"A" blast furnace & Stoves

The ironworks comprises two blast furnaces "A and B" which were identical as far as we know. They employed contemporary modern techniques and equipment. At this time America was leading the way in technological innovation, based upon largely unskilled labour and substantial capital investment. That was in contrast to the United Kingdom, for example, where a highly skilled workforce and under investment meant that the technology was slow to develop. Wharton furnaces were equipped with (right to left) regenerative hot blast stoves (which heated the cold air blast from the blower house), an automated two skip inclined hoist , twin bell arrangement for closing the top of the furnace to contain gas, four gas offtakes which collected the dirty gas and directed it to a dust collector and gas cleaning plant (far left). In front of the furnace is the high line, an elevated pair of railroad tracks running across a line of stock bins for storing the iron ore, limestone, and coke . This side of the furnaces was generally called the back side . On the front side, the molten iron was cast from the furnace directly in to iron ladles, as opposed to pig beds which were still in widespread use throughout the industry. That is a good indication of how modern these furnaces were.