Iron Making

Iron Making. . , Carrie Furnaces, In 1884, the Fownes brothers began operating the first Carrie Blast Furnace. Several years later they added a second, bringing their capacity to 18,000 tons of pig iron per month. Because of its proximity to the Homestead Works, Andrew Carnegie bought the Carrie Furnaces in 1898 and over the next decade expanded the complex to include a total of seven blast furnaces., The furnaces supplied the Homestead Works with iron until they went offline in 1982. Today, only furnaces #6 and #7 remain to evoke the memory of the Big Steel era., (Sidebar):, Hot Metal Bridge, Andrew Carnegie constructed the Hot Metal Bridge in 1900 to link his newly-purchased Carrie Furnaces to Homestead's steelmaking facilities across the Monongahela River. One of only seven hot metal bridges in the world, the Hot Metal Bridge was the heaviest span ever built at that time., Iron was transferred from the blast furnaces in a molten state in order to save time cooling and reheating the metal. The iron was poured into torpedo and ladle cars - specially designed insulated railroad cars - then transported across the river by train., (Captions):, Hot Metal Bridge Drawing, 1900 , Rivers of Steel Archives, Union Railroad Collection, Postcard of Carrie Furnaces, c. 1900 , Rivers of Steel Archives, Tapping a Blast Furnace, c. 1970 , Rivers of Steel Archives, Chikiris Collection, Iron ore is mixed with limestone and coke in a blast furnace to produce pig iron that can later be made into steel.