Bad Intel
Clairton Coke Works in the midst of a "quench," where they use water to cool down the coke as it leaves a 2,000C oven.
A few weeks back, a friend of mine told me that the Coke Battery in Monessen, PA had been shut down and was going to be gutted for parts within the month. A coke battery is a facility that takes in raw coal and processes it into an intermediate product that is used as a fuel in the steel production process. This was a rare opportunity to be able to get into a plant that hadn’t yet been stripped, and we were told the time table was short, so we took the unusual step of exploring during the week (thank God for flexible work schedules). Three of us made the trip down, found the plant pretty quickly, and immediately knew that something was wrong. We expected the place to be mostly abandoned, but the parking lot was more than half full. Obviously the workers were still there. Was it possible that our intel was a little premature?
We walked up to the guard shack and introduced ourselves as industrial preservationists and explained what we had been told. The guard seemed a little perplexed, but told us that we were flat out wrong. The plant is currently being “cold idled,” which means that they are not producing, and have basically shut off all of their equipment and cut back staff hours until the economy turns around and demand for coke increases. We asked if there were any way we could get a tour, and she told us that they are taking advantage of the downtime by upgrading all of their equipment, and they don’t want us to see any of their proprietary technology. So, we took some pictures from the perimeter, but couldn’t get near any of the good stuff.
On our way out, we took a quick tour of Monessen, one of the many Steel towns in the Rust Belt that is a shadow of its former self. After we left town, we stopped at an old coal mine a few miles outside of town, only to find that it had been completely demolished and stripped for parts (see the final photo). Hopefully my next adventure will be more fruitful than this one.
-aigulf
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- Clairton Coke Works in the midst of a "quench," where they use water to cool down the coke as it leaves a 2,000C oven.
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- We expected an abandoned plant about to be gutted.....we got a parking lot full of cars and a fully staffed entrance.
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- Coal Cars waiting for the plant to reopen.
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- All the good stuff's inside. Too bad there are tons of guards and workers around.
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- Nature bats last, and she always finds a way to retake the land.
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- Another piece of the city on hold until the economy turns around.
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- This dog just looks like the kind of dog that will get itself into any trouble it can find. Hopefully the owner got it to come back inside.
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- Kind of reminds you of that trash compactor scene in Star Wars, no? This is the remnants of a coal mine that's been torn down and gutted for equipment.
I'm an engineer by trade, and a photographer by hobby. In the fall of 2007, I bought my first digital SLR, a Nikon D40x, and haven't looked back yet. The majority of my photographic expeditions involve abandoned structures in Western Pennsylvania, but I'm never without my camera while on the road or at a Pirates game, and I have been known to take the occasional photo of a plant.