Republic Steel Bolt & Nut Division, Part III

After browsing literally hundreds of photos on the Cleveland State University Cleveland Memory Project website, specifically the section on Cleveland Union Terminal, I finally found some more photos of the bolt & nut plant. Of course, I found none of the photos by searching for anything related to the bolt & nut plant.

The photo below was found by searching for "Cuyahoga River", and was listed as a general distant view of the Terminal Tower from the banks of the Cuyahoga River. What it actually shows was my "bingo" moment because as far as I know this is the best shot available on the internet of the blast furnace at the bolt & nut plant, which was constructed prior to 1900. The photo was taken in 1928, which was 2 years before Republic Steel purchased the bolt & nut plant, and at this point in time the plant was known as the Upson Bolt & Nut plant and was owned by the Bourne-Fuller Company. You have to look closely to notice, but a large ore freighter is on the river just on the other side of the person standing in the foreground, the deck of which is just above the person's head. The wheelhouse and mast are visible to the left of the Terminal Tower.

Upson Bolt & Nut late 1800's era blast furnace, photo circa 1928. Photo: CSU Cleveland Memory Project. 

A little more history research revealed that this blast furnace along with the ore unloading dock and the open hearth furnaces were dismantled at some point after 1935, just 5 years after Republic took control of the plant. After the blast furnace and open hearth furnaces were dismantled, the bolt & nut plant would have received raw steel slabs from the much larger Republic Steel mill just a few miles away and a little further up the Cuyahoga River. The large structure formerly housing the open hearth furnaces was turned into a steel bar and slab storage building. I assume that this was done by Republic as a cost saving measure and to consolidate steel making operations in the Cleveland area. The larger Republic mill up river, the former Corrigan-McKinney steelworks, was a much larger steel mill and was the centerpiece steel mill for Republic in Cleveland.

The photo below is a 1952 aerial photo from USGS Earth Explorer, which I obtained by following Chris Ellis' excellent tutorial. The stacks from the open hearth furnaces are gone, as is the blast furnace and ore dock, meaning that the bolt & nut plant was not making its own steel anymore. The ore bridge crane has not yet been dismantled though.

USGS aerial photo of the Republic Steel Bolt & Nut plant, circa 1952.

This leaves me with a modeling dilemma. If I am to model the 1940's-1950's operation of the plant, I will either have to take freelancing license and pretend that the bolt & nut plant still made its own steel in the 1950's or I will have to model the plant without steel making capability. I am leaning towards freelancing because I think a working steel mill will add a layer of interesting operations to the layout.

Republic Steel Bolt & Nut Division Part II

As I mentioned in the previous post, there is little information available on the internet about the Bolt & Nut plant. Here is an example of how to date an undated photo based on what you know about other things in the photo or not in the photo.

The photo below is of the Nut & Bolt plant and is one of the few full plant shots I have found on the internet. It is undated but it was taken from the Terminal Tower so it has to be after 1930. DK Yard is clearly visible from the rolling lift bridge in the lower right corner through to the left side of the photo. The Carter Road lift bridge, which should be sitting adjacent to and on this side of the railroad bridge, has not been built yet so the photo is definitely prior to 1939. The 5 open hearth furnaces are the 5 tall thin stacks attached to the large building in left center and spaced wider than any of the others. Since this is well before any environmental emission regulations, I would expect the open hearth stacks to be spewing smoke. The steelworker's labor union conducted a strike in 1937 which became known as the Little Steel Strike of 1937. This plant was impacted heavily by that strike until World War II in 1942 when the strike ended (unsuccessfully for the labor union) and operations resumed again for the war effort. Only minimal operations were conducted by "scab" workers during the strike, so that could explain why the open hearths appear to be shut down. So, my best guess on this photo is sometime in the 1937-1939 time frame.

Photo: From the Cuyahoga County Engineer's Photography Collection, Cleveland Memory Project.

This is pretty much all I have found reference the plant. It traces its beginnings back to 1872 as the Cleveland Nut Company. It became Upson Nut Company in 1883 after some mergers with other companies in Cleveland and also in Connecticut. Upson purchased some of the land surrounding the plant including an ore unloading dock and also a pig iron and blast furnace from the Cleveland Iron Company which was next to the plant on Carter Road. By 1905 Upson Nut was America's leading nut & bolt manufacturer. In 1910 Upson constructed the 1200' x 135' building which housed the 5 open hearth furnaces, meaning that now Upson Nut had its own fully integrated steel mill and bolt & nut factory all in one place. In the 1920's the rest of the factory buildings were constructed and the photo above represents the facility at the height of its existence. In 1930, Republic Steel purchased Upson Nut & Bolt and it became the Republic Steel Bolt & Nut Division. The facility operated until the 1960's when competition from foreign producers, higher wages, and environmental regulations caused Republic Steel to start the slippery slope downward. The plant shut down most operations by 1973. In 1984 when Republic Steel merged with Jones & Laughlin Steel to become LTV, the property was abandoned. In 1989, some of the vacant buildings caught fire and the entire facility was razed in the several years following that. (UPDATE/CORRECTION: In 1973, Federal Steel and Wire purchased the Upson Nut & Bolt property from Republic Steel during a period where Republic was reorganizing and consolidating operations in the Cleveland area. Federal Steel and Wire apparently never operated the plant, and began selling off all the bolt & nut manufacturing equipment and the plant was vacated. The 1984 merger between Republic and J&L to form LTV was therefore irrelevant for the Upson plant because Republic had sold off the property over a decade before. In April 1990, some of the abandoned buildings caught fire and the facility was razed shortly thereafter.)

On my layout, the Bolt & Nut plant will be operating at full capacity in the mid-1950's/1960's.

Republic Steel Bolt & Nut Division

Here's a map of the Republic Steel Bolt & Nut Division that sits next to DK Yard on the Clark Branch, circa early 1940's. I hadn't really considered modeling an active steel mill until I really started studying this map. The more I looked at it, I realized it has a lot going on and could generate a large variety of freight traffic on a model railroad. Indeed, I think DK Yard probably devoted a lot of time and energy serving this plant.

There is not a lot of information available on the internet about this plant. It was razed sometime in the late 1980's or early 1990's. Looking closely at the map though, you can see that it is its own self-contained steel mill attached to a bolt & nut factory. Lately I have been researching steelmaking as it would have been done in the 1950's and as I learn about the process I have been able to visualize how the plant may have operated.

It has its own locomotive facility, its own ship-to-shore ore unloading crane & storage dock, and its own power & steam plant. It had 5 open hearth furnaces which would have taken in raw materials for making steel (scrap, ore, limestone, etc). It has facilities for processing the raw steel ingots that would have been produced by the open hearths into steel billets and then in turn would have been hot forged into bar stock to be used in the production of nuts & bolts. The final finished products would have been shipped out again in boxcars to customers around the country. Both the Erie and NYC switched traffic in and out of the plant, with Republic Steel locomotives performing the inner plant switching moves.

I think this industry could become the centerpiece of the layout and could add a significant layer of operations above and beyond what the average layout has. It would also give me a place to park my 750' Great Lakes ore boat.

Photo trip to Cleveland 7/7/16

Took advantage of great weather to make a short photo trip to Cleveland yesterday. I made sure the SD card was in my camera this time.

This is the south end of DK Yard looking north from Willey Av. Just a single track today. That's Werner G. Smith Inc on the right, which is a vegetable & fish oil producer.

Another view of Werner G. Smith Inc, and what appears to be a track over a trestle with what was at one time between-the-rails unloading. Looking at old Sanborn maps and Hopkins atlases, my guess is they unloaded coal cars here for their own boiler plant.

Yet another view of the trestle from the other side along Train Av. The shots above were taken from the crossing gates on the other side.

Further up DK Yard, here is OX tower which still stands right next to the twin lift bridges at Carter Rd. I'll have to do some more research to find out when they abandoned this tower.

Pivot 90 degrees right and this is what you see. Part of my finger, the abandoned railroad lift bridge on the left, and the Carter Rd lift bridge to the right of it. Looking through the railroad lift bridge to the other side was the line into the Warehouse District on the east bank of The Flats and the connection to the NYC Water Level mainline. Once that line was abandoned, this lift bridge would have also ceased operation. I have found photos of Penn Central still using the Warehouse District line in the 1970's. At some point the RTA Rapid line was built over top of the old Big Four line in the Warehouse District. I know this single track rail bridge was built in 1953 and replaced a rolling lift bridge which was double tracked. The Carter Rd bridge was built in 1939 and still operates today.

Another shot of both bridges from across the river along Columbus Rd. I am standing on the site where a large B&O freight house once stood. The old B&O passenger station on the left. I'm surprised that building is still standing.

Here is the grain elevator on Merwin St, which serves the cereal & flour plant on the other side of it. Back in 1952 this was listed as Montana Flour Mills, Fairchild Milling Division. The railroad spurs are between the milling buildings and not next to the elevator. Not sure if that means grain came to the elevator by both rail and grain freighters or just grain freighters.

Here's the office and one of the two locomotives for Flats Industrial Railroad. In 2014 FIR listed 2 employees on it's books. That lift bridge connects with DK Yard on the other side of the river.

I took 235 photos in the hour I was on ground yesterday. I'll eventually get them uploaded to Flickr. I need to take more trips because some of the roads I wanted to go on were closed for construction. There is also a bike trail being built along the entire path of the old Erie line through the area, but it is not quite finished yet and is still closed. Once that opens, I'll be able to stand on the bridge right over top of DK Yard, at the location where NYC interchanged with Erie.

Oxbow Bend

Yet another format change to the blog. If you've been following from the beginning, you probably think I change formats as often as I change underwear. You would be correct. Once a month whether I need to or not...

Anyway, now for some history...

The term "crooked river"  describes the Oxbow Bend area where the Cuyahoga River snakes through downtown Cleveland. An Oxbow Bend is actually a geological description of a winding river that over time gets severed from the river and forms a lake as the river naturally wants to straighten itself out. The Cuyahoga River never reached this point (it would take several thousand more years to complete) and now that humans have intervened by building dock walls, the river is where it is until humans decide they may want to change the course of the river artificially.

The map below represents the main area I intend to model. Until I change my mind again that is.

Oxbow Bend area in Cleveland

The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (CCC&St.L or "Big Four") mainline into downtown Cleveland came up the right-hand peninsula of the river, through the east bank of The Flats, and up to the old Union Station at the site of the current Amtrak station by First Energy Stadium. When the New York Central took control of the Big Four in the early 20th Century and once the Cleveland Union Terminal was built, the old Big Four mainline was no longer used for passenger trains coming into Cleveland and the line became the Clark Branch and DK Yard. Many industries were served in the Oxbow area by NYC and the other railroads that came into the area.

The OX Tower (which is still standing by the way) was at the north end of DK Yard and controlled the interlocking at the north end of the yard and access to the upper lift bridge into The Flats. DK Tower was further south near the Erie interchange and controlled the southern end of the yard and the Erie interchange. The upper bridge into The Flats sits right next to the Carter Rd lift bridge, literally just a few feet apart. The lower lift bridge crossed the river to the west of the yard and gave access to the left hand peninsula of the Oxbow Bend area where there were several more industries. Both of these lift bridges were built in 1953 and replaced rolling lift bridges built around the turn of the 20th century. NYC and Erie both interchanged with the Republic Steel Bolt & Nut plant, which had its own switching locomotives and switched the plant itself.

As time progressed and NYC became Penn Central and Penn Central became Conrail and Conrail became CSX, the area became less and less important as rail served industries in the area dwindled away. Eventually the tracks north into the Warehouse District and most of DK Yard tracks were abandoned and so was the upper lift bridge although the bridge still stands and is fixed in the raised position. Today the Flats Industrial Railroad interchanges with CSX and switches the few remaining industries in the area across the lower lift bridge which still operates. The grain elevator which sits in the shadow of the Lorain-Carnegie bridge in The Flats, is still operational today and is part of a flour processing plant called Graincraft. In the 1940's & 1950's it was a frequent stop for grain hauling Great Lakes freighters.

I am surprised how much stuff is still standing today. OX Tower, both lift bridges, and the grain elevator to name a few. Next step is to take a trip to Cleveland to get some of my own photographs. This time I'll make sure to remember to put my SD card into the camera before I go.

New Direction?

In the Army we used the "Military Decision Making Process", or MDMP, as a tool for planning and to make operational decisions. The idea was to take the basic problem at hand and follow a very structured and deliberate decision making process to evaluate all of the possible influencing factors so a commander can make the most effective decisions on how to resolve the problem. As an example, the operational plan to invade Iraq in 1991 (Operation Desert Storm) was developed by the staff for General Norman Schwartzkopf over many painstaking months of careful planning using MDMP. Everything from beans to bombs has to be taken into account.

We use pretty much the same process in a much more simplified way when we try to figure out what to have for dinner or what to buy for our next car. Life is full of making decisions and re-evaluating plans, and most of the time we don't even think about it when we do it.

Model Railroading is no exception, and layout planning is perhaps a little more structured than we realize. Making a list of "givens and druthers" is a perfect example of the model railroader's decision making process. We have an idea what we want to create (the basic problem) but we have to force ourselves to think about all of the influencing factors involved with building a layout. As we then progress through the planning and construction of our layout, we have to constantly re-evaluate criteria and if necessary make adjustments to the plan. Many times as we progress, new issues pop up and depending on how critical the new issue might be, it could very well force us to re-evaluate our entire plan.

This is kind of where I am right now with my layout planning. I think I have spent more time planning my layout than Stormin' Norman's staff did to plan Desert Storm, or Ike's staff did to plan the Normandy Invasion.

Recently I arrived at a point where I decided to take a new direction because I realized my main goal of creating a union terminal layout was simply not going to work the way I envisioned it would. My list of givens and druthers for passenger operations just won't fit within my 13' x 27' space. Rather than spend any more time dwelling on the realization that I can't do a union terminal layout, I have decided to just move on in a new direction.

New Direction: NYC Clark Branch in Cleveland OH.

Back to Cleveland, which is where I originally started my model railroad planning journey. The old CCC&St.L (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, or "Big Four") mainline into Cleveland became the NYC's Clark Branch when the Big Four was taken over by the New York Central in the early 1900's. This area has always fascinated me as I look at railroad maps of Cleveland and to me is an excellent example of riverfront railroading in Cleveland. Today most of it is gone except for a few tracks and much of it is operated by the Flats Industrial Railroad now.

Clark Branch starts in the south at the NYC Cloggsville Yard where the Clark Branch joins the CUT branch and the electrified line west of Cleveland Union Terminal. The branch then shoots north up a peninsula between the winding Cuyahoga River where it crosses the river right below CUT. It then continues northbound along the east bank of The Flats through the Warehouse District, finally joining the NYC's Water Level mainline between Chicago and New York City at a point just east of Bridge One which is the drawbridge at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River.

DK Yard is the main feature of the Clark Branch. In it's prime days, DK Yard served the Warehouse District, Republic Steel Nut & Bolt Division, and an industrial area inside another peninsula of the Cuyahoga River, as well as several industries right along the yard tracks. Clark Branch also interchanged with NKP at Cloggsville, Erie at DK Yard, and with PRR just to the west of Bridge One. DK interlocking was at the Erie interchange and OX interlocking was at the lift bridge below CUT where the line crossed the Cuyahoga River next to the Carter Road lift bridge.

I think Clark Branch offers a great opportunity for me to model Cleveland based on influencing layouts I still refer to, which are Bill Denton's Kingsbury Branch and Chuck Hitchcock's Argentine Industrial District. It will basically be an around-the-walls industrial switching layout with staging at both ends, interchanges with Erie and NKP, and plenty of riverfront railroading.

For now the passenger cars will have to stay in the boxes until someday when I have the room to incorporate passenger operations the way I would like.