Foundry: (Satellite, Alliance Casting/American Steel Foundries closed in 2017)
Morgan: (Satellite, web page)
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| Rich Fleischer posted PRR freight house at Alliance,Oh. |
I looked at a 1950 aerial photo, but I could not find this freight house. The cars on the left would be outbound. As we have seen before, cars are parked parallel to each other with ramps between the cars to offer more destinations for the outbound freight.
Update: The photo shows it was were the two Pennsy lines crossed. It would be the building marked "Sta" on this topo.
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| 1952 Alliance Quadrangle @ 1:24,000 |
Now that I know where to look, I can find an updated freight house on 1950 and 1952 aerials. Unfortunately, the only photo I know of is copyrighted. I think the existing building on the right below was one of the 1950 buildings. The next aerial photo after 1952 is 1971 and it shows the buildings on the left replaced a long freight house building.
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| Street View |
On the topo map, I included the industrial area south of the Pennsy railyard because of this Facebook post:
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| safe_image for a Google link to a YouTube drone video The foundry I [Larry Stewart] worked at, made the best and strongest bolsters and side frames for rail in the entire world... on idle since January 2017. Robert Garza: I worked for American Steel Foundries in East Chicago, Alliance was once ASF, very sad to see all these plants shut down. Greg Bara: I was a Class"A" Chipper on sideframes and yokes on Old 9 Floor from 78-88....go money but hard work! [I presume he chipped the sand of the casting after the metal cooled.] |
The buildings East of the tracks looks like those in the 1952 topo. But the buildings West of the tracks are a small fraction of those that stood in 1952.
Larry Stewart: The place on the other side of the train tracks is Morgan Engineering still running and started in 1846. They are the oldest crane company in the U.S.
Colleen Gantz: Larry Stewart Just built new offices cranes coming out of there every week!!!
American Steel Foundries closed in 2002. Billionaire financier Carl Icahn used a lot of incentives to restart the foundry as Alliance Castings and they started production of sideframes and bolsters in Jan 2004. (Sideframes and bolsters are parts used to build the "trucks" that go under freight cars.) A new union "agreement reduces the number of job classifications from 21 to four and contains lower wage scales and new health plans." [Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen] (Foundries in Cicero, IL, and Columbus, OH, also made parts for freightcars. [FoundryMag] It was registered in 1986 as an EPA Superfund Site, but it is an archived site. [HomeFacts]
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| AmstedRail [A Chamber of Commerce web site listed AmstedRail as the URL for Alliance Casting.] |
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| Postcard [I believe the foundry is on the left and Morgan Engineering is on the right.] |
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| AllianceMemory American Steel Foundries, Alliance, Ohio |
This video claims Morgan Engineering was founded in 1868.
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| Screenshot @ 1:22 |
This video is well worth watching. These are just some examples. In addition to overhead cranes, guns (during the wars), shears, rolling mills, etc. they more recently helped build retractable roofs for stadiums. ( In 2006 they built the world's largest tunnel boring machine (4:54).
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| Screenshot @ 1:37 |
"Our exposure to extremely high wheel loads has led us into the moveable stadium roof market. These roofs require many of the same mechanisms and parts as overhead cranes, with which we of course have extensive, well-documented experience." [MorganEngineering-KineticServices]
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| MorganEngineering-KineticEquipment Rogers Centre (formerly Toronto SkyDome) |
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| MorganEngineering-KineticEquipment Safeco Field "The structure covers nearly nine acres, weighs 22 million pounds and contains enough steel to build a skyscraper 55 stories tall. The three movable panels glide on 128 steel wheels powered by 96 ten-horsepower electric motors....The project included detailed engineering and tight tolerance manufacturing of both driven and idle wheel assemblies." |
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| Dan Aikens posted Bob Coffee: MORGAN….a truly great crane manufacturer! As a former ARMCO/AK Steel employee I worked closely with their sales and engineering staff, all were tops in my book!! Jim Jenkins: Working in electrical, we maintained many Morgan cranes at Great lakes works. Baby 15 ton up to 400 ton hot metal cranes. Definitely machines to be respected. There were several originally rated for 250 ton, that were later state certified to run at 400 ton. (Process was upgraded). Thats a heck of a safety factor. Craig Dickerson: Fish belly riveted girders, no catwalk, side hung bridge drive with additional pinion reduction at wheels. Looks to be half shell brass bearings on the wheels. I’ve worked on quite a few ancient ones like these. Probably also has split motor housings with pinions mounted directly onto motor shaft that is inside the gearbox which required the gearbox top to be removed to change the motor. But most likely just replace the armature and/or field coils. Open gearing, dc motor control and resistors built into a huge single unit with a lever handle in cab. Most of the ones this old I’ve seen (and worked on) had the hard drawn solid copper trolley wires strung on the inside of the bridge girders. Nathan Burcl: I had one of these in my last shop. External gear with oil bath and rope seals. Jim Smith: My father-in-law Louis Bondoni worked there 25 plus years till they closed in the 80s. And went to work with his daughter and son-in-law at Smith Machine Inc. So many great memories of the day's past! Still building the best Cranes to this day! Kyle McGrogan: They also made mine locomotives for the coal mines, I do believe! Julius Nagy: We did! |
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| Bryan Reule commented on Dan's post Here's the Morgan I run. 50 ton. |
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