VII. Building the Rail Mill
As originally conceived in mid-1887, the rail mill was to occupy almost sixty acres along the eastern bank of a sweeping bend in the Stony Creek River. Some two and a half miles downstream, at its confluence with the Little Conemaugh River, was the sprawling Cambria Iron Company, its blast furnaces and steel rail mill. Up the Little Conemaugh lay Cambria Iron's Gautier Wire mill and its company town of Woodvale. Near the confluence itself were situated the small downtown boroughs of Johnstown and Conemaugh, the latter built along the site of the old canal basin from the days of the Pennsylvania Canal system, where canal boats were off-loaded from the Allegheny Portage Railroad after crossing the mountains.
A few residential areas had sprung up south of the confluence along the Stony Creek. The most populated ones, Kernville on the eastern bank and Hornerstown on the western bank, were comprised mostly of frame houses and tenements, and small storefronts. Further south, the population was far more sparse. Below Hornerstown was Meadowvale, known mostly for the presence of several small lumberyards and some railroad sidings. Below Kernville on the western bank was the small village known as Grubbtown, site of the Osborne Station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the toll house of the old Valley Pike, a private toll road which ran south along the Stony Creek to the farming areas south and west of the Village of Benscreek.
Excavations for the major buildings of the rail mill were begun in early November 1887, causing some measure of local concern when an old family grave site, dating as far back as 1811, was uncovered. Large gangs of men dug the foundations out by hand, hauling dirt, stumps and rock away by horse-drawn wagon. The prepared foundation holes, some as deep as fourteen feet, were then filled with cement. Pressing ahead with abandon, the work teams under the supervision of A.H. Walker completed all of the basic mill components by the following August, including the large rail rolling mill with accompanying furnaces and coke ovens, a steel foundry, a pattern and machine shop, a blacksmith shop, and a boiler house. A small mill office was located next to the rail mill near the river bank, though the main company offices were to remain at the Woodvale switchworks.
The mill was linked to the surrounding communities by both road and rail. First, there was the old Valley Pike, the aforementioned toll road by which farmers brought produce to the small communities at the confluence of the Little Conemaugh and the Stony Creek. Johnson and Moxham moved promptly to gain controlling interest in the Valley Pike Company, the original contractor for the toll road, and proceeded to upgrade the roadbed and connect it to the mill site by means of a newly constructed iron and stone bridge across the Stony Creek. This span would later become known as the Moxham Bridge. Another toll gate was erected on the northern side of the bridge to obtain revenues from horses, teams, and foot passengers headed in either direction. The roadway was then extended south between the mill and the planned residential properties, along the route later named Central Avenue. Within the year, it would cross back to the western bank of the Stony Creek, at what would become known as the Ferndale Bridge, and then extend out toward Benscreek.
Aside from the Valley Pike, there was also the new narrow gauge railroad spur built by Moxham to connect the plant with both the Woodvale switch works and the Cambria Iron primary mill, from which he would secure his blooms for rolling. The spur, the Johnstown and Stony Creek Railroad, ran entirely along the eastern bank of the Stony Creek, much of it on the Baltimore and Ohio right-of-way. From the Johnson Company mill, it wound its way across Central Avenue and into Meadowvale and Hornerstown to the intersection of Bedford and Baumer Streets. It then curved through old Conemaugh Borough (site of the original laying out yard) where it connected to the various spurs of the Cambria Iron Company Railroad either west into the huge Cambria Iron mill or east into Woodvale.
Completed in early spring 1888, the spur was later extended south to reach the many coal mining operations, particularly the Ingleside Coal Company, further up the Stony Creek. In June of that year, the Johnstown and Stony Creek commenced a passenger service along the same line, using three railway passenger cars pulled by a steam dummy from the entrance to the mill to a Bedford Street terminus. There passengers could catch cars of the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company, the horse-drawn street railway line that ran through the downtown area and out to the Cambria Iron company towns of Cambria City and Millville along the Conemaugh, and Woodvale and Franklin along the Little Conemaugh.
The rail mill itself was a huge modern structure. An iron truss building running north and south along the river bank, it measured 175 feet wide and over 500 feet long. Its eastern side adjoined a boiler house with eighteen 150-horsepower boilers, each with a 32-foot iron chimney, which generated the steam for operation of the engines throughout the plant. Moxham had originally designed the rail mill to burn natural gas, the dominant fuel in use in practically every iron and steel mill in the Pittsburgh area by 1885. It was adopted by the Cambria Iron Company the next year, but supplies of natural gas were being progressively diverted to public and domestic uses, and its availability became so unpredictable that many mills returned to coal. Moxham was one of the first steelmakers to opt for burning artificial gas produced by the Archer process. The gas was extracted by heating crude petroleum in furnaces fed by soft coal brought from local mines to the south. Three gas generators supplied fuel for the six furnaces used to heat the blooms, which were supplied by the primary mill at the Cambria Iron.
Blooms weighing up to 1,770 pounds were delivered by a portable crane on tracks to the northern end of the rolling mill There they were set into heating beds by two overhead traveling cranes. The heating beds themselves were fired by five Gagaden regenerative open hearth furnaces. The heated blooms were then withdrawn from the furnaces by large tongs suspended from an elevated shaft controlled manually by ropes, and placed on the 200-foot roll train powered by a Galloway 2,500-horsepower engine.
The blooms were carried by the roll train to the two-high, reversing type roll stand in the middle of the mill. The roll stand was comprised of three stands of housings especially designed by Moxham for the manufacture of heavy shapes and utilized 26-inch diameter rolls. The blooms were run through a series of eleven-to-thirteen roughing and finishing passes, without reheating, to form the Johnson girder. Having perfected the roll design and sequence after a year of experimentation in Louisville and another six months at Cambria Iron, Moxham was able to roll the first Johnson girder in his own mill with little effort on May 8, 1888, almost five years to the day after Cambria Iron had successfully rolled the first commercially-produced Johnson rail.
Generally, each bloom produced a 63-foot length of finished rail, which was then measured and cut in two by circular saws fed up against the rail by hydraulic lifts. After cutting, each length was passed over a series of small rolls to give it a slight arch and placed on cooling racks where it apparently cooled nearly straight. After cooling, the rails were taken to the lower end of the mill building to be precision-straightened by one of eight manually operated straightening machines of Moxham's own design.
The rolling sequence, indeed the entire rolling mill itself, was designed by Moxham. At the age of 34, he had the advantage of over fifteen years of experience as an apprentice and an ironmaster in mills in Louisville and Birmingham, and was blessed with sufficient private financial support from du Pont to equip the mill with state-of-the-art machinery. Having quickly mastered the rolling of the basic girder shape, Moxham began to design other types of rails and shapes as well. Within a year, the rolling mill was producing nearly two dozen different sections and weights of girder rail, not to mention other girders, heavy beams, and angles used in construction of street railway car barns. The mill also produced a line of slot rails and girders for cable systems.
While the roll mill was completed by May of 1888, the steel foundry was not completed until about three months later. Prior to its completion, the production of steel castings had been contracted to other local foundries, such as the Johnstown Steel and Iron Casting Company at Sheridan Station below Cambria City. The new steel foundry was also an iron truss building running parallel to the rail mill and boiler house. It measured 115 by 150 feet with an added eastern wing measuring 90 by 55 feet. It was originally equipped with eight Mitis furnaces (causing it to be known for years as the Mitis Foundry), two double-drying ovens, and two hand-powered cranes.
Moxham was one of the first to adopt the Mitis furnaces, which lowered the melt time of wrought iron through the addition of small amounts of aluminum. The Mitis process produced castings that possessed desired strength and hardness, yet were extremely light and easily worked and welded. All of the steel castings were completed on the day shift, making five or six casts per day with each cast being approximately 900 pounds. With all six furnaces in operation, the foundry had a daily capacity of 5,400 pounds. The metal was poured with hand shanks into molds for switches, frogs, splice bars and other light mill castings.
The design of the steel foundry was constantly changed as Moxham experimented with different types and combinations of ovens, cranes and layouts. On January 1, 1889, the foundry was placed under the supervision of Benjamin J. Watkins, a Welshman by birth and an experienced ironmaster who had apprenticed at the Cambria Foundry and been lured by Moxham from Sharon Steel. Watkins was one of the first in the country to develop and construct core ovens for the mill and foundry. To utilize the resulting greater capacity in the foundry, day and night melting was initiated.
By the fall of 1889, the foundry installed an experimental three-ton Lash open hearth furnace that was immediately converted to accommodate an Archer water-oil gas producer. The drying ovens were removed to the outside of the foundry to make room for the installation of Ridgeway balanced steam hydraulic cranes and allow for more molding space. To match the greater capacity of the new Lash furnace, a wood frame annealing and chipping building was constructed just north of the foundry.
To produce their own rolls and other heavy castings, Moxham capitalized and built his own sophisticated iron foundry on the south end of the mill site near the Ferndale Bridge. The Johnson Foundry Company, chartered and financed independently of the Johnson Company, began construction in September 1888. Contracted to Riter and Company, and under the supervision of William Boyd, an experienced foundryman from Pittsburgh, the iron foundry was completed and operational by April 1889. By the fall of the following year, a machine shop was added to the foundry to finish chilled and sand rolls.
By May of 1889, the Johnson Company (its name officially shortened the previous year to assist in marketing) was a thriving private corporate entity. Though its operations were geographically split, with its rail mill and foundries south along the Stony Creek and its switch works four miles downstream in Woodvale, the Johnson Company had successfully begun to expand its production activities into virtually all dimensions of the street railway business. Starting out with only a switch works on an open cinder dump and contracting out its foundry and rolling functions, the company now operated its own foundry and rolling facilities. Its profit margin was so high that reinvestment of profits in new machinery was commonplace. Also, the company had constructed its own railroad spurs and secured its own supplies of coal from local sources. It had established its own distribution system, with experienced and technically trained company salesmen in six major cities around the country. And it had become one of the leading designers and installers of street railway systems in addition to making rails for other contractors to install. Using Johnson's design, Moxham's production skills, and du Pont's capital, the company had in six short years become a major steel fabricator in the national steel market.
Then Providence intervened. On May 31, 1889, the Conemaugh Valley was devastated by the Great Johnstown Flood.