Optics and Exposure » Carrie Furnace http://blog.odonoughue.org an Engineer with a Camera Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:28:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Return to Carrie http://blog.odonoughue.org/2010/04/return-to-carrie.html http://blog.odonoughue.org/2010/04/return-to-carrie.html#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:16:45 +0000 Nicholas O'Donoughue http://blog.odonoughue.org/?p=2151

Control board for the hoist house.

I have a special affinity for Carrie Furnace.  She was my first abandoned factory, and she’s very close to home, so it’s always nice to plan a return trip.  Not to mention the fact that I always find something new!  Last weekend, I had a leisurely excursion and got a bunch of shots from new angles and places I hadn’t yet seen.

I’m never happy with my blast furnace shots, so I tried another one…the sunlight was pretty harsh, so I’ll be trying that again the next time I’m there.  The majority of the shots I’m posting come from either (a) the hoist house (which was used to power the cables that lifted ore into the furnaces) or (b) the high line, where incoming supply cars emptied their contents.  Take a peek into a National Historic Landmark.

-aigulf

 
Portrait shot of the blast furnace, and the channels used to direct molten pig iron coming out of the furnace. This assembly was used to protect the face of an operator who needed to peer inside the blast furnace at the molten steel and slag. The finished coat is flaking away. I thought that was a paper cup at first, but it is indeed metal. This can predates pop tops (obviously), as the entire lid had been removed to open it. Control board for the hoist house. Tension cables running from the hoist house towards the mineral lifts used to feed the furnace. From the crane used to unload supply cars, this shot shows a blast furnace (left), smoke stack, and three gas ovens used to heat the air that is injected into the blast furnace. At the right of the frame is a second furnace (partially visible). The tracks at the bottom were used to collect incoming ore (each furnace has an elevator to feed it). The operator's booth for the rail crane has seen better days. Rail cars entered the (partially obscured) tracks to the left. Stabilizing arms were lowered to hold the car in place, and the entire assembly pivoted to dump the contents of the car onto the grating structure to the right. The gears used to lift this whole assembly are absolutely massive. Control Room for the car dumper, which physically flipped rail cars not capable of emptying from the bottom. Four DC motors (two for each set of hoist cables) were needed to lift the car dumper assembly. Control Board for the DC Motors at the Car Dumper. Behind the board is a wall of resistors. These resistors were connected to the motors in series to throttle them (an extremely wasteful approach -- excess energy is lost to heat) ]]> http://blog.odonoughue.org/2010/04/return-to-carrie.html/feed 0 Carrie Furnaces (revisited) http://blog.odonoughue.org/2009/10/carrie-furnaces.html http://blog.odonoughue.org/2009/10/carrie-furnaces.html#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:44:12 +0000 admin http://blog.odonoughue.org/?p=906 I obtained another set of photos from Rankin’s Carrie Furnaces, two decommissioned steel furnaces from Homestead Steel Works, which are located on the northern shore of the Monongahela River, outside Pittsburgh, earlier this week. It’s my second such set, and I must say that the revisit has brought a lot to my attention that was missed the first time.

Blueprints discovered in one of the offices at Carrie No. 7

Blueprints discovered in one of the offices at Carrie No. 7

The first time through, the site overwhelmed me. It was impossible for me to critically look and identify any of the components, the whole facility seemed like a mess of pipes, valves, and rust. But, now, I can picture the facility, operational and buzzing with the activity of machinery and man.

Furnace no. 6

Furnace no. 6

I can imagine the clouds of steam erupting into the air as the molten pig iron is drained from the blast furnaces into torpedo cars, for the trip across the river to be refined one last time into steel.

I can feel the heat radiating through thick glass and asbestos, into the operator’s booth, and I can almost taste the soot.

But, mostly, I can feel the weight of the place. The lives made here, the dreams that died here, the resignation when this place died, when the hundreds here lost their livelihood. The abruptness with which this facility closed is evident everywhere. Things scattered, like someone locked the door while everyone was away at lunch.

Check out the full set of photos on flickr (from both trips).

-aigulf

DSC_1897 Blueprints discovered in one of the offices at Carrie No. 7 Shattered Dreams Elevated Hygiene ]]> http://blog.odonoughue.org/2009/10/carrie-furnaces.html/feed 0