Significant Piece of Youngstown History Coming Back Home!

[Rick Rowlands]

We are also bringing one of these teeming ladles back from Duquesne.  This one holds 175 tons of molten steel.

[AllanY2525]

Outstanding work, Rick

keep it up!

[Rick Rowlands]

The Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation is working to bring back to Youngstown a hot metal car built by the William B. Pollock Co. This car, named a Kling type car after its inventor, is currently at the former US Steel Duquesne Works and was scheduled to be scrapped.

In 1902, a German emigrant by the name of Fred E. Kling came to Youngstown and went to work for the Carnegie Steel Co. Ohio Works in the drafting department.  Later he became the chief engineer of the Carnegie Steel Co. Youngstown District, and was responsible for the design of the 40" and 43" blooming mills at the Ohio Works as well as the design of the McDonald Works.  In 1925 Mr. Kling invented an improvement on the open top hot metal cars then in use at the Ohio Works blast furnaces. This new design kept the molten iron hotter as it moved from the blast furnaces to the steelmaking furnaces.  Kling licensed his patent to Carnegie Steel, who ordered dozens of these cars from the William B. Pollock Co.  Only a couple of these cars survived, one is on display in Homestead and another is at the RIDC City Center in Duquesne.

We are making arrangements to have the Duquesne car moved to the Tod Engine Heritage Park by the end of the month, and are quite excited about the prospect of bringing this important piece of Youngstown's industrial heritage back home again. It will serve as a jumping off point for telling the stories of the development of not only the Ohio Works but the William B. Pollock Co. as well.


Builders photos of a Kling type car at Pollock's plant.



Photos taken Saturday of the Kling car in Duquesne.