Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-11-08
GENESIS OF THE RAIL
American Steel That Glistens
Across Siberia.
IN AFRICAN WILDS
CLIMBS THE STEEP PASSES OF
THE LOFTY ANDES.
Pyrotechnics of the Birth, Education
and Upbuilding Of Single
Specimen.
Written for The Evening Star.

looking thing, yet instinct with the strange
new poetry of this era. the wonder era OF
the machine American steel rails giisten
across the bleak wastes of Siberia ana
through leafy African forests They CLIMB
the steep passes of the Andes and thread
the Scandinavian peninsula. In short. they
grdle the earth 1t behooves good Ameri-
cans, therefore. to make much of the
American steel rail
1t matters little where yoe 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-Siberian railway
Some fifteen hundred tons of completed
rails slide out from the rolling mill every
twenty-four hours and take ship at the
compauys dock for Europe, Africa, south
America and the far east Quite ha!f Oh
this plants output goes over seas
Get you a pass, admitting your person 10
the mills lat owners risk, and guide.
else you infalihly will fall into something,
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 or prignt,
white steam. stand up against the SKY. A
mighty eddying wave of scarlet flares OUT
against the somber cloud A ueVh
smithy," you find yourself muttering.
Crossing desert of hard gray Stag, the
waste of the furnaces usurplng the piace Oh
a time-honored marsh, you come falrly INTO
the hurry, the throb and beat ana rumDie
| of the mills. Your guide pulls you out or
the way of a huge travelling crane, strad-
| ding across four separate tracks ana car
rying to the shipyards a pondereus IRON
boiler He draws you from before ntue
| electric engine, plunging across the yards
| with train load of fiery molds All this
| before you get fairly into the mills.
The Realm Of Pandemonium.
| At q door marked plainly mo Admit
| lance" he stops and ushers you directly
| into pandemonium Eight high-power blow
ing engines, driving at mad speed, I'LL the
| place with a crash and roar as Of heavy
| artillery The guide stoops and shouts itno
YOUR ear that these whizzing engines are
| manufacturing cold blasts; that Is, they are
delivering air at pressure OF twenty-hte
| mounds to the square inch. Stoves of titanic
| size turn the rushing air from the engines
| into scorching hot blast and send 1t along
| through fat. brown pipe, to reed the
| flames of the great blast furnace over tHe
| way IT..
| shouldered bottle. set up on its neck. WIFE
| ar opening In the bottom, which Is now OF
top. To get the picture riSht II Is heeeSs 'a;
| II some eighty or one hundred feet high
This sort of furnace you don't stoke IRON
below Its mouth is up atop. me mario"
| nack of the bottle is supplied with entrance
holes for the hot blast pipes. kept from
| melting by a perpetual bath OF cold water
and tapping hole to let out the meltec
iron. =,
How the Stocking Is Done.
To see the stocking you go up a hoist
| You step on the grimy platform or Inc
| s'case" or openwork elevator, along WIFI
pair of ponderous bnggies OF coke and
dull iron ore. You clutch the cold side OF ar
ore car with one hand, your hat with thu
| other signal sounds, and you rise sioWi!
into the air through an uncemfortaeiy open
| work iron hoist Arrived at the top, yol
wait politely for the heavy buggles to leave
| the lift A workman touches a lever, an.
the iron track they rest on rises Sharply a
| ore end and the buggies run easily dowr
| the incline and out over the very mouth o.
the furance. Another touch dlsfupts th'
! bottom of the ore car and the load crashes
into the iron mouth of the monster. Step
| nlng 10 the edge of the platform, you Set
thai the load has fallen not into pit of roar
ing fame but on to the sloplns sides
of a great iron cone. But When tht
last load is dumped. the cone, in ODE
dience to the laws of its mechanism, sink:
slowly into the furnace. the ore and tue
slide into the fire. and believing fiamt
rolls superbly skyward moment. ant
the cone comes evenly pack 10 place anu liz
demonstration ceases
Within that inferno is lake burning
with perpetual fire. Some thirteen year!
ago that furnace was blown In; that is
the first fire was laid on its cold hearth
| Kindling wood and coke and limestone aRf
more coke with little ore atop were piled
nm TO a third the height of the big furnace
Fire was applied, and when 1t was roarinf
| nicely more wood and coke and lime wer'
| fed TO it and a gentle breath of hot bias
was turned on to help combustion. Be
| fore many days the furnace was running
full blast and full charge; and so, night ant
/ has roH
| ton of ore and fuel and f1uX are tumblet
into it's Unsuitable nav; and ton upon tol
| OF molten metal peurs out from the cfuelol
a. it's base. Three shifts of men tend l
| day in and day out. from one years end Il
another.
In the Furnace.
Inst what goes on inside this raging fur
mace?
OF the three materials dumped In at tn,
mouth. the coke was for fuel, the ore To-
melting and the limestone, or fiux. wal
there to take to Itself impurities which
; otherwise might solidify and choke the fur
mace. Melted limestone. moreover, floats oil
the surface of molten iron and can be tap
ped off easily when the furnace is poured
These three things falling in at the moutl
| of the furnace meet at first no very fierc
heat, but as they sink lower and lower il
| the throat the heat grows more intense
The limestone first parts with Its carboni
| acid and then becomes quicklime. TIL
iron ore turns spongy; the particles or irol
begin to unite with phosphorus and silicol
and carbon and sulphur, and other things Il
the charge which do 1t no manner Of good
| But by the time 1t reaches white heat II
the crucihle at the bottom. the quicklim
| has wooed away the bulk of the Impurities
uniting them with itself as fluid Stag. Ever.
particle of the original charge Is converte'
into either gas or fluid: nothing remains II
the furnace from that particular desc c
| material Clinkers In blast furnace woul,
| mean sheer ruin. The gas Is pfped of t
| feed the blowing engines and the blast
stoves, and the iron and Stag are tapped OF
below to go their several ways.
| Turn back to the hoist now. and you vii
| find your cage descending with the empt,
| buggies and full cage coming up to tn
mouth Of the next furnace. The man at tn
winding engine is no respector OF visitors
You must take passage when the sigma
sounds or await the next car.
Down at the foot of the blast furnace tn
air Is choking with the stencil of gas. Al
eerie red tight dfts the shed. and siov
river Of molten metal. white as fame a
the taphoae but glowing ever more darki
, red as it flows. Is pouring sluggish.
through q tangla Of sand cutters fnts tn
open mouths Of a row OF GaRtaan ladies
:, dra wn up on fat cars In trench below
> 'Iadle.' il the ironmaster's term for tn
| vast caldF0ns which make nothing OF
burden of thirty tons of foamins, fii'