' that is,
the first fire was laid on Its cold hearth.
Kindling wood and coke and limestone and
more coke. with a little ore atop, were
piled up to a third the height Of the big
furnace. Fire was applied. and when 1t was
roaring nicely more wood and coke and
! lime were fed to it and a gentle breath of
! hot blast was turned on to help combustion.
. Before many days the furnace was running
full blast and full charge. and so, night and
day. it has roared ever since. Ton upon ton
OF ore and fuel and iux are tumbled into its
Unsuitable NAV. and ton upon ton OF molten
: metal pours outs from the erucible at its
/. base. Three shifts Of men tend it day in
and day out. from one years end to an
other.
E what Happens I'm the urna
Just what goes on inside this raging
o furnace?
OF the three materials dumped in al