The Stock Trestle

At Sloss, iron ore, limestone and dolomite, and coke arrived by railroad and were stored in stock bins below the elevated stock trestle. Charging the furnace was accomplished through mechanical equipment: railroad cars carrying the stock were pushed onto the trestle, doors in the bottoms of the cars opened to release the materials into the bins, and the bins discharged them by gravity feed into a scale car running in a tunnel beneath. The scale car automatically weighed each load and carried it to the skip pit at the base of an inclined, steam-powered skip hoist, where the material was dropped into a skip car, pulled up the incline, and dumped into the furnace. The furnace top had a double bell and hopper that allowed raw materials to be charged without letting furnace gases escape into the atmosphere. Automatic charging devices were added in the late 1920s when the furnaces were rebuilt; before that, raw materials were taken to the top on a vertical elevator and dumped in by hand. A typical charge at Sloss might include two skips of coke at 3100 pounds per skip and two skips of ore at 5000 pounds per skip, with 1500 pounds of limestone added to the second skip of ore. Blast furnace gas posed a constant danger to workers at the furnaces, stoves, and boilers because it contained significant amounts of lethal carbon monoxide. The most famous fatality from gas inhalation occurred at Birmingham's Alice Furnaces in 1887, when Theophilus Calvin Jowers, overcome by gas and heat while installing a new bell at the top of a furnace, tripped and fell into it. His death became part of local legend, with reports that his ghost remained at the Alice Furnaces until their abandonment in 1927 and then moved to Sloss, becoming part of the city's folk culture. The hazards of gas inhalation led the company to impose stringent safety regulations, including gas masks, foreman notification when entering danger zones, and the use of two get-away men and a respirator for anyone working above the receiving hopper, though occasional accidents still occurred.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States