Burnham, PA: 1795 Standard Steel/Freedom Forge

(Satellite)

 

Ruth Rosie posted
Great old post card of Boring Mill -Standard Steel- Burnham. Year unknown

Martin Souček: According to eBay, it dates back to sometime between 1907 and 1915. https://ebay.de/itm/256643170912

Steel Mills are like coal mines, if they are still standing, they are worth noting.

StandardSteel

Fortunately, the street view camera rides rather high so that we can see over their visual barrier.

Street View, Sep 2023

From the same location, about a decade earlier.

Street View, Sep 2012

 

Rich Shaginaw posted
Those of us whose families work and worked in Big Steel don't often think about smaller plants like this, but they employ steelworkers, too, have interesting histories, and are often owned by larger steel firms. My late father-in-law and his father and other relatives retired from Standard Steel in Burnham, PA. The Standard (as they call it there) specializes in railroad wheels and axles. https://www.standardsteel.com/history.php Real Bubba: Last domestic producer of forged rail wheels. Glenn Beamer: Thanks for posting this. One of the last building standing at Bethlehem’s Johnstown plant was its axle shop — their specialty bar mills were long a point of pride. Kile Stimely: I work at the standard steel in burnham pa to this day. They employ about 500 people. Also at least to my standards. It's not small at all It's huge. That picture is just one side of the entire standard steel. There are 4 major shops and many smaller shops throughout the mill.

The place is huge.

Street View, Sep 2023

Jerry Fowle posted, cropped
Amazing place, Electric Arc Furnace and Vacuum degassing. Make train axles and wheels.
James Lupold: I think it is amazing to watch them forge the wheels with the 10,000 ton press 80% complete one shot.
Jon Quinn: First steel mill I visited as a metallurgy student at Penn State - it was a class field trip. We watched the GFM (?) rotary forge work a billet into an axle, and a piece spalled off and we all watched the orange glowing chunk of metal - maybe size of a marble - arc through the air. It plunked the metallurgist who was guiding our group on the tour (also a PSU alum) right on the corner of his safety glasses. He just watched it the whole time coming right at him and he never moved. I guess he never played any baseball and couldn’t judge a fly ball. But he was un-injured and we continued the tour the the ring roller mill. Neat place. They also used to be owned by TIMET many years ago - a former employer of mine.

Jason Lhota commented on Jerry's post
Standard Steel, Burnham, PA

1 of 4 photos on reddit

 

NipponSteel
As of 2011, the company is now foreign owned by Sumitomo Metals, which is a Japanese company. In this case, foreign ownership might be good because it is transferring technologies that they use to build railroad wheels for high-speed trains.

 

NipponSteel

The original corporation was founded in 1795. Does the "founded" date of 2005 mean that the revenue figure of $138.5m and the employees figure of 553 are as of 2005? [datanyze]

I've seen higher figures for revenue and employees.

This news release claims $250m and 620 employees. "Standard Steel is the only producer of forged steel wheels for railcars and locomotives on the continent." I've looked and looked, but I can't find a year for the Sumitomo news release! My guess from the content is 2011. (I wondered if Standard Forge Products/USS Wheel and Axle cast their wheels rather than forged them. IndustryToday implies that is the case.)

 

jbritton_burnham, this webpage also has Sanborn maps of the area

 

jbritton_yeagertown, this webpage has several more images including another interior view

Doug Kroll Flickr
Standard Steel100
Standard Steel. This very rare oval-radiator VO660 #6712 worked it's entire life for Standard Steel and was kept in meticulous condition. Fortunately it was preserved at the Railroaders Museum in Altoona, PA and was recently purchased by SMS Rail in NJ. This photo taken on July 20, 1976 at the plant in Burnham, PA. Built in January 1940 it is the oldest Baldwin diesel currently in existence.(misc941b)

NewEquipment

Ring-rolling mills (1856 and 1977) produce locomotive tires. In 1856 they could produce 2,000 locomotives tires per year. [IndustryToday] I was surprised to see the 1977 date because I thought locomotive tires were used only on steam locomotive drivers. There must be another use for rings.

Indeed there was other uses for rings: "In 2003, the company slashed its payroll when it exited the product line at the Burnham plant that produced steel rings for jet engines, power plants, mining and oil exploration." [IndustryToday]

Said Vice President of Sales and Operations John Hilton, Sr., “One of our works managers back in those days was none other than Andrew Carnegie. He tried to introduce the Bessemer [Kelly] steelmaking process to Freedom Forge in 1866 to produce rail and unfortunately, it was not successful here because the local ore was too high in phosphorus, making it very brittle, and causing a cracking problem. That caused Freedom Forge major financial difficulties at the time. Carnegie moved to Pittsburgh in 1872, resolved the problem, working with people in Sheffield and Birmingham, England, and the rest is history.” [IndustryToday]

In 2002, the Burnham site had 1.5 million sq. ft. of buildings covering a 250-acre site. "New freight cars are still the biggest driver of business for Standard Steel. Company officials say that about 120,000 of the wheels it produces go toward newly built freight cars, with another 60,000 into the aftermarket. The locomotive and passenger segments of the market are much smaller, although Standard Steel does supply the wheels for cross-country passenger trains." [IndustryToday]

A financial, rather than technical, timeline.

StandardSteel

The Latrobe, PA, plant that Standard Steel owned from 1976 to 2003.

LC-DIG-highsm- 58703 (ONLINE) [P&P], Public Domain
Credit line: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.