pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 125)
latter problem. Originally 226'-0" wide x l,085 f -0" long x 26'-
0" deep, and laid out in front of the plant's four original blast
furnaces, the ore yard was capable of storing 600,000 tons of
ore. Consequently, enough ore from the Lake Superior region
could be stored in the yard during the warm weather months to
allow for its use year round. The former problem, that of high
labor costs, was solved by the use of electrified ore stocking
bridges, operated by one man, in conjunction with a system of
stockhouse bins which were hung from a trestle that lay between
the ore yard and the blast furnaces. When ore was being handled,
railroad hopper cars were moved, via a car puller, onto the
outside tracks of the trestle. The bins into which the ore was
dropped were equipped with two counterbalanced chutes capable of
delivering it into either the stockhouse bins themselves or into
a bucket which was placed in the ore yard directly below the
chute. In the latter case, the bucket was picked up by one of
three Brown Hoisting & Conveying Machine Company ore bridges and
delivered to one of several storage piles contained within the
ore yard. When it was required to move ore from one of the
various storage piles to the stockhouse ore bins, a 5-ton bucket
scoop was attached to the hoisting machinery on the ore bridge
trolley in order to deliver the ore from the pile to a railroad
hopper car which was then positioned over the designated
stockhouse ore bin where the hopper car dumped its contents.
Coke and limestone was dropped directly into its assigned
stockhouse bin by a railroad hopper car which was moved onto the
trestle, there being no attempt to carry a stock of these
materials. 1
With the exception of increasing the length of the ore yard
and the trestle in order to accommodate two additional blast
furnaces built in 1901, the operation of the raw materials
handling and storage system remained the same until the period
between 1918 and 1928. In that period the system was
reconstructed in a effort to keep pace with technological
advances within the industry. The coke track system on the
trestle, for example, was realigned to accommodate the movement
of the coke bins from the eastern wall of the stockhouse to new
locations which straddled newly constructed hoist bucket pits for
each blast furnace. A car dumper was installed along with its
electrically powered 110-ton ore transfer rail cars. The car
dumper was designed to overturn one railroad hopper car full of
iron ore at a time, thereby dumping its contents into the hoppers
of an ore transfer car which was set below it. The transfer car,
designed and built by the Atlas Car Manufacturing Company of
Cleveland, Ohio, was then run onto the trestle to an assigned ore
bin before its bottom dropped the ore into one of the
counterbalanced chutes leading directly to the bin itself or to
the ore yard proper. The installation of the dumper system