By Karamagi Rujumba
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In a field of knee-high grass behind the hulking frame of what is left of Carrie Furnace — an expanse of blast furnaces that once produced as much as 1,200 tons of iron per day for the former Homestead Works of U.S. Steel mill — sits a rusted torpedo car.

The cylindrical container made of steel, together with hundreds more, was at one time an indispensable tool in the steel producing days of the Mon Valley. Back when massive steel factories still churned plumes of smoke over much of the region, torpedo cars didn’t sit rusting away.

They were used to treat and transport iron via a hot metal rail bridge that runs across half of the Carrie Furnace site in Rankin and Swissvale, over the Monongahela River, and into Homestead where it was made into steel.

That era is long gone, but Allegheny County, which in 2005 bought the 168-acre land parcel where the Carrie Furnace had operated for 102 years, is in the final stages of environmental cleanup and expects to start marketing the land for redevelopment this year.

[ Full article available at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09138/970906-56.stm ]