British Steel Secures Major Contract From Deutsche Bahn
The title of this post is the same as this article on Global Rail News.
I thought the article had a touch of Coals-to-Newcastle about it.
But read the article and there are a lot of things coming together to enable the order.
- British Steel have spent a seven-figure-sum at Scunthorpe, to make the longer rails, that the Germans use.
- Deutsche Bahn are Europe’s largest purchaser of rail.
- The initial order is for 20,000 tonnes of rail.
- Rails can be delivered in 120 metre lengths through the Channel Tunnel.
I should say, that I’ve read in the past, that Scunthorpe makes a quality product.
I found this video on the British Steel web site.
It all brings back memories of the time, I spent as a sixteen-year-old putting automation on heavy machines use to roll non-ferrous metals.
I doubt you get work experience like that these days!
The Anonymous Widower 
Ah well when I was 18 I had a summer job in the “computer” department at British Steel Scunthorpe. We did the back office stuff for the “medium section mill”, which could roll angles, girders, channel etc. from billets (in turn made from cast steel blooms). For safety reasons visits to the actual mill were rare – events like “cobbles” (where the section being rolled bounced out instead of going through) made the floor a dangerous place.
Perhaps the nearest thing to hell I will ever see is the “soak pit”, where newly cast blooms (huge ingots) were kept red hot awaiting processing. About the size of a small swimming pool and twice as deep, one would definitely NOT want to fall in…
Expertise in rolling complex sections as single entities has since developed into one of the more specialised mills in the world, making rail for much of the EU – well until Brexit makes it more economic to do it on the continent.
Comment by Mark Clayton | March 16, 2018 |
Well we still have a good intake of new blood that get to work on the big stuff
https://britishsteel.co.uk/join-our-team/meet-our-trainees/
Comment by Daniel Pyke | March 16, 2018 |
I hope you train them as well, as ICI at Runcorn trained me in the late 1960s.
It also looks like the mathematics of ramping up rail production could be interesting!
Comment by AnonW | March 16, 2018 |
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