I took a trip out east to Pittsburgh with my new VW Jetta GLI in August 1986 to photograph trains and steel facilities. Little did I know that there was a steel strike underway! Nevertheless, I did get to see and photograph many trains and most of the existing steelmaking facilities there.
I was especially fascinated with the United States Steel Duquesne Works. Duquesne Works was originally a competitor to Carnegie's Edgar Thomson Works, just down the Monongahela River in Braddock. The Duquesne Plant came into being on June 4, 1886, when a small group of Pittsburgh investors began construction of a small Bessemer converter shop and a blooming mill to produce rails for the nation's railroads. Within two years, this young enterprise had been sold by its original owners to the Allegheny-Bessemer Company, which in turn sold the plant to Andrew Carnegie in 1890.
Within the next twenty years, Duquesne was to become a fully-integrated steel mill. Six blast furnaces, two open hearth shops, blooming and billet mills, and five bar mills were built and placed in operation. These facilities made Duquesne a producer of bars and semifinished shapes for other plants. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to discover Duquense Works in person, it was already shut down. Here, Conrail SD50 6799 heads downriver on former Pennsylvanis Railroad rails, heading past two of the remaining three blast furnaces, Nos. 4 and 5. Today, the entire plant is completely gone, although U.S. Steel built a training center on a portion of the site for its Mon Valley facilities.
