EARLY BIRD TOURS – Thursday, May 28, 2009
NOTE: Given current economic conditions, some sites may withdraw by May and will be replaced. Undersubscribed tours may be cancelled, so be sure to rank your preferences on your registration form. As of this posting, hard-hats will be provided as needed and site photography has not been determined. Check your confirmation letter for final details.
1. A THREE FOR: ONE FORGE, ONE RARE DRILL, ONE MAN’S OBSESSION: Full day tour. Ellwood Quality Steel, one of North America’s leading steel suppliers, is the first stop on this all day tour that takes you from the EQS’s Forge and Machine Shop to two singular industrial heritage museums: The Harlansburg Station Museum of Transportation, one man’s dream to preserve an eclectic array of artifacts related to air, rail, and auto transportation, and the Little Beaver Historic Society, housed in the oldest train station in the country and home to one of the few remaining Keystone Drillers, a portable steam well drilling machine patented in 1880. Lunch at local New Castle restaurant is included with the tour. (7:30 am – 5:30 pm)
2. OHIO RIVER NAVIGATION: Full day tour. Travel by bus for walking tours of the three oldest lock and dam facilities on the Ohio River. Dashields Locks and Dam, built in 1929, has the only concrete, fixed crest dam on the Ohio. Montgomery Locks and Dam has the first vertical lift gate dam on the Ohio, built in 1934. Emsworth Locks and Dam is the oldest facility on the river, dating from 1922. Their main lock chambers at 600’ long are half the length of the rest of the modernized Ohio System, but are reminiscent of the historic lock size established here by the Army Corps in 1885. If time allows, the tour will stop at Old Economy Village, the Pennsylvania State Museum preserving the Harmonist Society communal buildings in Economy along the Ohio River. (9:00 am – 5:00 pm)
3. RIVER OF COAL: Full day tour. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Monongahela River carried a greater tonnage than any other inland river in America. The "Eight-foot," "Pittsburgh," or "River" vein of coal extending south from Pittsburgh deep into West Virginia has provided premium quality metallurgical coal for well over 100 years and to places as far-flung as Cincinnati, Memphis and New Orleans. The "River of Coal" tour will travel a circuit of some 150 miles through this coal region, never more than a few miles from an active or abandoned mining operation. Along the way, we will visit a river navigation maintenance facility which was later re-used for the manufacture of mining equipment and now produces a unique selection of wooden toys; the first cast-iron bridge built in America; a belt-driven machine shop and foundry which cast boiler grates for the river steamboats and fabricated tools and equipment for the local mines; a coal-fired electric power station with a newly installed scrubber system for pollution control; and a rail-to-barge coal transfer facility serving one of the major remaining coal mines in the "Cornerstone of the Keystone State." (8:00 am – 5:15 pm)
1839 First Iron Bridge - Painting by Carl Rakeman
HAER photograph of bridge (HAERPA-72-2) taken in 1983 by Jet Lowe
4. HOMESTEAD AND BEYOND: Afternoon tour. Tour the Carrie Furnaces, a rare example of the turn-of-the-century smelting technology that catapulted the United States into its role as the steel making capital of the world. The visit to these, the oldest standing blast furnaces in the Mon Valley, is coupled with a plant tour of Galvtech, a steel galvanizing plant that was part of the 1942 ammunition plant constructed, owned and operated by the US. Navy and the Mesta Machine Company during World War II. The day concludes with a tour of Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (Wabtec). Inspired by the ingenuity of George Westinghouse more than 135 year ago, Wabtec continues to serve the railway industry manufacturing brake subsystems and related products for locomotives, freight cars and passenger transit vehicles. Lunch-on-your-own before tour. (12:00 noon-5:30 pm)
On this video a retired steelworker talks about his experience at the old Carrie Furnaces in Pittsburgh. (The SIA will be visiting the Carrie Furnace)
5. RIVER CRUISE – Casual afternoon river tour. Walk the ½ mile from the hotel to the docks. (1:00pm – 4:00 pm)
6. AFTERNOON ARCHITECTURE WALKING TOUR - Afternoon tour. Extended architectural walking tour of downtown Pittsburgh similar to Sunday morning tour with possible excursion to the nearby Strip District. (2:00pm – 5:00pm)
