Todd;

Glad you asked!

This was an event dreaded by most, when things got out of control under the “floor” of the blast furnace, and it required draining of the molten iron mass into something called The Salamander, due to its shape.  Think pigs, but much, much bigger.  This was a dangerous process.

The demands of WW2 caused the loss of many specialized people from the industry, and replacement with people that often didn’t know what they were looking at.

There were signs a blast furnace was going out of control.  If it did, they literally had to drill through the walls containing the base beneath the floor, then dig slowly through until they could tap the salamander into the sand beds pictured.

This process ate up HUNDREDS of freight cars for wall debris, fill removal, cinder removal, burden removal, and cooled salamander material (mostly iron broken up) recycling.  Those cars are proof of process.

There are extremely few photos that show this event.

Elden Gatwood