An overhead crane...

[doctorwayne]

...One of the coldest places I've been was in front of a blast furnace as it sucked all the cold air off the lake and blasted it straight up.

Yeah, David, it was surprising when the wind came off Hamilton Harbour in the winter. There'd be snowdrifts on the pit floor, yet only feet away, in a soaking pit, were ingots at 2300°F, almost ready to be rolled.

Here's a photo, taken on a summer nightshift, of the mill in which I worked...



...at right are the west walls of the soaking pits, 18 pairs of two, stretching into the distance farther than can be seen in the photo. Unseen between those and the two railway tracks at left, are two tracks for cable-operated ingot buggies. When a craneman takes an ingot out of the pit, he places it on the buggy, then presses a button which sends the buggy to the rolling mill. When it arrives there, it slows, then stops, and an electric eye activates the rollers on the buggy. The ingot rolls onto the roller line leading to the mill, while the roller (one of the guys who runs the rolling mill) sends the empty buggy back to be reloaded. Meanwhile, another ingot is on its way, on the other buggy, towards the mill. With hot steel and good sizes, it was not uncommon to roll over 70 ingots per hour.

The hoist cage of one of the pit cranes can be seen at the top of the photo.

At one time, I had a series of fairly good photos showing the journey of an ingot from the soaking pit, through the 46"x36" mill, the automatic scarfer, which removed surface imperfections, the slab shear, stamper, and slab piler, to the slab yard, where the slabs are loaded onto specialised "hi-riser" cars, for their trip to the next step in the process. Unfortunately, the photos were loaned to a fellow employee and "lost".

Here's a photo, taken in the slab yard, showing a lift of hot slabs about to be loaded onto one of the hi-risers...



The hi-risers were built in-plant, using the tenders from scrapped steam locomotives, many of them from U.S. roads. The bodies were cut off, leaving only the cast steel frame and bed, along with the six-wheel trucks. All brake gear was removed, then new fishbelly flatcar-style sides were affixed to the tender beds. These were plate steel, at least an inch thick The sides extended several inches above the bed, and atop those were welded several risers. These were about two feet high and 2"-3" thick, and extended across the width of the car - if you look closely at the left of the photo above, you can just make out four hot slabs sitting atop those risers.
The six hot slabs, centreframe, are on the "C"-hooks of the yard crane. The operator will set the lift atop an empty riser car, with the "C"-hooks between the risers. Once the slabs are on the risers, he'll lower the bale a bit, and then withdraw the hooks from beneath the slabs.
Beneath the risers, and confined by the car's sides extending above the tender bed, is about six inches of slag. The hi-riser cars had a nominal capacity of about 200 tons (not counting the weight of the car, risers, and slag, of course).

Here's a link to some more info on Stelco, and, if you scroll about halfway down the page, some better photos of hi-riser cars.

Wayne